Michael Batson

The media in Britain covers the whole spectrum from the ridiculous to the sublime, whereas New Zealand just has, well, the mediocre.

At the recent annual television media awards, Television New Zealand (TVNZ) News  beat the competition to be named news channel of the year for New Zealand in a competition of two, well, three – almost.

Hardly a competition at all I’d have thought, especially when the main opposition comes from rival channel Television Three, whose news coverage is dire to say the least. The other channel in the race is Prime, which is a subsidiary of TVNZ in any case, and manages in 30 minutes, half the news time allotted to TVNZ, to cover exactly the same number of stories in the same if not better fashion.

Lacking either the inclination or the resources to effectively analyse news or what’s behind the news, especially international news, both channels resort to the inane coverage of local items, including court proceedings in excruciating detail, yet without really adding any value to the story.

To illustrate this, last year TV3 spent precious national news minutes predicting what it thought would be the events in an especially gruesome murder trial for the following week. This trial, where the defendant was accused of stabbing his former partner over 200 times, citing provocation as his defence, had been a rich source of media time for both channels to their detriment as informed investigative news services.

The lawyers on display seem to revel in the attention, almost preening themselves in front of the cameras, no doubt viewing the opportunity as free advertising. I am amazed by the lack of conviction (no pun intended) in their arguments, hardly likely to sway any jury. Poor speakers all, their diatribe is more soporific than spectacular.

There are too many animal stories, up to two per evening news shows at times, coupled with gossip stories regarding local sports stars and New Zealand’s z-class celebrities, the qualification for which can be dubious at least. At times, this may be someone who was once merely married to some ex-league player or other.

The television news in New Zealand more resembles the tabloid press at every turn. In New Zealand this isn’t the gutter press found in the United Kingdom. The print media there boasts some of the most prestigious newspapers found anywhere, and some of the sleaziest.There is an old adage in Britain with regard to its newspapers, where the better quality ones are known as broadsheets, given their physical size. The sleazier they are the smaller they tend to be, though in recent times, broadsheets are not so broad any longer.

The Financial Times is read by those people who run the country. The Times is read by those people who run the country or are married to those people who run the country. The Daily Telegraph is read by those people who would like the country run the way it was 100 years ago. The Guardian is read by people who think that they should be running the country. The Daily Mirror (a tabloid) is read by those people who think that whoever is running the county they could do a better job. And the Sun (another tabloid, perhaps the most infamous of them all) is read by people who don’t care who runs the country, so long as she has big tits – on account of the paper’s infamous page three topless models!

At least New Zealand’s media, regardless of its quality or lack there of, doesn’t have those awful class connotations found elsewhere, especially in the UK.

I once sat on a London tube train wearing a working man’s Donkey jacket and covered in mud from the site that I was working on, but reading the Guardian, a leftist broadsheet. Opposite me, a man of the City, resplendent in pin-striped three-piece suit sat casting his eye over me, only because he couldn’t equate the clothes with the paper. In Britain’s hideously constrained and type-cast class system, I should’ve been sat there reading the Sun, or some other rag. I always liked having a New Zealand accent in the UK, because it was almost impossible for Brits to categorise you by social class.

It is rather puzzling as to prominence given the weather in Television One – it leads the news and is featured twice more during the course of the programme.

Why is it that the BBC can present a forecast for the global weather in less than five minutes, where TV One’s presenters take three goes and twice that time frame to summarize just the South Pacific?

Then of course there is the BBC itself, long recognised as one of the world’s premier news services, matched these days arguably by Germany’s Deutsche Welle and the likes of Al Jazeera. The BBC is not without its critics, but like those other news services blessed with professional journalists and presenters, devoid of the eye candy presenters so often seen on Australian and American channels.

Australia’ television media fares a little better, saved by one or two quality presenters and channels. While channels seven, nine and ten are largely forgettable, the ABC is worth watching for its coverage, and the SBS though getting more Americanised can still produce effective current events shows.

Channel Nine will lead their hour-long news show with the latest indiscretion of an AFL player while under the influence. “Such and such admitted urinating outside police headquarters on St. Kilda Road” whereas SBS may mention it briefly during the sports section, the ABC wouldn’t mention it at all. SBS is the only channel in Australasia that leads the sports news with football, the round ball variety, rather than any of the other codes.

Wellington’s Dominion Post was the creation of the amalgamation of the morning Dominion and the Evening Post, the last remaining evening paper of the country’s major cities until its demise. Pity then, they didn’t take the opportunity to update the paper’s name, routed as it is in the country’s colonial past. The paper’s conservative-bent is peppered with great swathes of advertising, and a lack of in-depth articles, save those lifted from overseas publications.

The latest sensationalist item in the New Zealand media is the demise of one of the country’s leading shock jocks. Paul Henry managed to insult the Governor-General, Sir Anand Satyanand, during an interview with Prime Minister John Key on Henry’s Breakfast show last week, causing a diplomatic row. Henry was suspended for a fortnight without pay (estimated to have cost him up to NZ$8000) but yesterday resigned from TVNZ after meeting the state broadcaster's chief executive.

The insult followed previous derogatory comments Henry made about an Indian minister. On 1 October, Henry erupted into giggles on Breakfast, mispronouncing Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit's name. It's supposed to be "Dixit". Six days later, the New Zealand High Commissioner to India, Rupert Holborow, was called in by the Indian foreign ministry in New Delhi and handed a formal protest over "Dikshit" remarks, followed by a formal complaint to New Zealand by the Indian Government, shocked that a “multi-ethnic democracy like New Zealand” should be allowing such things.

Henry is provocative, he’s paid to be. He would to many New Zealanders epitomize the Jaffa, or just another f****** Aucklander. Brash, opinionated, unconcerned with matters south of the Bombay Hills, in old-speak, a Rangitoto Yank.  Rumour has it that though Henry resigned with immediate effect, he was given a six-month payout! How many people get that?  Henry also lost his gig as host of the local version of This Is Your Life, replaced ironically enough by another disgraced former television host and fellow Aucklander, Paul Holmes. Seven years ago, Holmes was forced to resign after referring to the then UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, as a “cheeky darkie.”

It seems for Television New Zealand, time is the great healer.