104. No newsroom can avoid the churn

John Campbell's forthcoming move from RNZ to TVNZ is a massive loss for the public radio organisation. Campbell is their brightest talent, anchoring that vital 5pm-6.30pm slot with his insightful and passionate work. He's still the best in the country at getting incredible interviews from members of the public – everybody wants to talk to John - and is genuinely irreplaceable.

But his move should not really a surprise for anybody. As good as he is at presenting news shows, he's even better out in the field, while TVNZ has made no secret that they wanted to add him to their roster. He's always been a TV man at heart, so of course he's going back to it.

It's also not a surprise because media companies in this country have a huge staff churn of staff. No newsroom is that stable, and no line-up lasts forever.

There have been some exceptionally chin-stroking think-pieces in recent days of what it all means for the public broadcaster. You don't have to look far to see people pontificating on the morale at RNZ, and how the government's backtrack on funding is affecting staff, and how Carol Hirschfeld's sudden resignation has had an impact, and how nobody seems to know what's happening to The Wireless.

These pieces are usually written by people who have some tenuous connection to Radio NZ, and you can tell, because they haven't actually gone far enough – while they usually mention the loss of Campbell and Hirshfeld, there have been other huge losses in the past few months. Long-serving Auckland correspondent Todd Niall has gone to Stuff, and excellent reporters like Benedict Collins, Laura Tupou and Mei Heron have all buggered off to television. Lynda Chanwai-Earle, who was behind the excellent Voices editor has gone and almost the entire Wireless team has been replaced.

There have been a dozen other resignations in the past year, especially from off-air staff who never see their name in lights, but do invaluable work behind the scenes. And it's far from over, with other members of that brilliant Checkpoint team bound to follow JC out the door, and at least one prominent on-air personality currently in a total shitfight to keep their job.

Many of these people have legitimate grievances with the organisation and the people who run things there, and RNZ does have problems – including some incredibly shitty pay rates - but to suggest that this wave of quitting proves there is a toxic culture is pushing it.

Because this kind of thing is hardly unique. Newsroom in this country are always cycling through a huge amount of staff, and reporters who have only been in the game for a few years suddenly find themselves in senior positions as older workmates jump ship to other newsrooms or out of the profession altogether, and have to be replaced by people who are still figuring out how this whole news thing works.

Most people leave for better pay and hours, but there might be a hundred other reasons, with some leaving for the OE, while others are just burned out. There tend to be waves of people all leaving at once, but this is no suicide pact – sometimes one person leaving can be enough to push others to make a similar decision, or it could just be total coincidence

The bigger the newsroom, the more stable it can be, and they can lose a few people without really having a huge impact. But a huge organisation will also lose people all the damn time, because individual people have individual needs and wants, and a bit of new blood every now and then is also healthy for the mix.

No newsroom is going to hold onto everybody forever, even if you're working in a place that doesn't have commercial or promotional imperatives like RNZ. The public broadcaster is not a perfect place to work, but it's just as bad almost everywhere else

There are still going o be some glum people at RNZ when John signs off for the last time, but life goes on.

- Margaret Tempest

103. Always look for the bright side of life

There is a certain amount of truth in the old newspaper cliche of 'if it bleeds, it leads' - both consumers and producers of every kind of news are drawn to stories of death and disaster.

It's just the way human beings work. We all slow down to rubberneck at a crash scene, even as we moan about everybody else doing the same thing. We're drawn to stories of violence and tragedy, even if we feel guilty about it later.
 
Fortunately, it's not all just ghoulish voyeurism. There is also some genuine social worth in covering awful events, because talking about and examining these events is the only way we're ever going to stop them happening again. As interested as we all are, we still don't want it to happen again, and anything we can learn about the event to prevent a re-occurrence is vital.

And while many social media loudmouths think journalists are scum who are only interested in the horrible side of things, we do actually love doing stories about the lighter side of life - stories of rescue and perseverance and good people doing good things.

There are a number of reasons for this. One is that we're always trying to offer as big a variety of stories as possible, and we need some lightness to break up the goddamn gloom. Some days it's almost unavoidable to fill newspapers and bulletins and websites with terrible events - some afternoons all the gross court stuff comes down at once, or there are some awful crashes on our roads, or some mass shooting overseas - and editors will be desperate for something to break up the grimness. It just creates a better overall product, and reminds everybody that the whole world isn't completely shit all of the time, no matter how much it can feel that way.

