Giving up on television news
CURMUDGEON - KARL DU FRESNE
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OPINION: I have almost given up entirely on the television news.
This is not easy. Watching the TV news is like addiction to tobacco; you know it's not good for you, but a lifetime habit is hard to break. There's always the nagging fear that I might miss seeing something really important.
Fortunately the television networks, bless them, are doing their best to make the parting painless for me.
A watershed moment came when TV3 led its 6pm bulletin with coverage of Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe's apology for the way the airline treated the families of those who died in the Mt Erebus tragedy in 1979.
The bulletin editors decided that, in her preamble to the item, newsreader Hilary Barry should give viewers the benefit of her opinion on the airline's behaviour 30 years ago. "Frankly, it stank," Barry harrumphed.
Perhaps I'm alone in this, but I neither expect nor want to hear facile editorial opinions from newsreaders - least of all from one who, by my reckoning, was about nine years old when Flight NZ901 slammed into Erebus, and who probably remembers less about it than many of her viewers. What gob-smacking effrontery.
Of course, it may not have been Barry's opinion at all, but words written by someone else for her to say - which, if anything, makes it worse.
Was it Barry's own opinion, in which case it was worth no more than that of the corner-dairy owner, or was it the opinion of some anonymous TV3 person behind the scenes whose view might carry some weight, if only we knew who the person was? It's anyone's guess.
The very vagueness of this editorial posturing makes it meaningless, yet at the same time slightly disturbing.
Unlike a newspaper editorial, which is clearly an expression of opinion for which the editor takes responsibility, the viewers don't know where this opinion emanated from or what, if any, importance to attach to it.
More disturbingly still, the promiscuously casual mixing of news and comment - long the journalistic stock-in-trade of TV3's political editor, Duncan Garner - means viewers increasingly have to guess which is which.
A few nights earlier, TV3 had repelled me with its highly opinionated coverage of the discovery of the body of missing toddler Aisling Symes in a stormwater drain at Henderson.
Being wise after the event, which is something TV reporters do very well, the journalist slagged off police for not finding Aisling earlier.
My guess is that the reporter was instructed to adopt her smugly moralistic tone. Certainly it wouldn't have happened without her editor's approval.
At times like this I cringe with shame at the behaviour of my fellow journalists, and I recall the famous condemnation of the British press by prime minister Stanley Baldwin in 1931: "Power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot through the ages".
What is noticeable about editorialising by TV journalists is that it seems calculated to exploit populist sentiment. They choose soft targets, playing to the public appetite for scapegoats and moral outrage.
It's considered safe to heap scorn on Air New Zealand, especially since most of the people who might once have defended the airline are no longer around, and it's considered safe to rubbish police for not finding a dead toddler earlier, though there were good reasons why that didn't happen, and Aisling's life wouldn't have been saved in any case.
Police, like politicians, are considered fair game in almost any circumstances.
A British newspaper journalist once wrote, tongue only partly in cheek, that editorial writers hid in the hills till the fighting was over, then came down and bayoneted the wounded. The same is now true of TV reporters.
This coincides with a fundamental change in the role of the TV journalist, whose primary function these days is not so much to impart important information as to provoke an emotional reaction from the viewer - be it grief, fear, anger, sympathy, disgust or whatever.
So I must now steel myself at 6 o'clock and try to ignore the temptation to switch on the TV set. Each evening I assess whether the benefit of anything I am likely to learn by watching the news will be outweighed by the irritation of sitting through so much pap. Most nights the balance of probabilities favours leaving the TV off.
The intrusion of editorial comment into the news is the proverbial last straw, coming on top of silly gimmickry like tandem newsreaders (can anyone else remember when it took only one person to read the news?) and pointless live crosses to attractive reporters who have the language and pronunciation skills of preschoolers.
TVNZ offers no respite, since the two networks are locked in a downward spiral of crassness in which any new form of idiocy adopted by one is quickly mimicked by the other.
Newspapers can irritate me too, but there's a vital difference. Reading the paper, you can see at a glance the stories you have no interest in reading - the depressing child abuse trial, the antics of celebrities you've never heard of - and pass over them.
Television doesn't allow that luxury. You either endure the dross, hoping it will throw up an occasional nugget, or you forgo it altogether. More and more often, I'm choosing to do the latter.
- © Fairfax NZ News
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Last time I watched the news ,there was an interview with an allblack. In the entire interview he was not asked one single question, he was given a bunch of stupid ,inane statements to reply to. The answers were just as stupid.Yeah nah, Boys backed themselves and um,boys got some go forward, yeah nah and um ,boys stepped up to the mark ,nah yeah,and um, and dumber and dumber. Is intelligent conversation too much to ask? And while I rant , what is all this "award winning" crap the media constantly promote themselves with. Qantas media awards are handed out by the dozen, being an "award winning" journalist, is about as exclusive as the fat kid who came last in the school swimming getting a participant award. Lastly "media training".Sorry there is no such thing, it is intellectual castration,designed to stupidify people down to the level of journalists.I have not watched the news in years, all I need is 10 minutes on the net , and the weather is one click away. I dont need to watch some smug ,overpaid head wobbler, go through their "how does it feel","do you accept that",what do you say to the people who say","talk us through that","and coming up, a cat was stuck up a tree in Gore ,lets go to our "award winning " reporter rubbish.
