79: Signing out for the summer

Like a lot of the news industry, Media Scrum is taking a break for a month or so, because it's been a hell of a year, and we're going outside to sit in the sun for a while.

We've been ranting and raving for nearly a year now, and none of us thought we'd last that long, but we keep coming up with new things to moan about, so we're not going anywhere.

It's also a good chance for a bit of reflection. The Media Scrum crew have had the chance to expose some of their core beliefs on this site, and we're standing by all of them.

This is some of what we believe:

* The first rule of journalism is still 'fill the fucking space'.

* The second rule is 'you can't do journalism on an empty stomach'.

*The third rule is now apparently 'don't sexually abuse people, you fuckers', and we're embarrassed and ashamed that this has to be spelled out like this.

* The NZ news industry is full of great people doing tremendous work every single day, and most of them don't get enough recognition for their efforts, and it's no wonder so many of them are buggering off overseas.

* There are also some jerks.

* But no matter who they are, the hours are shit for everybody. No wonder it's becoming more of a young person's game.

* The news media is bigger than it looks, and can't be tied down as any one thing.

* Time is not on our side, and bullshit 'pivot to video' strategies are not helping.

* Scoops are everything, but they're not the only thing.

* Breaking news banners are broken.

* We're always falling down a photo hole, looking for that perfect shot. It doesn't mean we can just rip off a Facebook post for fun and profit.

* Never, ever read the comments.

* No, seriously, nobody gives a shit about your ideology

* Some people just want to burn the world down for the LOLs.

* You can't predict the weather or the traffic, but you can still report on it.

* The future is unwritten, but it won't be written by robots.

* There is great journalism everywhere, if you can be bothered to look.

* But too much 'look at me, look at me' going on.

* Anybody who keeps going on about fake news just sounds like a moron.

* We're too fucking white.

* We need to remember the easy mistakes.

* It's easy to laugh at the bloopers, but newsreaders are still humans under that make-up.

* Winston Peters is a total arsehole. Fuck him, a lot.

* The big news sites have far too much junk in their trunk.

* You might be right, but you don't have to be a dick about it.

* It's an endless cycle of bullshit, blatant disrespect and crap pay for journalists in this country, and we still fucking love it.

Happy holidays, everybody! See you in 2018.

78. You can't do journalism on an empty stomach

Journalists are dealing with a lot of shit these days, including shrinking newsrooms, vastly increased workloads and an audience that often gets downright hostile. The industry is rife with sexual harrassment, people are being served with legal papers because they did their fuckin' job, and people are just dicks to you, like, all the fucking time.

These are some big issues to wrestle with, but when it comes to getting through the workday, it's all about the food, because you just can't do good journalism on an empty stomach.

You can't come up with a proper intro or audio cut when you're stomach is grumbling away, and any kind of dedicated writing and editing requires some serious brain power, and all that mental processing needs fuel to keep you going, or you'll just crash, and get nothing done. If you're out in the field, you might spend hours sitting in a hot car waiting for somebody to show up, and any food is welcome on the stake-out.

And yet, journos have the worst eating habits, and can often blame the job for their nutritional deficiencies. Shift work has a lot to answer for - workers on the late shift might only be getting dinner-level hungry late in the day, and the options become terribly limited, and those who are forced to take lunch breaks in the late afternoon might have to chance the dodgy sushi in that shop across the road, or some other shitty fast food, because there ain't many other options.

Journos who are out the road might go most of a day without ever finding the time to cram something into their gob to keep them going, or could be way out in the middle of nowhere, far from civilization, with nothing but a half a pack of breath mints to keep them going. The killer adrenaline rush of chasing down a big news story will carry you a long, long way, but it can't do it forever.

Meanwhile, subs and online editors might find themselves chained to their desk for a full eight hours straight, barely able to pop out for a slimy dairy pie and a packet of Doritos. When you're working in the news business, anything could happen at any moment, and that's part of the appeal. But it also means a major international incident could break out while you're in the bathroom.

Plans for a decent lunch break can be totally wiped out when breaking news suddenly hits, right before you step away for a minute, and it can be a long time before you get the chance to sort something out again - breaking news is notoriously inconvenient like that

In the Ocean's 11 movies, there is a recurring joke where Brad Pitt's character is always eating weird snacks all through the films, whenever you see him. The actor's reasoning for this was his character was someone who was always wheeling and dealing, and never sat down for a proper meal, so just had to snack his way through the day to keep his energy levels up.

Working in a modern newsroom feels like that sometimes, even if only a select few of us are as pretty as Brad Pitt.  We'll gorge on foods that are full of saturated fats and sugar, because we've got too much work to do.

It gets good when it's election night or some other big event - those who have to work on Christmas Day (which, in newspapers, is always busier than Christmas eve, because you're always working one day ahead), usually get a decent spread to help alleviate the fact you can't spend it with your loved ones. At the very least, the poor souls working while everyone else is at the barbecue usually bring some kind of tasty treat into the office.

Because, make no mistake, even the most seasoned and jaded journos will seize upon any free food sent to the office, they will descend on it like fucking seagulls. It doesn't matter if a lot of the food that shows up comes from PR companies, most journos will just take the food and ignore the message. 

You can't actually buy a journalist with a doughnut, but they might still love you for it, for as long as the taste lingers.

Look, the news media isn't the only industry where workers can be struggling to keep their energy levels up as they work long hours. It's part of modern life. It's just that journalism is a business where you will crucified for missing out on some big breaking news, just because you needed to duck out and get a fuckin' burger, and you were stuck on a shift with no back-up.

No wonder so many reporters and editors and producers eat at their desk, it's the only way to keep going as the news piles up.

- Ron Troupe

77: Should Radio NZ use so much Māori language?

Āe.

Of course it fucking should. Keeping te reo alive is a mark of distinction and honour for this country, and anything that can be used to make it more ubiquitous must be encouraged and nurtured.

RNZ should use more - it's just one tiny step in the long road to overcoming the bullshit Maori have had to put up with for the past two centuries, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

There is no argument against this that isn't fundamentally racist, so there really isn't much more to say. Te reo is here to stay. 

Anybody who has a problem with that needs to grow the fuck up and join the 21st century. We won't be waiting for you to catch up for much longer.

- Perry White

76. The level of sexual harrassment in the New Zealand media industry is appalling

The news media has a vital role to play in the exposure of serial sexual abusers and harassers, and any justice their victims may find usually involves mass exposure of the monstrous men and their horrendous habits.

The awful stories about people like Harvey Weinstein, Louis CK and Kevin Spacey were, apparently, open secrets in the movie, comedian and theatre industries, and anybody in a position to do anything about it was, apparently, a coward or a sycophant. It was only when stories of their misconduct where reported by bigger news organisations that anything actually happened. Somebody only fucking did something about it because everybody was looking at them.

None of this is easy for their victims, and some of it can be intensely triggering for many people, but it sometimes takes a massive fucking spotlight to expose a massive fucking scumbag.

Unfortunately, there is the usual hypocrisy at the heart of all this reporting, because the news media is riddled with absolute dickheads who have abused and harassed their co-workers and staff, just like every other industry appears to be. It happens overseas, with dicks like Charlie Rose, and it happens here, even if local victims are not ready to name names. Not yet, anyway.

The recent #metoo movement proved this, with many women in the media industry standing up and revealing their own unfortunate experiences. The Spinoff has done a few stories on this, and you can find just the tiniest taste of the bullshit female journalists have had to put up with here and here.