Another reason is that we're goddamn human beings and it can be genuinely difficult to deal with some of the shit that slides across our desks - we have to go through photos of terrible disasters to make sure we're not accidentally posting something upsettingly gory, we have to deal with endless stories of grief in the wake of natural catastrophes. We don't want to spend all day on the dark side, and want to cover the good stuff  too.

Just like everybody else, journos - even those accused of being the most superficial - are people with actual feelings and empathy and sorrow. As cynical as we can get, we desperately want to know that there is good in the world, and share it, in some bid to offset all the drama.

If you want to see proof, go back and look at the goofy grins on the reporters who covered the PM's pregnancy and birth - hard-nosed and hard-bitten journos who we're used to seeing scowling in the background were all over that.

Fortunately, while the world in general remains vast and uncaring, there are some stories of hope - as well as the PM's baby, there are things like the missing Thai teenagers who were found alive in a flooded cave, nine days after they vanished. Another grim story of tragedy, suddenly became one full of hope and optimism. While they face a huge task to still get them all out at this stage, we're all desperately hoping for that happy ending. 

After all, the rescue of the Chilean miners in 2010 was far more engrossing and goddamn uplifting than all the other tragic mine accidents that strike every year. We all want to see those kids out on the football field in the sun again. It's good news, and makes for a far greater story of adversity and persistence.

The local media outfits are after that positive rush, even as they lead the news with something tragic. TVNZ has been running its Good Sorts segments for years now, highlighting monumental acts of decency and kindness around the country, and the NZ Herald, which has always willing to make things as literal as possible, has even started labelling some of its stories as unashamed good news.

Sometimes it feels like we just need to have some good news for once. The end consumer might lament the lack of it, but the people behind the headlines need it even more.

- Margaret Tempest

102. Don't give away your secrets

Here's a top tip for both aspiring and experienced journalists - if you figure out a way to get blacked-out information from a government report that has been redacted to hell, don't fucking include in your report how you fucking did it, because those arseholes who are trying to hide this fucking information will realise what they've been doing wrong, and nobody will ever get that fucking information in that fucking way ever again, including rival news outlets who also figured out this trick, and are left high and dry by the reporter who tried to show off how fucking clever they are, and instead just looked like a fucking idiot, or at least a cheap magician who can't fucking help showing everybody how they fucking do their tricks.

We're not going to name and shame the people responsible for a particularly egregious case of this kind of idiocy that popped up last week, but they know what they did, and we can only hope they don't fucking do it again.

Don't give away how you do this shit, just do it. Everything else is pure narcissism, and there's too much of that in the local news media scene as there is.

- Katherine Grant

101. We don't need evil's side of the story

Journalists really do strive to keep things as balanced as possible. It's not always achievable, but they should usually try to cover both sides of the story. But not always, because deeds and rhetoric that are obviously evil don't need to be heard and shared.

There are plenty of cases where there isn't a need for balance, because the 'other side' of the argument is just obviously wrong, or just too odious to contemplate, or just totally evil. Nobody wants to hear a paedo's sick justification for what they do, nobody wants to know why genocide ain't that bad, nobody wants to be told that one race is better than the other. And nobody needs to hear that locking children up in giant concentration camps has any fucking merit at all.

The United States isn't the only place causing this kind of industrial-strength misery in this sad, sick world - there are plenty of other countries whose leaders inflict misery on the weakest and most vulnerable members of their society for their own personal gain. But it's the hypocrisy of the US that is so vomit-inducing. You just can't call yourself the land of the free and the home of the brave when you're locking away children and losing them in a vast impersonal system because you're scared of brown people.

This isn't fucking rocket science - if you're causing mental or physical harm to children, you're the fucking bad guy. You're fucking evil. There is no justifiable story where you bravely cause harm to kids to make yourself feel safe, it's just wrong. This is the easiest test of a person's morality, and the fucktarded leadership in the US right now are failing that test with honours.

And there is also no place here for a 'well, actually", or any desperate attempt to justify this bullshit. Any attempts to excuse the institutional racism that leads to deplorable treatment of people fleeing horrific circumstances is part of that institutional racism, and must be stamped out like the fucking cancer it is.