Aah-the 6pm slot. Why not (1)instead listen to the news on National Radio, or (2) watch Chris Tarrant instead: Much better for the soul!
It is the same here in Aus-just childish.The only balanced veiws around are coming from 'the australian' news paper.
Why cannot journo,s ask serious questions?
They all seem to stay on the level of debate that is current-and not raise it.
A very good example, is that there is a 'demand side of the drug problem, but they do not even ask the police if they are policing that.In the south island in the 80,s -if you went to court on "possesion of stolen property" the judge threw the book at the defendant to keep "demand" down for burgleries.Effective policing !.Now days,the news media have gone out and created an image that "bikies" and the like, are responsale for the drug problem--------it is an absolute lie.----Grow up.
Great article, great comments. Couldn't agree with elizabeth re: radio NZ more. The part of TV news that makes me sick is their blatantly photoshopped pictures of their reporters overseas when their world news has spiralled down into utter oblivion. Cue cheesy picture of reporter with afghani children, what a total crock, we only have a US, pacific island, europe and australia cirresposndent for crying out loud. Hey, nothing of interest happens in the middle east anyway right....
The whole news presentation scenario is a contentious thing. Given enough radios and TVs one can multi-task intake and immediately disregard the dross. After a while a strange thing happens. One commences to become aware of the underlying agendas driving each disseminator of news, whether it be merely to function as a vehicle for the advertisements, or more seriously, to implant in the listener a politically correct line of thinking. This is perhaps the most valuable lesson to be learnt and makes even giving passing assessment of the rubbish worthwhile.
Haven't watched TV for about a year now. Most refreshing. The double-anchor news readers has been copied (via the UK)from the Americans, a nation comprising some of the bluntest knives in the world's drawer, hence the need to constantly recap and repeat information. NZ's on-going cultural cringe ensures that we continue to look at other (often more stupid) cultures than our own in a bid to be taken seriously.
I couldn't agree with you more. I have not watched TV news for a long time, mainly due to my disgust at the reporters and presenters apparent feeling that their opinions are in some way related to the news they should be presenting. Reporters should report, presenters should present (do we really need them?) and opinions should be clearly stated as such and separate from actual news. This applies also to print and internet media - maybe the blurring explains why readers get confused over opinions and news, complaining when opinion columns such as yours express opinions?
Why not time-shift using MySky or that Freeview thingy? We start watching about 6:20pm and ff through ads (ultra fast), weather (slowly) and the stupid stuff (fast). That way we don't miss out on the one worthwhile item that appears every blue moon. Sky recently said very few of its subscribers do this. Ha Ha!
Totally agree. And why do we need such a long section on sports news?
I also struggle with the overuse of puns on the 6pm news. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head but they've gone well beyond amusing now.
New Zealand's 'biggest' P-lab busted
Suing doctors a return to 'dark days', court told
Sonny Bill Williams finds rugby boring: mate
Fallen property king arrested in Auckland raids
'Starved, beaten' teen weighed just 32kg
272 confirmed dead in Honduras jail fire
Govt says asset sales will cut debt
Mallard sells festival tickets online at profit
Olympics trigger record $815,000 rent for home
Debt crisis may stymie surplus by 2014
Electronic cigarette explodes in man's mouth
Another near-death Laos tube ride
From TV to a tent: Family of eight evicted
Fallen property king arrested in Auckland raids
Star claims Home and Away racism
Pub owners give up, open kindergarten
Robyn Malcolm lays it all bare
Sonny Bill Williams finds rugby boring: mate
Nats to discuss Mondayising holidays
Letter: The nakedness of skateboarders
Mallard sells festival tickets online at profit
Should you take your groom's name?
Auckland, Wellington expensive for expats
Mojo Mathers gives maiden speech
Star claims Home and Away racism
Kiwis' epic skateboarding adventure
Mallard sells festival tickets online at profit
Mallard sells festival tickets online at profit
Cyclist: Don't fine us, fix the road
Should you take your groom's name?
Can Paris Hilton save her image?
Hey! You've jumped on my long-standing band-wagon!!
Unlike you, I gave up the TV-news habit a long time ago and cold-turkey (this came after spending an entire year monitoring both TV1 and 3 for my thesis research...such was the mental trauma of watching 700+ hours of NZ TV news in a year that I turned it off and have never looked back!).
The real danger to which you don't allude is not so much that the viewers have to try and discern fact from editorialising, but simply that they don't notice the distinction. As if we need to have our emotive responses cued by some TV journo - a jumped up graduate on whom someone has slapped a suit jacket and given a microphone. Frankly hearing the vox pop would be every bit as legitimate in terms of 'newsworthiness'.
And has anyone else noticed that NZ tv news networks have recently made an awful lot of formerly ordinary journos into "political editors" or "social affairs editors" etc - thus presumably bestowing upon them an (unearned and unjustified) seniority which is intended to legitimate their blatant editorialising...'if they're an 'editor' well then gee, they must know what they're preaching about'...never mind the fact that most of them have spent all of 2 years out of grad school and as you correctly note, can't formulate a sentence properly, let alone a soundly based, well-informed opinion!
Finally, I guess we should note that in recent years news readers have become news 'presenters' - this is more than just a semantic shift. Drama and commentary apparently now come with the neatly coiffed, 6pm package.