For concrete and empirical proof of the toll this is taking on our news media, just look at the ratio of women are in high-powered positions in the industry, compared to the ratio of women who enter the business. J-schools have been overwhelmingly female for decades now, but that same representation isn't seen at the top table. There are obvious exceptions - some of the country's biggest papers and broadcasters are female-led, and there are growing numbers of women at the board table - but the upper echelons of editors and producers tend to still be predominantly male

There are, of course, many reasons why women slip away from the industry - the usual glass ceilings and gender pay gap issues; the fact they're much smarter than men, and realise they can make way more money in comms and PR much faster than their male contemporaries; the idea they might choose to spend more time raising a family (although this is another area where men need to step the fuck up more).

But given all the evidence, along with innumerable rumours and whispers, it is clear that many women are being harassed right out of the industry, and that's not good enough. If the news media is ever going to give any kind of indication of how society should act, it needs to sort its own shit out as well.

This means no tolerance for this kind of behaviour. And anybody - male, female, gay, straight, trans, whatever - who is aware of it needs to make sure something is done about it. Nobody needs to be treated like this, and it only stops if we make it absolutely unacceptable to do so.

This world feels so horrible sometimes, especially with all these stories of harassment and abuse around, and even more especially when somebody who gleefully admitted to grabbing women by the crotch is sitting in the goddamn White House, but this kind of behaviour isn't right or proper, and it is a little heartening to see that these shitheads can't get away with it anymore. No more turning the blind eye.

Because the more these kinds of serial offenders are exposed, the better off we are. And the more we say we don't want people to see people on our TV screens who don't seem to have a lot of contrition about, say, breaking somebody's fucking back,the better off the world is.

In other words, we might like to talk about sport, but we don't want to be your fucking mate, Tony.

***

In similar and blatantly shameful territory, Media Scrum fave Harkanwal Singh has been on a couple of platforms recently, pointing out that the average newsroom in this country is white as fuck. While Singh had the misfortune to spend most of his news media career in the whitest big newsroom in the country - one that never bothered with something as important as a Māori Affairs reporter for years - he's still right, and the news industry in this country really is white as fuck.

Again, there are notable exceptions - RNZ has some gorgeous brown faces in its large Māori and Pacific Affairs teams - but this is something that needs to be addressed, because you can't reflect society properly in your news stories if you don't properly reflect society in your newsrooms. Any kind of programme or scheme designed to get a better ethnic mix in the news media must be aggressively pushed, if we're going to get anywhere.

This is still a country where men get their panties in a twist over hearing a little bit of te reo on the airwaves (a dumbarse concept which we thought was well and truly settled before the ODT decided to print a complaint straight out of the 1930s last week), so any kind of programme will invariably see white blokes moaning that they're not getting jobs because of reverse discrimination. But that can't be right, because reverse discrimination isn't a fucking thing, and they're just hiding their own inadequacies and incompetancies behind good ol' racism, so who gives a shit what those arseholes think?

This is 2017, and journalism is still hanging in there, but society is starting to outpace it. Newsrooms need to be more sexually and culturally aware if they're even going to catch up, because it can't continue like this.

- Margaret Tempest, Steve Lombard

75. This is why things don't happen

Wellington traffic was going to be a nightmare, they said. With none of the trains running, all the city's roads were going to turn into car parks, they said.

Industrial action by Wellington train workers shut down the whole network for a day last week, leading to inevitable warnings of carmageddon on Wellington's roads. In the end, the traffic were fine for much of the day, and many commuters were convinced they even got into work a little faster.

But even though it really wasn't a problem, any snarky comments blaming the media for over-reacting to the issue - and there were inevitably a few - can be ignored for the bullshit they are, because if the media didn't report on it, it definitely would have been a fucking problem.

This is a different issue from the moaning about the media hyping up potential issues with upcoming weather patterns - that's an issue where nothing really could happen, because nobody can 100 percent predict which way the wind is going to blow. But in those cases, it's still far, far better to be safe than sorry - better to have the inconvenience of moving out of a danger area, than being taken unaware by a sudden flood and drowning in your fucking bed.

In the case of the Great Wellington Traffic Jam That Wasn't, the strike was definitely going to happen - both sides made that clear they couldn't reach an agreement the day before it all kicked off - and it would have been a complete fucking mess if everybody hadn't been warned about it. If the capital's commuters hadn't seen the news on TV or heard it on the radio, or found it on the web, or read about in the paper, they would have been totally fucked.

Still, we're talking about Wellington here, so all it really took to save the day was the public service telling everybody to stay home, and that reduced the congestion by a tonne. But those public servants - and the people making the decision to keep people home - still had to be made aware of how bad it could get.

The fact that it didn't go all Mad Max on the white line nightmare of Wellington's mean streets showed that getting the message out through the mass media still worked, even in this attention-fragmented age.

The ultimate example of all this is the good old millennium bug, which is still, 17 years into the 21st century, held up as the greatest beat-up in history.

For a lot of the 90s, there were all sorts of breathless warnings in the news media about how critical computer programs weren't going to recognise the difference between 1900 and 2000, and that was going to fuck us all up - nuclear power stations across the world could melt down, planes could fall from the sky and everybody's porn was going to be deleted.

In the end, nothing much happened - there were a few hiccups, but in general, life in the 21st century carried on, same as it always was.

And ever since then, there has been endless whining about how it was such a waste of time, and the entire news media made a big deal out of nothing, and it's all such crap.

It was precisely because of all those warnings that something was actually done - giant companies saw the coverage and were spooked enough to hire huge IT teams to scroll through their code and fix the issue, so it didn't become a problem. All vital systems needed to keep the modern world ticking along were the first thing searched and repaired, and literally billions of dollars were spent sorting out the problem. 

The fact that nothing happened meant the system fucking worked. The warning prevented the problem from happening.

This can't keep happening indefinitely, and it won't matter how much warning you're given if the Wellington bus company can't agree with its staff - things will go full-on road warrior really quickly, because people could only hold off heading into town for so long.

Warnings will only go so far, but they do sometimes work. Moaning that something didn't happen doesn't mean it should have been ignored. We'd all be screwed then, no matter how shiny and chrome things get.

- Margaret Tempest

74. No, they're not going to reveal their bloody sources

Last week, the deputy prime minister of New Zealand served legal papers on a number of prominent people, trying to uncover the source of the leak of his super over-payments. Winston Peters is still on the warpath there, even though it didn't look like it did him a hell of a lot of harm in the end.

Along with several politicians, a couple of journalists were also included in this round-up, including staff at both Newshub and Newsroom. The action might be nothing more than a fishing expedition - we're a long, long way away from reporters standing in the dock on contempt charges - but if Mr Peters is expecting news people to give up their sources, he's absolutely dreaming.

As much as it is a cliche, it's also totally true - journos never, ever reveal their sources. In cases all over the world, reporters and editors have been threatened and have even gone to jail to protect their source of information. Betraying that kind of confidence is never acceptable.

Besides, if you give up the people who tell you things, nobody is ever going to trust you again. You just can't be a journalist any more, if you don't hold that kind of base line of integrity. You give up your source, and you might avoid something unpleasant, but you're not a journo anymore. No newsroom is ever going to hire you, none of your colleagues are ever going to share anything with you again, and you're done.