There will always be fucksticks who try to point out that other nations do worse, or that previous administrations also split up families, (which is an awful fucking argument - nobody can get away with murder because other people have been killers in the past), or that some of the details about individuals involved in this systematic fuckery have been erroneous, or even that, god forbid, some of the journos who are reporting on this shouldn't talk about the government's actions because they're divorced, and have "abandoned their children". If these bullshit attempts at moral equivalency are all you've got, you've got nothing worse saying, and less that is worth reporting on.

Anybody who gets into journalism for fortune and glory is a fucking idiot, because there isn't a lot of either for most of us. But there are actually a few reasons why we do it, and exposing unmistakable cruelty and injustice is definitely one of them.

We have to expose this shit, so that somebody can be accountable for it. Journos don't have any real power, they can just reveal the truth to the public, and let those with power do the right thing. If society doesn't do everything it can to stop the things now happening at some of these awful detention centres, that's on society's head. (And no, kicking somebody who defends this trash out of a restaurant isn't enough, these fuckers should count themselves lucky nobody has brought out the goddamn guillotine yet.)

We've got to expose this stuff, especially when it's got the power of the state behind it. This kind of malignant awfulness only spreads in darkness and intentional confusion.

This is why journos really, really hate fuckwits like the various Fox news arseholes more than anybody, because they're all about the obfuscation for political and financial game - right wing commentators can twist themselves into self-righteous knots trying to explain why treating kids like scum is okay.

Nobody needs to have a balanced view of the fight against racism - racism is objectively fucking awful, and if you're a racist on of a bitch, you shouldn't be surprised when fewer and fewer people don't want to listen to what you have to say, because it's both worthless and genuinely harmful. If you can't see that - if you can't feel some basic goddamn empathy, or that they shouldn't shit on people below you, or can hear the stories about crying children being shovelled onto flights - than you're part of the fucking problem and can be safely ignored.

Here in NZ, we've been more focused on our PM having a baby in the past week, and the reports coming out of the States have only made us more glad we've got the kind of leadership we have in this country. Because anybody who would do that to thousands of children, just to make a political point, is evil as fuck, no matter how they try to spin it.

- Steve Lombard

100. Some reasons to be cheerful

This whole Media Scrum wasn't supposed to last this long, it was only supposed to be a short term thing. We just wanted to have a quiet moan about the state of the NZ news industry, as seen from the inside, and thought we'd run out of things to bitch about within a couple of months, after we'd got a few things of our chests.

Now we're up to our 100th post and we keep thinking of new things worth complaining about, so we're not stopping anytime soon. It's also extremely cathartic, getting all this shit out of our thick skulls.

We're also surprised it has lasted this long because we kinda thought the whole media business would have collapsed by now, but it's still hanging in there. And even though we're still fairly convinced all the funding and goodwill is about to run out, and the media landscape is facing a digital apocalypse, there are some bright signs out there. Not a lot, but some reasons to be cheerful.

We're just hoping these dim lights at the end of the tunnel aren't an oncoming train.  

* Stuff is beefing up its Auckland coverage with some big names

Although it has long had a dedicated central newsroom in Auckland, Stuff has also relied on its fragile network of suburban papers to cover most of the issues facing NZ's biggest city, and those guys are busy enough putting out multiple editions a week.

But this is changing now, with the media giant actively recruiting some bloody good journos for its Auckland team, poaching phenomenal talents like Todd Niall from RNZ or Andrea Vance from TVNZ, and making a lot of other good hires.

This won't please the dullards moaning that Auckland gets too much attention from the national media as it is, and it won't silence those who have righteous concerns about Stuff's ongoing destruction of its regional services

But any kind of decent investment in any kind of newsroom is good for everybody, even if they're a bunch of fuckin' Jafas.

* Nicky Hager's legal win is a win for all confidential sources

The wide-ranging apology that the police were forced to give to freelance journalist Nicky Hager was a victory for all media in this country, and a victory for the vital process of keeping your sources anonymous. If you can't promise that kind of protection, you can't blame people for keeping their mouths shut.

It almost makes all the aresholes saying this is proof that Hager is the only really journalist in the country bearable.

* The government doesn't hate its own public broadcaster

It's still struggling to shake off a public perception as Radio Lefty, but RNZ still likes to rip into the government that ultimately pays its bills, no matter who it is – Guyon Espiner had a deliciously snarky interview with Andrew Little last week and nobody gets off easy when any of their interviewers get their teeth into something meaty, no matter what ideology they personally follow.

