What another wonderful week of news media we have been able to indulgein, in this once great country of ours. This week Paul Henry has been putting in his usual poor effort presenting a live morning show on TVNZ. Don't be mistaken; he was not giggling, he was in full blown hysterics over what he thought was funny. I feel sorry for his co-presenters who had to smile and were unable to do anything about this particular runaway freight train. You could even see from the looks on Pippa Wetzell's face how the control room was trying to contain this outburst.
In my mind this is just a reflection of the standard of reporting and presenting that we currently have in this country. People like Paul Henry win Peoples Choice Awards because of the lack of real presenting, which went out the door years ago, when all of a sudden presenters started worrying about their public image and how they where perceived, rather than concentrating on getting a particular story across.
This unfortunately also has an affect on the people that they are interviewing as well. A classic example of this would be when the earthquake hit Christchurch. I was working in the morning and thankfully didn't get to see much of the morning reporting. Once I arrived home at around 1400 I took to the television to see what I was able to find out about the devastation. Well, if I had missed anything from the morning I sure didn't miss anything at all at this late stage as for approximately 1 hour (about as long as I could watch it) I saw the same footage 3 times. So what was being reported? An interview with the Mayor of Christchurch, discussions on relief aid that was being brought in to the region? Nope, it was reactions from the general public, and mostly always the same information. I say mostly as the only thing that I can remember changing was the magnitude of the earthquake. It started out as a 7.4 then it was a 7.2 and then a 7.1. The only time that I was able to find anything new was when I tuned in to Al Jazeera news to, well, finally see an interview with Bob Parker. Yes, that's right, Al Jazeera.
Then we got to then interview with John Key. Well I though that of all the times to show what you are make of, this would be the time. Did we hear about how the government was going to be bringing in help from other centres to aid the workers that had been working since the time of the quake? Nope, just about the first thing that we heard about was how much this was going to cost, and that there should be some money available for this. I'm sorry, money over human life?
Yes, old Gas Station Toilet Access (John Key) did say that this was a terrible day for the whole country and that we are all thankful that there was no loss of life, but what about those people who had come in to work in the hospitals after the quake had hit. I take my hat off to them and know that I would have done the same after I had taken care of my own family. But after at least 12 hours at work even they would start to get a bit tired. So where were the relief workers for these staff, and why wasn't John Key telling us about where they where coming from? Counting the dollar the cost should not have been the first concern here.
I lost faith in the New Zealand media a few years ago when John Campbell laughed at a car magazine editor when he replied to a question that he had asked. All I could think was, here is a journalist for a predominate car magazine, which has been in publication for quite a number of years, and to get the job of chief editor would not be easy to say the least - and you think that this is some sort of joke?
It was reinforced a few years later when one of these morning shows had a hypnotist on, and they tricked one of the presenters into thinking that the person that they where interviewing was an international singer (I can't remember who), and they where to interview them. Their colleague was to be asking questions as well. Well, the colleague started asking some rather pointed questions that were quite valid (note the person being interviewed was not the singer in question). Yet the person who was hypnotised was outraged at the type of questions being asked, and was even saying that you can't ask questions like that. What was wrong with these questions? They where not embarrassing. They where not derogatory. And given what had happened, they where fair questions to be asking. This was just another example of an interviewer saving face rather than asking hard questions and accepting the responses.