On the other hand, there is a lot to be gained if you stick by your source. Yeah, you might suffer some unfortunate short-term effects, but you gain a reputation as someone who can be trusted, who won't dob you in if things get a bit sticky, and you'll get the first call from any future whistle-blowers who are looking for a trustworthy reporter.

Journalism is an industry that is built almost entirely on reputations, and they can be destroyed in an instant - just ask poor old Ben Mack, who vapourised his the instant he sent his opinion piece to the Washington Post last week - but they can also be steadily built up over years of grinding work, and are certainly helped if you show some integrity, and just a bit of goddamn backbone.

You also get the undying respect of your peers, which is nice. We could all do with a bit of that.

The only time it is acceptable to reveal a source is if that source gives their express permission, and is happy and willing to face the consequences. This doesn't happen very often, but it does happen, and there is no black mark on the journo's reputation.

Maybe, one day far down the line, when everybody involved is dead or retired or just don't give a fuck anymore, the truth will all come out. Some book or long-form article will dig back into the past, and might be able to find out who said what to whom. When it becomes history, when there is nobody left to protect or blame, the truth will become clear.

It usually does. 

- Margaret Tempest

73. Honeymoons don't last forever

Any change in government inevitably leads to a kind of honeymoon period, as the new regime gets settled into their new role, and everybody cuts them a little slack, for a while.

Even those members of the public who voted for the old status quo can grudgingly admit that the new government deserves a chance, at least, and the media tends to follow this nation-wide sentiment fairly closely. There will still be the odd spiky interview, right from the start, but in general, reporters, editors and producers give them a break.

The new Labour-led government was sworn in just the other week, and is still getting a little bit of  a free ride through the first days. There is still, of course, a deeper focus on its new policies, and their cost, and their possible effectiveness, now that they have made the leap to the big time, which is only to be expected. And there are interviewers whose entire reputation rests on having a bite at everybody, and nobody should be surprised to see them getting their licks in.

These kind of things have already prompted murmurs and whispers about the end of this honeymoon stage, with several political commentators already giving the new government a bit of the side-eye. But it takes more than that a short, snide column or long, boring Twitter thread to bring that honeymoon to an end. It never lasts forever, but it lasts a bit longer than you might expect if you were hip deep in endless political analysis and guesswork.

The honeymoon period between a new government and the media usually well outlasts the usual prophets of doom, but it comes to a dead stop at the exact moment the current regime can't blame the previous ones for all its own fuck-ups.

This could take years, with the new government's policies so diametrically opposed to National's, on so many different levels. Issues with the health, justice, housing and transport systems are all being proactively looked at, and steps are already been taken to move in new directions. It just takes fucking ages for these kinds of processes to fully kick in, and in the meantime, the previous direction takes a kicking.

Eventually, ministers won't be able to hide behind the ideas, flawed or otherwise, of their predecessors, and will have to front up to questions and accusations, based on its own merits. They might still whine about the mistakes the earlier guys made, but sooner or later, they've got to stand or fall on their own work.

For the best example of this, you only have to look at the media's access to government ministers. By the end of its three terms, the National government was notorious for declining to comment on some pretty fucking big issues. Trying to get Jonathan Coleman into a live interview to talk about some of the horrific examples of our healthcare system failures, or Paula Bennett to talk about another social welfare fuck-up, was bloody difficult,

That's flipped around now, and new ministers are only too happy to go on The Hui or Checkpoint, or talk to long-suffering newspaper reporters. They're only too eager to show that they're concerned, and doing something about it. There have been tonnes of media appearances in the past couple of weeks by the new Trading and Health and Housing ministers, and it's easy to get almost any government minister on the line.

But if time drags on and there are no real results, there will be no more excuses, and any failure to meet expectations will lead to a souring of that relationship. If Labour manages to stay in power for three terms, there is little doubt they'll end up the same way National did after nine years - wary and weary of being exposed to any media scrutiny. It certainly happened to the last Labour government.

Meanwhile, the new opposition is still getting used to the idea of needing the media's help to get their message across. Several of them, including the lovable Gerry Brownlee, remain hilariously grumpy with reporters who ring up for a quote, clearly blaming the media for their part in their loss of power, instead of their own shortcomings around the negotiation table.

They'll flip around in about the same time the government starts to sour on the media intrusions, and starts muttering darkly about those pinkos at RNZ, or that bloody Paddy Gower. National will have to re-learn the opposition game, although the lack of any real bloodshed in the ranks after their loss might mean it takes a bit longer.

In the meantime, the new government should enjoy their honeymoon while it lasts, and try not to think too much about the inevitable divorce.

- Steve Lombard

72. The political limbo game

New Zealand's political journalists were trapped in the ultimate 'damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't' situation during the recent coalition negotiations for a new government.They had nothing to report, but were heavily criticised for reporting on it anyway. 

They had to follow all the latest developments as the talks took place behind locked doors, and there weren't any, so were forced to do awkward colour pieces about the interminable wait, spending days and weeks hanging about in hallways, trying to catch a whiff of anything newsworthy.

They couldn't even see who was even going into these meetings, and were forced into undignified positions, peeking around doors and over fences to get any kind of clue to what was happening.

The parties involved were all keeping a cone of silence over the whole thing (although it probably helped the big parties that they seemed to have genuinely no idea which way Peters was going to go until he went up there and told the whole world). But there was also the possibility of some big, big news coming out at any moment, and staff needed to be on standby for that moment. It might be weeks away, or could have been in the next hour, but it was definitely coming, and reporters and camera-people needed to be ready for it.

So every day, the TV reporters went live to the studio to reassure the presenters that no, nothing was still happening, and the only copy coming out of the gallery were light colour pieces about the waiting period, or desperate predictions based on the very flimsiest of evidence.

Naturally, this lead to the usual snide commentary and mean tweets from all the usual suspects, wondering why the press gallery were wasting their time, and maybe they should just bugger off and wait for an pronouncement. The politicians should just be left alone, they argued, and things would go a lot faster if those pesky media scum stopped asking impertinent questions.

Fortunately, that's not how journalism works, and asking questions is what we fucking do, and the question of 'do we have a bloody government yet?' had to be asked over and over again, every fucking day

The reporters knew they would take shit either way so, amazingly, they got on with doing their fucking jobs. Even the puff pieces about how many tiles there are on the floor served a purpose - they showed that there was someone there for when the shit did hit the fan, reassuring the readers, viewers and listeners that any big developments would be swiftly and fully covered.

Of course, the reporters were accused of being lazy, because they were just sitting around all day, but those accusations invariably came from people who don't work in daily journalism and seemed to have no idea that it's actually a tough fucking gig, covering that shit day after day.

The ability to wait - for a story, for a contact or even a goddamn phone call - is an indispensable part of being a journalist - they should really teach more about this skill at j-school.  It's part of the job, and even with nothing happening, it can be incredibly stressful. Especially when you're dealing with the political future of the whole goddamn nation.

The press gallery at Parliament worked their fucking arses off this year, and it didn't stop after the election. Some of them cancelled much-needed holidays to wait it out, and some got gushing nosebleeds from the stress. There was no fucking lazinesss there.

We can only hope the inevitable pay-off, when Mr Peters finally stepped up to the podium and revealed he was going with Labout, was all the more sweeter because of it. Most of us in the news game live for moments like that, even if it feels like our whole lives are ticking away while we wait.

- Ron Troupe

71. You might be right, but you don't need to be a dick about it

Nobody likes making a fuck up, especially when everybody in the world can instantly see your error, but they still happen.

