TV review: News outlets snipe over Bain verdict

BY JANE BOWRON

Usually the two competing news channels refrain from taking swipes at each other but on Thursday night, TV3 couldn't resist having a go at the Petrie Dish.

With Bain ardour running at an all-time high - I keep expecting to see a David Bain doll appear in shops - a TV3 news reporter informed us that on Facebook pro-Bain fans are calling for David to be a contestant on next year's Dancing With The Stars, and added that perhaps he should partner up with TV One news anchor Wendy Petrie.

On the night the verdict was returned, Petrie had been flown to Christchurch to report live from outside the courthouse - muscling out the reporter who'd done the hard three months' slog - and, after successfully completing a live cross, was caught on camera committing a professional foul, yanking her right arm and crying "Yes!"

Having only a passing interest in men's fashion I have been astonished at the running fashion spread we have been treated to of the Bain doll on the nightly news.

We have seen David in his lovely dark cashmere coat, and in a leather jacket swinging a golf club against a backdrop of Christchurch's last autumn leaves.

These images of Bain enjoying his not-guilty freedom come with equally astonishing calls to the public to donate to the David Bain fund.

Perhaps the most shocking image to grace our screens during the trial reportage was the spectacle of numero uno Bain supporter Joe Karam handling exhibits in the courtroom.

This is a task which should be performed only by court attendants rather than acted out by someone who is on the defence pay roll and who has written three books about the accused.

Surely allowing Karam to demonstrate how a gun might have been held in front of the jury can only be seen as deeply compromising.

But I suppose it is only right and fitting for a man who earlier in the week, in a lengthy interview with John Campbell, compared himself to Socrates.

To quote: "I made a point in my second book - actually it was a point Socrates made 3000 years - four or 5000 years ago when he said: 'Don't worry about why I might be saying something - have a listen to what I'm saying' and of course what he said laid the foundation for modern civilisation - even though he was hung for it at the time."

This utterance came after an assertion by Karam that the media were/are jealous of him because when he first became involved in the case, "the media thought I was finding an excuse to write a book and I stole their story".

"It was Joe Karam's story, not theirs, and they tried to pick holes in it rather than listen and read it and understand it."

When Campbell asked Karam why, in spite of the not-guilty verdict, 53 per cent of people in a Herald poll still believed David Bain was guilty, Karam replied that those polled were either basing their opinion on inherent prejudice, or only on "the snippets" reported in newspapers and on TV.

According to Karam, only the people who were in the courtroom every day are entitled to be the cognoscenti, the holders of the truth, not any QC or any of the "Johnny-come-latelies" who hadn't done serious trial time and were therefore getting their evidence from, "the front page of some newspaper or other".

Such comprehensive and scathing criticism of the fourth estate is surprising when you remember Paul Holmes championing Karam on Holmes after the launch of his first book, and Campbell's own gushy outpourings of exultation when Bain was first liberated from his incarceration.

Several times during the three- segment Campbell Live interview Karam curiously referred to himself in the third person, speaking of how, during an earlier defamation trial, "Karam won the lot, the police lost the lot" - patronisingly adding that "you would have thought they would have learnt their lesson by now".

Karam also maintained that the police had an obsession with him, that, "the police tried to shut Karam down but like a phoenix I would rise up again". Identifying himself as Joe Karam rather than using the conventional I or me is unusual.

If Karam is knighted, as some people are divining, after watching this lot, "Sir" will become even more insufferable. With the trial finally over, Karam, who has become the "Bain" of our lives, will be out of our faces until the inevitable film is released.

I wonder who they'll get to play Karam? I hear Danny DeVito is free.

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