Fortunately, it is still a new government that doesn't have open disdain for RNZ's efforts, and recognises the need for a full and fair public broadcaster. It might not have got as much in this year's budget as earlier comments indicated, but its funding hasn't been frozen for nearly a decade, like the last lot did.

It's good to have a newsroom that has no commercial imperative in this country, and it's good to have a government that recognises that fact. For as long as the honeymoon lasts, anyway.

* All the TV

Television is dying, say all the cool kids, but it's not dead yet. Not by a long shot, and there are some incredibly good producers, directors presenters and reporters putting out an extraordinary amount of live TV every week.

Between the main bulletins, the off-peak shows, the breakfast broadcasts and the weekend current affairs, there is more than 60 hours of live broadcasting going out on the airwaves for free every week, and it's amazing that it goes as smoothly as it does. Even when the live cross breaks down, we should be heartened by how much live visual news a tiny country like our can produce.

* Leaving the PM alone

Journalists are generally awful human beings, who rely on terrible tragedies to keep the news flow going, so it's actually nice to have a big news story that is genuinely positive, like the Prime Minister having a baby.

Even better, our press is a lot less trashy than, say, their UK counterparts, and even though things can get a bit tabloidy sometimes (especially when the NZ Herald leads its website with a fuckin' Daily Mail story), the NZ press pack is far better at respecting somebody's personal boundaries, even if they're the leader of the nation.

So after the PM goes home with the baby, it's a strong bet that we're all going to leave her the hell alone, until she's ready to come back to work. There will still be opportunistic scum looking to pap the baby, but who the fuck would buy it? The public backlash alone would be astronomical. 

* There's always a place for hyper-local news

Everyone wants to know what is going on in their immediate vicinity, so there is always going to be a place for local news in the media landscape, a lesson that has been lost in endless consolidation and buy-outs, as fiercely regional news enterprises were swallowed up into larger media behemoths.

This has been a huge demographic that is increasingly ill-served by the national media and you only have to see the utter destruction of local sports coverage to see how much the big boys in the boardroom care about the regions they ostensibly serve.

But there is an increasing certainty that these things can be run better without the massive overheads and even bigger over-expectations from a central office. Some areas are focusing solely on the communities around them, with local newspapers for local people.

Nobody is going to make a lot of money out of this, but people in a town like Kaikoura want the Kaikoura news, and if they're not getting that from a news website overloaded with national and international news, they've got to get it from somewhere.

* The kids are all right

A member of the Media Scrum crew had the opportunity to meet some students journos recently, and holy shit you guys, the kids these days are a brilliant sign for the future. They're so full of youthful idealism which is more tied to reality than ever before. They're politically aware, scarily smart, and it's amazing how much they're ignoring the whole idea that journalism is a dead end career with few prospects, and are going for it anyway.

We'll lose a lot of them very quickly - they're getting into comms at younger and younger ages - but looking at the next generation of journalism is the best reason to be cheerful, even when it feels like this entire industry is falling down around us.

- Katherine, Margaret, Ron and Steve

99. A picture that is worth 10,000 words

If you want to see some hard photographic evidence of the benefits of an experienced and knowledgeable reporter, go check out this RNZ story and look at the latest use of Eddie Gay's glorious picture.

That's Malcolm Rewa, and while we don't want to appear too prejudiced or biased hereat Media Scrum, it's still fair to say he's undoubtedly one of the biggest pieces of shit this country has ever produced. The serial rapist is locked away for a long, long, long time and is about to face trial for the 1992 murder of Susan Burdett for the third time, with a stay of prosecution lifted after Teina Pora's conviction was quashed.

There have been a lot of online and print news stories over the past few years that have talked about Rewa, but they've all had to use the same image from his arrest back in the 1990s, with the younger scumbag looking morose as hell. It's a photo that is totally outdated, but it's all that most of us have got.

At least it was all anybody had, until he appeared again in court a few months back, and RNZ was the only media organisation that was given permission for a photo to be taken. It was the only one to put in a picture application, and so it was the only one granted, something the judge even raised an eyebrow over.

Even though there is still court action going on right now to stop the third trial before it starts, Rewa is highly unlikely to make an actual appearance in a courtroom until that trial begins, so nobody else is going to get another shot until then.