In this climate of overworked staff and a critical lack of time in the newsroom, silly typos on instant online news stories are unavoidable, even if every digital journo fucking hates making them. Nobody likes fucking up at the best of times, and especially not when you've got thousands of people watching and judging everything you do.

So despite the best of efforts, they will happen. They do, of course, get immediately fixed when spotted, but it's still a little shocking and disconcerting to see how much it drives some readers into a total fucking rage.

Accepting that human beings aren't fucking robots is part of being a grown up. You can expect more, you can even expect total perfection all the time, but it shouldn't be a crushing disappointment when you don't get it. Fucking toddlers manage to work that shit out.

The people running the big online news sites in this country hate making mistakes as much as any other person, and are only too eager to fix their fuck ups. If they're fast enough, they'll spot them first – and they usually do, because they're looking at their sites more than any other human being. If they fix it before anybody notices, it didn't happen, and we can all move on and just hope no smartarse shithead took a screenshot.

But over-worked and over-stressed editorial staff don't need a fucking lecture on the downfall of media standards every time they spell police as polcie. They welcome short, precise notice that something isn't right, and this will usually result in a 'shit yeah, you're right', a thank-you and a swift correction.

If, however, you feel the need to express your displeasure in the medium of indignant profanity, telling people you've never met that they should all be fired and burn in hell because this is the downfall of all journalism and it wasn't like it in your day - well, then you're not going to get far.

Because that kind of missive is even way less effective. You might think you're blasting a big, sprawling organisation, but you're also pissing on an actual person, and you can't blame them if their reaction is a “fuck you, buddy, I'll get around to fixing it later”. If it's not huge and noticeable - and most of the errors that attract this kind of vitriol are definitely not - it can fuckin' wait.

Bigger issues of overall balance and bias are a different matter altogether, but when tiny mistakes are made that are easily fixable, everybody needs to calm the farm. They'll sort it out, if you don't be a dick about it.

Nobody really likes being told they've fucked up, but a bit of perspective – and some common goddamn courtesy – can go a long way.

- Katherine Grant

70. Column writing is more than just an opinion

The giant media mega-merger between Fairfax and NZME is currently looking deader than dead, for a variety of complicated and logical reasons. There is still the outside chance it might happen, with appeals still ongoing, but it's not looking healthy for the plan.

One can only hope that one of the main reasons behind the disapproval was the horrifying possibility that every newspaper in the country would start carrying Mike Hosking's column, and that local voices would be drowned out by the boorish braying of the radio host, assuring the whole country that everything was okay, because Mike has a nice house and a Ferrari. You just have to work hard, think smart, and act like a complete fuckwit, and you too can be just as beloved, Mike could tell you.

There is, unsurprisingly, more cross-pollination of editorial staff as companies consolidate and get together, with redundancies and double-ups ruthlessly sniffed out and eliminated. Radio stations and TV networks and newspaper publishers share the same masters, who fight the imbalance of the balance sheet by cutting out vital staff, and then act amazed when readers/viewers are turned off by an inferior product.

One of the unfortunate casualties of all this consolidation. has been the professional columnist, who is rapidly becoming an endangered species. Why pay an actual writer to offer up one decent essay a week, when your national TV or radio star can shit out a column during the ad breaks? It's not just filling column space, it's free promotion for the media company's brand, and everybody wins.

Except the reader, of course, but who gives a damn about that poor bastard? The problem is, radio stars make terrible goddamn columnists. What works during a three-hour radio show doesn't always work in print. Several high profile columnists have had their fingers smashed for writing things they can get away with saying on air, because with the audio there is often a dissenting voice, or some sort of context, or even an indication that the writer/presenter is taking the piss, all of which is lacking in the plain black and white of print.

Great hosts are often terrible writers, with meandering and mediocre opinion pieces about the same old bullshit everybody else is talking about. There are always exceptions – Kerry McIvor is still a cracking writer who doesn't fuck about getting to the point – but the art of the column is getting buried in all this goddamn cross-promotion.

(It's also notable that the TV and radio newsreaders, who just do the bulletins, often make surprisingly great writers, probably because they're used to speaking in short, sharp and clear sentences, and know the value of editing that shit down. In all the pieces about the bloodletting at Mediaworks last year - and there were a fucking load - longtime loyal presenter Carolyn Robinson wrote one the best for The Spinoff, capturing the thrill and joy of breaking news, making her cold dismissal at the end all the more personal.)

Everyone thinks they're a writer, and everybody has an opinion, but writing a column does actually take some skill, with a desperate need for structure and a proper point, or it's all just mad rambling. It's something that needs to be worked on, not tossed off in the break.

There are still some great columnists out there, and the very best are those whose opinion you totally disagree with, but you still end up reading their point of view. That takes skill, and a bit of courage.

Media companies are cost-cutting and penny-pinching, but dedicated column writers – not just the most popular voice on the radio - still have their place. It takes more than a good voice.

- Margaret Tempest

69. Ain't no elites here, mate

One of the great insults lobbed at the editorial departments of the big news media companies is that they're a cultural elite, full of arrogance and misplaced superiority. Just a bunch of Auckland wankers who drink fancy fucking wines and spend every weekend trying to get into the Herald on Sunday's Spy section, utterly divorced from the common man and his common sense.

They don't care what happens in the small towns, or anything south of the Bombay Hills. Everyone down south knows that.

But a city that is expanding as rapidly as Auckland has to get its population from somewhere, and despite the fervent wishes of morons and racists everywhere, it's not all international immigration. As the biggest city in the country, Auckland attracts a lot of people from all over the country, brought there by the bright lights and opportunities.

People who have deep, long family ties to Auckland can find themselves outnumbered by internal migrants from Timaru, Feilding and Whakatāne when they are in a gathering of friends or colleagues in the big city. Yeah, the housing market is a fucking nightmare and the traffic is getting worse and worse every month, but Auckland has the brightest lights in the country, and anybody hungry for opportunity is going to be drawn to that like an idiot moth.  

This can be clearly seen in the big national-scale newsrooms in Auckland  -TVNZ, Newshub, the Herald, Stuff, RNZ and NBR aren't packed out with Aucklanders worried only by Auckland problems - they're full of people from all over the country.

And just because they've embraced the JAFA lifestyle doesn't mean they've forgotten where they come from, and they don't just remember it when their local team comes to play at Eden Park. We've all got our roots somewhere and we all care about them.

Which means those complaints about the short-sightedness of Auckland-based newsrooms are a complete load of dogs bollocks. The news organisations might feature a lot more stories about Auckland, but that's because it's a third of the country's population, and yes, another story about the terrible traffic snarl-ups is going to affect a shitload of people and is always going to get more attention than a 10-minute traffic jam at a Dunedin intersection.

(Although it's worth noting that online stories about the horrors of Auckland traffic actually pick up a hell of a lot of their audience from outside the big city. They always do well online because Aucklanders want to know if they're getting home tonight, and because non-Aucklanders like to read those stories and feel smug about their nine-minute commute to work).

These people do give a shit about the state of the rivers in Canterbury, or the latest shenanigans at the Horowhenua council. Every single story might not always make it onto the nationwide bulletin, but these things aren't just forgotten, and all the big news outlets do substantial stories about hyper-local issues all the time.

All those Auckland media people might be wankers, but they are still giving national attention to fine work already done by their colleagues at local papers and radio stations, backing up the local journos (who are doing great work) and giving their concerns and crusades a national platform.

Just because they live in the big city, doesn't mean they don't still care about the small towns.

- Margaret Tempest

68: The boy who cried breaking news

CNN broke the breaking news banner, but they won't stop flogging it into oblivion. They made it meaningless and unhelpful, and have nearly ruined it for everybody else.

The 24-hour news channel is just one of many news outlets to have a constant BREAKING NEWS banner scrolling across the top/bottom of the page/screen, but they're the most egregious with it, and will use it for anything. Even if it's about something that happened hours ago, or is just the latest development in a huge story that has been running for days, there is a big red banner on the bottom of the CNN screen, screaming for your attention.

Sometimes you catch them running out of even that, and they just have a 'BREAKING NEWS:' sitting there, with no other text. It's telling you that there probably is some big news out there somewhere. It'll come through, any second now. Promise. Just you wait.

The reasoning behind it is obvious, the whole world is full of flashing lights and banners, and you've got to be loud and obnoxious to grab somebody's attention, and nothing does that like the latest big news. As a society, we're fucking addicted to breaking news, and we're all terrified of missing out on something important. Even if we've only got a moment, we've got long enough to read a banner.

But there is a cost to this when you use it for every fucking thing. It devalues the whole idea of standing out, because something that is always there will inevitably fade into the background of normality. The more that it's used, the less effective it is.

Outlets like CNN have been around for decades now, so a lot of media companies have learned this rule, and save the banners for truly breaking news. Those that can still restrain themselves from losing their shit over every damn thing will notice that a lot more people are paying attention when you do flash something big and important.

Unfortunately, there are also a few newsrooms that don't give a flying fuck about little things like 'over-saturation' or 'total overkill', and are only too willing to take a giant dump on the whole idea of long-term credibility, in favour of short-term gains.

One of those worst offenders in this country atthe moment is the NZ Herald, which uses a breaking news banner for fucking anything, to the point where it's totally devalued. They'll slap that label on anything: write-offs of other newsrooms' scoops from seven hours ago, the latest developments on The Block, a house fire around the corner.

Most organisations have the ability to do an event bar, and anything can go in there, and it can be a great place to raise awareness of good longform journalism further down the page, or of some campaign by the newsroom to wipe out childhood diarrhea or some shit. But that ain't breaking news.

Breaking news is something big, something important, and flashing anything less is insanely counterproductive. The easy way to tell if something is worth a breaking news banner is if it passes the 'oh shit' test - if you tell somebody something has just happened, and their first reaction is 'oh shit', that's banner-worthy for sure. Anything else is pointless and counter-productive.

If this goddamn industry is ever going to survive much further into the 21st century, it needs to stop yelling about everything, and only shouting about the 'oh shit' moments.

- Margaret Tempest

67. We're still stuck on this bloody election trail

After months of campaigning, and political machinations, and outright lies, and the usual betrayals and downfalls, the 2017 general election still ended up exactly where everybody fucking knew it would - with Winston bloody Peters arsing about with the balance of power.

The proportions of power changed changed, but all those polls that Peters continually derided as garbage turned out to be pretty fucking spot-on - the numbers seen on Saturday night were very close to the ones seen in recent polls. Especially the various poll of polls, which were so much more than just a "an intern with a calculator", as some sneered.

So now the entire system of government is stuck in a holding pattern as the various coalition negotiations go on, and it could be weeks before anybody has any idea who is going to be in government, and we all just have to sit back, think of Aotearoa and take it.

In the meantime, as we wait out the inevitable hesitations of the negotiation process, we can expect the usual bullshit - endless analysis and opinion, but nothing to really back it up. Peters' refusal to talk about any possible coalition deals before the election means we're all stumbling around in the goddamn dark, wondering if the old fool will go out as an establishment man to the end, or an unlikely savior for the cool young things on the left. What sort of legacy does Winston want? Does he even know?

And it hasn't taken long for the various under-performers to lash out at the mean old media coverage, for not giving their boring-arse personalities and policies more airtime or page views. While there was some moaning about this kind of thing when the pre-election debates were all going on, Act leader David Seymour was one of the first to lay into the media coverage after the ballots had been counted.

In one of his first post-election interviews, Seymour lambasted RNZ, saying his party suffered due to an over-representation of the bigger parties. If only he had that kind of platform, he reasoned, then everybody would have seen how wonderful and smart Act's policies are, and the voters would have come flocking.

Unfortunately for Seymour - despite whatever they're putting in the water in Epsom - the rest of the country are just never going to vote for somebody who looks and acts exactly like Rimmer from Red Dwarf, (a Lister or Cat candidate, on the other hand...). It didn't matter how much media time he got, nobody really wants a Rimmer in their government.

Seymour also conveniently forgets that there is a fucking shitload of stories on the election campaign to follow up on, along with a massive cast of personalities and an absolute tsunami of press releases . There just isn't room - or enough reporters - to cover it all, and someone has to miss out.

In the end, news editors can only go for the most newsworthy - the biggest election bribes, the most idiotic moves, the most egregious abuses of power. There are more than enough of those to go around. Some politicians have become masters at manipulating this news flow, and it can appear that the media is unable to resist it, but you can't just ignore this shit.

So when, say, Simon O'Connor makes a totally bone-headed comment connecting suicide and euthanasia, then he has to be called out on it. And when Steven Joyce says there is a fiscal hole in Labour's accounts, it doesn't seem to matter that everybody except Bill English says he's wrong, he just sat back smugly and let the doubt take hold.

There is the argument that the news media shouldn't rise to the bait, but all it can do is show the facts - John Campbell's slow, methodical reading of all the economists who said Joyce was full of shit has been an election coverage highlight - and hope like hell that its audience can look at the data and make up their own goddamn minds. Any more hand-holding, and you're in the realm of pure bias, but it's not like this crap is totally ignored..



Still, thank fuck it's almost over, because this is all getting a bit much. The great game of politics and media needs something new, because this relationship is getting old.

- Ron Troupe

66: Fix your heart or die

We're all up to our fuckin' necks in election coverage, so no 'top class whinging' until all this shit is over. Normal service will resume next week.

In the meantime, here are our favourite quotes from the BSA, from their summary of a recent decision against a fuckwit who got all hot and bothered by RNZ's use of some words from one of its national languages. Considering the BSA usually goes out of its way to be polite about the people who lay complaints, this is fuckin' scathing:

"The Authority further noted that, even if the complaint referral had been validly made, it would have found the content of the complaint to be trivial and vexatious, and would have declined to determine it."

"The complainant wanted to complain about a presenter on RNZ National who ‘calls herself “A HO” at the end of each news bulletin’. He said that the presenter also used ‘Te Ngae’ ‘as an alternative’. The complainant said that the presenter ‘reads the news in English, not Mardi’ and that the presenter made herself ‘a laughing stock’ by using the term. He said that this amounted to ‘over Maorification [sic] of Language’ which was ‘offensive when words [like] “ho” are used. It is an Americanisaton of the expression “Whore”’."

"RNZ did not accept the complaint as it related to the complainant’s personal preferences."

"We consider that the tone and language used by the complainant, both in the content of his complaint and in his correspondence with Authority staff, to be offensive, derogatory and dismissive of the proper purpose of this Authority."

"The policy behind section 11 is that the time and resources of the Authority, which are sustained by the people of New Zealand, should not be wasted on having to deal with matters which objectively have no importance."