Even better - for RNZ at least - was that they aren't allowed to share the image with anybody else, and some certainly tried. In cases like this, there is a lot of quid pro quo that goes between editors and reporters at different organisations (especially when many of us are mates who have worked and studied together in the past), but the granting of RNZ's application specifies that it is not allowed to share the image, even with its syndicators, let alone competitors. (We can't even put the image up here on this site, because that will get us in some serious legal strife.)

There has been a growing trend in the media to make reporters shuffle around, and be experts in everything, especially when there aren't enough staff in the first fucking place. But Eddie Gay got this photo by working the Auckland court beat for years, keeping a close eye on all the big developments, and leaping on an opportunity to get some new visuals when it appeared for the briefest moment.

There are a lot of great court reporters in Auckland, working the same beat as Mr Gay, and you can bet they are kicking themselves for missing the opportunity. Shit happens, and even Eddie misses things sometimes. The court system, especially in the greater Auckland area, is huge and sprawling, and the few dedicated court reporters in the various newsrooms can't be expected to get every appearance, or every picture possibility. We're not slagging off those other reporters here, just highlighting a great get.

A lot of the big court cases in this country are covered by multiple media organisations, all sharing the same quotes and pictures. But sometimes just one place can get something nobody else has, and sometimes it takes a goddamn expert in court reporting to see that opportunity and grab it.

RNZ is going to use the shit out of that photo of Malcolm Rewa, and who can blame them? When a great reporter serves you up something like that, you have to make the most of it.

- Steve Lombard / Katherine Grant

98: If your publisher won't stand up for you, who will?

Publishers can sometimes have a fraught relationship with their editorial staff. Journalists can be a massive pains in the arse, always moaning about things like pay and conditions and the higher ideals of the industry, and are often barely tolerated by the people and organisations they work for.

But it has always been absolutely important that a publisher stands by their reporters and columnists – that anything put out under a banner has the total backing of the people who ultimately pay the bills.

This is an incredibly essential part of the whole news media machine, especially when it all turns to shit. Good journalists tend to write stuff that is going to piss off people, and often piss off people in positions of power, who will use that power to shut down the story, and the journalist themselves, if they can.

And if it all gets a bit legal, the publisher has to stand with the journo in court, and back them until the end. This is a vital ingredient of the news media industry and always has been.

The only exception is if the journo engages in completely unethical behaviour. If they're guilty of something like plagiarism or caught out writing outright lies in a straight news story, there isn't a publisher that won't cast them loose, while also taking on some of the responsibility for letting that situation happen in the first place. The machine that published the work has to bear the authority of that work.

This relationship has been generally rock-solid in NZ's media history, but has started to look a little shaky in recent months, thanks largely to National Business Review publisher Todd Scott and his current legal action involving a former columnist and a National MP.

The details of the case are as mind-numbingly dull and childish as you would expect, and the case initially seemed to have NBR standing behind Hooten. But now a side-action has been taken against the columnist by the publisher, casting him loose completely, and leaving him potentially liable for any damages that may arise

Scott – who has a worrying tendency to blurt out anything on his mind through Twitter -  has defended this decision by saying he had to take this action after Hooten 'cut a deal':

To those who have questioned my motivation for filing a High Court action against Matthew Hooton: I did it because he cut a deal with Steven Joyce, which meant Mr Hooton would be dropped from the proceedings. NBR wants to defend the claim, but can't if Mr Hooton is dropped.

— Todd Scott (@ToddScottNBR) May 30, 2018

Scott is still portraying the NBR as a plucky underdog, fighting against shady back-room deals, but if the publisher had the balls to put out Hooten's claims, it still needs to take full responsibility for it, or it shouldn't have published it in the first fucking place. If anybody in any part of the editorial process had raised objections, none of this legal bullshit would have happened. Nobody forced them to publish potentially defaming content, but they did it anyway.

Scott may say he has very good reasons, but he could be setting a dangerous precedent. The closest he came to actually working in news was a stint reading out Lotto numbers on the telly, but there is the chance his lasting legacy will be the irreparable erosion of the relationship between the publisher and the people who produce its content, with a legal precedent saying it\\that it's okay to throw a reporter under a bus.

And if the bigger fish start thinking like that, we're all screwed. In a worst case scenario, journos won't take on jobs that could hit them personally, because they could be ruined without anybody to back them up. Nobody will say the things that need to be said.

We have to be in it together, or there is no use being in it at all. Reporters can't do it on their own.

- Katherine Grant