"In this case, we observe that even if RNZ had responded to this complaint formally, we would have declined to determine it, as we consider HM’s complaint to be both trivial and vexatious."

"His complaint disregards te reo Māori which is an official language in New Zealand and he has persisted in wasting Authority time and resources on a matter that is without foundation, either procedurally or substantively."

The BSA just told you to go fuck yo'self, fool. Classic.

65: The Tuesday morning that changed the news forever

Everyone remembers where they were when they heard about the World Trade Center towers coming down in 2001. The horrific dust clouds from those collapsing buildings are still blowing around the world and right through our heads.

Maybe you were a kid at school, feeling sick and talking with classmates about the uncertain new future, maybe you were woken up by a loved one's phone call and told to turn on the bloody telly, maybe you were out of contact for a few hours and came back to find the whole world had turned upside down.

It was 16 years ago now, but unless you're a teenager or younger, you know exactly where you were.

There were far greater examples of man's inhumanity to man throughout the 20th century, but this attack, right at the heart of capitalism, right on the goddamn doorstep of the 21st century, shook western civilisation to its core. It led to more useless bloodshed and an air of fear and paranoia that has slowly and painfully led us here, where there are genuine fears of a nuclear Armageddon in the year 2017.

Any chance that we were on the fast-track to universal enlightenment was kicked in the fucking balls by the September 11 attacks. All that raving in the '90s about a glorious new aeon were just the same old shit.

And after a public display of naked aggression that was unparalleled in our modern age, the first thing everybody did after they saw the skyscrapers coming down was turn on the news, and look for some kind of information or explanation, just to help us make some sense of it all. News ratings spiked, circulations went through the roof and the internet instantly became the news delivery source for the next generation.

9/11 was the first multi-media terrorist event, but we've come so far since then. Now there are live blogs and video feeds, tweets. You can Facebook Live the end of the world when it all goes down, and everybody has got a HD camera in their pocket, as long as the battery lasts.

But as connected as we all are, there is also that feeling that you could be missing out on something huge, happening right now. That you just need to check in, to make sure North Korea hasn't been destroyed, or to find out the latest score in the cricket. Smartphones give us that connection to the world, through a huge variety of feeds, wiping away any suspicion that we're missing out on something important. We haven't been able to look away for 16 years now.

TV has tried to get in on the act, by filling the hole with 24-hour live news, which is fantastic when there is a big world-shuddering event going down, but not so much when they have to fill the rest of those hours throughout the other slow news days and resort to mindless, dull punditry to fill in the gaps between the ads.

Newspapers are, of course, still trapped into printing schedules, so can only really provide valuable context, background and reaction. Radio has always been super-immediate, but doesn't have the pictures to grab the attention. Unsurprisingly, it's online that the real 24-hour action is happening, with big news websites crunching through huge amounts of news every day - something like the NZ Herald is easily putting several hundred stories every day.

It's taken years for the big media websites to learn the lessons spelled out on a sunny Tuesday morning, 16 years and one day ago. They're still not quite there, still blindly reaching out for an audience that it knows is out there, selling its soul to social media and acting affronted when it bites back.

But we have also come a long, long way. Look at the 9/11 websites, and how crude they are, and how unacceptable they would be in this data-hungry age. If some thin-skinned buffoon sets off the end of the world any time soon, or even just ignores the disastrous effect of unquestionable climate change, we all face potential catastrophes that will dwarf the horror of 9/11. But at least we'll all have a front row seat.

- Margaret Tempest

64. Fuck you, Mr Peters (again)

While the authors of this blog maintain an absolutely professional attitude to dealing with politicians in our day jobs, we can be just as opinionated about them in our private lives as anybody else and it's fair to say we fucking loathe Winston Peters as a bigot, a hypocrite and an old fool.

Astonishingly, despite not having a new idea since the 1980s, he's campaigned this year on a platform of change and new directions, like he hasn't been in Parliament for fucking decades. Even more astonishingly, he still has enough support from other scared old people, to the point where he is still likely to hold the balance of power after the forthcoming election.

But the ball always bounces perfectly for the leathery old shit. It looked like he could be in trouble last week, with the revelation that he had been overpaid for his superannuation for years, to the point where revealing an exact figure would have been truly embarrassing. But it only took a few days before he managed to be the fucking victim again - a true, solid man who was being undermined by lesser creatures.

Even without getting into the morality issue - why the fuck does a working person on a stunningly good public salary need to claim the money for anyway? - there were legitimate questions about how a man who is extremely up-to-play on the ins and outs of the super system could miss the wrong data for years. Suggesting it was a simple, honest mistake might impress the rubes, but since he's a leading politician who has been hip-deep in the finer details of the pension for years, it just makes him look incompetent as hell.

But somehow, the shit just slid off him, and by the end of last week he had managed to portray himself as a victim of a smear campaign, threatening prosecution on anybody involved in leaking the information.

Mr Peters has, of course, never stopped himself from using his own leaked information to smear his opponents, but got right on his fucking high horse when it started coming his way. Suddenly, a man who has built his career on some jaw-dropping leaked data was the paragon of privacy, outraged that people would use the same tactics he had happily employed for years.

Peters set his sights on the usual political targets, and unsurprisingly, a lot of it was also apparently the media's fault for daring to report on an interesting news story.

The news media has long been a target of Mr Peters' ire, but it's only got worse in recent years. After he made the outrageously racist claim that Herald journalists were only working on stories about the property boom because they were Asian, Mr Peters didn't really suffer any consequences, so it's no surprise that when it comes to his latest media criticism, he once again played the man, not the ball.

It was, admittedly, a pretty fucking lame assault - claiming that the Newshub reporter who confronted him about his super overpayments was a young, inexperienced reporter out to prove himself by beating up a nothing story.

Which is the usual heaping pile of bullshit. The reporter involved has been around a while and knows the fucking score, and only the most catastrophically inexperienced journo would hear that a major political figure was overpaid his pension for years and think it was a non-story. To ignore that would have been the true incompetence, but no, it's all part of some sordid conspiracy to bring the Last Honest Man In Parliament down, apparently.

Mr Peters is getting nastier as he gets closer and closer to death, and the truly funny thing about his nastiness is that it just doesn't work politically - his poll numbers have been fucking tanking for weeks now. While he is still a folk hero to the kind of morons who gladly drink poisoned Kool-Aid if Winston said it would get rid of immigrants - there were plenty of voxies last week from the usual idiots who sneered at the media to just leave him alone - he's scaring off the more moderate voters, who can see through his thin veneer of charm.

Still, at least he has some real competition for biggest shithead of the campaign this year, after Paula Bennett revealed in the weekend that a little concept like 'universal human rights' wasn't really something she subscribed to. It's an interesting tactic for National to try appealing to the moron vote as much as Peters has been doing, although Bill English was hitting the morning shows hard yesterday to let everyone know that Paula didn't really mean what she said (an admirable trait for a career politician), so maybe they looked at those poll numbers for Peters and realised there are only so many idiots willing to buy your bullshit.

Mr Peters has, with dull predictability, written off his terrible poll results as 'fake news' and they're still not terrible enough to stop him from having that grip on power later this month, so he's unlikely to change. Maybe all we can do is ask the press gallery to soak up some more of his bile, because he might think he's being big and clever by blaming the media for everything, but he just looks like a fucking tool.

- Ron Troupe

63: Let's be careful out there

The recent case of a Swedish journalist who disappeared while out covering a story really does sound like one of those Nordic noirs - there was a headless torso, a missing reporter, and a submarine.

But behind the weird and nasty novelty factor of the case lurks a terrible truth that a lot of the biggest media companies  are ignoring - they are often sending reporters into real danger, with inadequate preparation to deal with the situation if anything goes horribly wrong.

In the past, reporters have almost always had - at the very least - a photographer with them, to back them up, especially if things go south. But with staffing levels being cut back further and further, reporters are now expected to head off on their own to cover things, loaded down with all sorts of gear - camera, audio recorder, notepad and everything else a reporter needs, except for actual human back-up.

That's not a real problem - not when you're off to cover a ribbon-cutting ceremony, some political announcement, or anything else that features a large media contingent.

But reporters are also constantly being sent out into openly dangerous and hostile areas, at weird times of the night, and that can be a big worry. Caught up in the rush of breaking news, reporters are sent out without a second thought for their own personal safety.

There are chief reporters at some of NZ's biggest and best newsrooms that have actively refused to send young reporters out in the field on their own, deciding that they can't send the night-shift reporter to cover a gang-related homicide in Mangere late on a Saturday night, because it's just not safe for them to be out there, especially if there is a pissed-up crowd gathering. But other chiefs don't even give it a second thought, and send their reporters into situations that are, simply, dodgy as fuck.

The actual assault rate is mercifully low, but journalists can be chased away from properties, or even off the public street, by people who lash out in grief or anger. Reporters at the scene can be dealing with people who have recently dealt with great loss or trauma, and need to tread carefully.

It doesn't help when a lot of the reporters sent out on these jobs are young, and keen to get out there, and might not have the experience to know when to push an issue, and when to back the fuck off.

It's also not helped when fuck-headed politicians whip up frenzies against the media - it's genuinely astonishing that the poor souls who cover President Trump's nasty and narcissistic rallies haven't been seriously assaulted, and it's surely just a matter of time.

Any journo who has been in the business for a few years  has been threatened with violence, and while the vast majority of this is from fucking nerds too scared to get out from behind their keyboards, it only takes one crazy shithead to do something terrible.

It's not just the danger of a late-night call-out, it's the ongoing risk of going to stories that might be nothing more than puff pieces, before things go sinister and wrong. The biggest personal risk to the well-being of reporters might even be just outside the workday, with shiftwork requirements that see journos forced to get to and from work at extremely risky times of the day - late nights and early mornings, with most big newsrooms found in the central city. A Radio NZ journo in Wellington was tragically killed while walking home after an overnight shift, just a few short years ago, and it's sadly guaranteed to happen again.

And the case of the submarine death also shows that even covering something as innocuous like some bloke with his private sub can have a horrific ending. The true story of what happened on the sub is still unrevealed, but it still shows that the simple act of going out there and getting the story can have an incredibly tragic result. Everything possible should be done to avoid this.

-Katherine Grant

62: Are you old enough?

If you just judge the news media by the keen young things that front up for the latest live cross to the TV news studio, it would appear that reporters are getting younger and younger every year, and it's only a matter of time before a toddler is solemnly reporting from outside the High Court.

There is always a constant injection of youth into the profession, and it's desperately needed. That kind of enthusiasm and idealism is absolutely vital - a newsroom that is full of nothing but cynical old hacks is a newsroom that is dying on its arse.

Of course, the young ones are also the only ones willing to put up with some terrible working conditions, as they strive to make a name for themselves. They'll put up with the shitty hours, and usually don't have kids that prevent them from devoting themselves fully to the job, and - crucially - they don't mind getting paid absolute peanuts for the first few years of their career. (Then they graduate to almonds.)

The majority of young reporters don't stay in the trade long enough for the jadedness to seep in, and they're off to comms or PR or teaching or any other bloody thing, happy to be out of the grind. You're lucky if half a dozen graduates from any j-school class are still in the business after a decade.

The ones that stay, though, they are in it for life, and for the long haul, and they're ready to age disgracefully within their profession. They're in it for the news, or for the platform, or just because they're not much use at anything else.

Unfortunately, after a lifetime of tiny pay rises, they're also expensive, and can sometimes come with a worklife that is full of baggage, and there are plenty of journos that have a stellar career right up until their forties or fifties, and then find nobody is returning their calls anymore.

This is a definite problem in the digital age, where even the people running some of the biggest news companies in the country actively seek only young people for online roles, because they're convinced the younger generation is the only one which understand this new-fangled internet.

This isn't dumb just because it overlooks the fact the internet has actually been around for decades now, and multiple generations have grown up in a digital environment. It's dumb because the online department is the one most likely to fuck up in the most egregious ways, and it can take an experienced eye to point out that maybe you should be more careful what thumbnail pic you put on that story, because a bit of carelessness in that regard can swiftly lead to legal action.

A focus on cheap youth can leave those with a bit of history out in the cold, and you can find some staggeringly experienced journos doing any job they can, and that can involve frankly demeaning work with terrible hours, and they're just happy to be working.

But the important thing to remember is that the older journos are just as vital as all that youthful enthusiasm in a well-rounded newsroom, because they have the kind of institutional knowledge that is absolutely necessary in this fast-paced age.

They're not necessarily any smarter than the young pups, but they have made all those fuck ups in the past, and have learned from them, and can spot something that will quickly get everybody into trouble, before it hits the printer or studio.

They can also have astonishingly great contacts lists, and any of them that have done regular news gathering for years will always know exactly who to call to get the right scoop.

Most importantly, they can teach the younger generation a whole slew of journo tricks and methods, built up from decades of experience, and passed down from previous generations. It's knowledge that is eternal, even as the technology behind the news continues to evolve.

Still, while it might seem like there are younger and younger faces in front of the camera, there is still centuries of experience in all the best newsrooms, and editors that still go after experience, rather than a flashy smile. There are reporters who have been doing this for years and still produce fucking amazing stuff, and subs and news editors and other people behind the scenes who have the kind of knowledge that would fill a hundred textbooks. They might seem like a dying breed, but the elder ones still in the mire every day are tough as fucking nails.

After all, none of us are getting any bloody younger.

- Steve Lombard

61: Be calm

It's been a frantic few weeks for breaking news, and with international tensions continuing to go crazy, and the local general election rushing up fast, it's unlikely to die down soon.

As always, there are legitimate questions about media coverage of some of the big events, with some genuine concerns raised about the way Metiria Turei's political career was targeted and destroyed, and these are issues that deserve to be considered and discussed.

But all of that stuff - all of the problematic issues - don't matter in the moment when it comes to breaking news, because it's such a fucking rush getting it out there into the world. From the first burst of info coming through, to the moment all the news has been shared on air, or on the website, it is a heady rush of activity that can leave you shaking.

Some journos are in the game almost purely for this rush, getting the cheapest of thrills through the simple sharing of information. For these poor souls, a sudden, huge breaking story - especially when it doesn't actually involve anything horrifically tragic - beats any drug in the world.

It can also be hugely stressful, trying to get something out when all your competitors are also trying to beat your arse to informing the public, and when your boss is leaning over your shoulder, wondering what's taking so bloody long. This stress is unavoidable under such huge time pressures, but reporters, editors and producers need to keep their shit together, and above all, keep calm.

After all, the best bit in the original Matrix film isn't the crazy kung fu, or Agent Smith's contemptible sneer, or the bit where Keanu Reeves falls down the rabbit hole. It the part where everything is turning to shit and Morpheus' crew starts to freak out, and the big man simply, bluntly, tells them to 'be calm'. And then, without missing a beat, he works the fucking problem.

Morpheus may have a stick up his butt the size of the Sky Tower, but it's a good, simple mantra to follow when the shit hits the fan. It's no use freaking out when a big news story suddenly drops into your lap, it doesn't help anybody.You've just got to work fast and smart, and get it out there as soon as you can. Freaking out over it will just make it harder, and slower.

The human voice is still the best communications technology we have, and will still be used to instantly share information across a newsroom. You'll hear a bit of that when it's all going down, but most journos involved will just have no time for chat - when they're getting the story out there, the volume around a newsroom should be more of a sustained hum than an elongated shriek.

This does, unsurprisingly, freak out some older journos who still miss the incessant clatter of typewriters, and loud shouting from old-school chief reporters, but when it comes to big breaking news, seconds really do matter. Nobody has got no time for anything too noisy, and the journos involved are too busy getting the job done for anything else. Calmness reigns, because it has to.

Mind you, for all Morpheus' calmness, he still gets the living snot beaten out of him by Agent Smith in their bathroom fight, so maybe we shouldn't be putting too much faith in baldy.

- Katherine Grant

60. A question nobody needs to ask

No, it's none of your fucking business what anybody's plans are for parenthood. It doesn't matter if they're someone on the dole, someone running for Prime Minister, or anybody in-between, it's a question you don't get to demand.

But if there was ever a classic example of a small number of media muntheads ruining it for everybody else, it was the story that grew around new Labour leader Jacinda Ardern's baby plans. Even though almost everybody knew it wasn't right, proper, or even fucking legal to ask the question, she got asked twice.

So even though it was just two people - and one of them was the goddamn sports presenter on a breakfast TV show - the entire local news media scene gets blasted, especially when it was picked up by overseas media, who were basically laughing at their idiotic antipodean cousins, still struggling with the most basic issues of decency and gender equality.

As noted last week, it only takes a couple of people to make some stupid-arse decisions to taint everybody in the entire media industry, and that's certainly how it was seen, both locally and overseas.

There were more than a few reaction pieces in New Zealand too, although the best of them showed the sheer tiredness at having to deal with this shit yet again.

Some, including the irredeemably fucked Mike Hosking, tried to claim that it was a legitimate question to ask, as if the deepest and most personal decision a person can make is ripe for public consumption, and there were plenty of dickheads in Facebook comments who were absolutely gagging to share bullshit anecdotal evidence about poor beleaguered employers suffering as young women they hired threw in jobs to raise a family, as if the employer still had a right to know.

"They're just asking the question."

Once again for the cheap seats - it's none of your fucking business, even if it might affect your company or country. You don't get to pressure potential workers about it. Just fucking deal with it.

In a way, it was a shame that anybody bothered to follow up on the numbskull questioning, and didn't let it flicker and die like the nothingness it was. After all, there weren't two sides of the argument - it was just a question that was not worth asking, because, again, none of your business.

The other argument for ignoring it was that it didn't need to be defended. It would be like writing a thinkpiece saying 'is racism really that bad'? - nobody needs that because it is so goddamn self-evident that yes, it really is that fucking bad. Similarly, nobody needed to write anything that raised the possibility that the country needed to know about a potential leader's potential plans, because nobody needed to know.

After all, we're 17 years into the 21st century - businesses and employers, including at the highest level of government, can deal with this type of thing now. It's not like the entire government would collapse if a political party's leader had to take some maternity leave. Life would literally go on.

The election is just a few short weeks away, and the political news cycle quickly moved on, to focus on the fact that somebody wasn't living in the place they were enrolled at (and if we're going down that road, nobody is safe, because real life is invariably more complicated than 'you must live at this address, because that's what the official records say').

Unfortunately, there will still be people talking about baby plans if Ardern and her crew do get into power. All the news media can do is wait for them to grow the fuck up, and get the fuck over it, and stop hassling people about their baby plans, whoever the hell they are.

- Ron Troupe

59. Ripping off Facebook pics for fun and profit

The legality of taking pictures and video from social media is one of the great grey areas of modern media. There are many who maintain that permission must be sought before any images, of any kind, are used. But there are also others who argue that anybody who wanted to keep things to themselves could just adjust your privacy settings, so anything still showing is totally public, and up for grabs.

As always, it's a fuck-sight more complicated than that, and the actual truth of the matter is somewhere in between, and heavily dependent on the circumstances in a case by case basis. Not all pillaging is equal.

Most people can agree that profile pics of people who have suddenly become news are okay, provided the people using it is 110% sure it's actually the right person, (everybody remembers the unfortunate Jackass cover of the NZ Herald). If you want so have some kind of presence on social media - and let's face it, no matter how much we pretend, it's not actually essential to have a Twitter or Facebook accounts - there is always going to be some kind of profile picture. Just remember to put your best face on, because that's probably how you're going to be remembered for the rest of time, (and if even that terrifies you, you can always put up an anime avatar or a pithy saying or a Shortland Street character, or anything else in that space).

But when there is a tragic event, even people who complain the hardest about privacy want to see the faces behind the stories, because those images - which are a necessity in online templates - give it an emotional heft. They're not just names, they're people, and if we can all help avoid future tragedies by putting a human face on them, then it's all worthwhile.

Make no mistake - all non-sociopathic reporters hate doing death knocks, because they're awkward and intrusive, and nobody wants 30 different organisations looking for a picture. If everyone has the same photo at the same time, more people can leave the grieving parties alone.

But there are limits on this, and they're fairly fucking obvious, and it only takes one media outlet to dance over the line, and everyone gets tarred with the same shit-brush.

One of the big arguments for a crackdown on use of social media pics recently has involved a terrible bus crash near Gisborne, and pictures of the injured victims that were taken and used on a leading news site.

Several people died, and dozens were injured, in the crash near Gisborne, and the victims were part of a Tongan church group. The Pacific Island communities have embraced the whole social media thing in a way tech-nerds never envisioned, using it to keep strong family bonds even tighter, and they share everything, including friends and family lying on gurneys in a hospital.

It wasn't hard to find these photos on Facebook, they were all public and heavily shared. There is no doubt almost every newsroom in the country saw them, and almost every newsroom in the country made the right and proper decision not to use them.

It was a question of dignity, and good taste, and plain good manners. Profile pics of a victim in happier days is one thing, people suffering and bleeding in plain sight was just unnecessary. It was no use arguing that it was all in a public forum, it was just gross and deeply invasive to use them.

Unfortunately, at least one of New Zealand's major news media outlets thought 'fuck it', slapped them up all over their website. They took a lot of immediate flak for doing so, and got heavily, and rightfully, slapped down by the BSA.

It was a fucking dumb decision, and the unfortunate side effect is that it created an example of media callousness that is going to be lobbed at every fucking journo for years to come. It's already been used as such in several chin-stroking think-pieces, and has also been put forward in parliamentary committee's looking at the issue.

Thanks a fucking lot, TVNZ.

There is nothing that can be done about it, because it was absolutely the wrong call to run those photos, and everybody fucking knows it. All the editors who saw those pics and decided not to use them just have to suck it up, and wait it out. Until the next time some other newsroom fucks up and makes us all look bad.

- Steve Lombard