But the tone has shifted on the part of our local constables, and modern NZ police see their media colleagues more as parasites, always digging and trying to get a bit more information out of them.
Police still don't hesitate to use the media to tell the public about blocked roads, or missing kids, but they have followed the lead of general bureaucracy, and make reporters know that it's actually a privilege - not a right - to receive information from a public organisation in a free and fair society after all, and they should be thankful for what they get. Even if it's nothing.
This attitude has culminated in recent months with the New Zealand police's centralisation of their comms system, demanding reporters go only through designated hotlines, and actively blocking them from talking to the police officers who might actually have some useful information.
This has, unsurprisingly, proved a fucking disaster for journos, with an overall lack of accountability, and general frustration at the inability to get even the most basic of information, even if it's plainly important that this info gets out to the public as quickly as possible. Putting up a news story about an ongoing situation isn't just about the titillation, it's about the police's duty to share information.
It's especially bad on a local level, where a local cop might know exactly what the situation is, and can provide valuable information, but both sides have to spend an extra half hour going through fuck-knows-how-many intermediaries.
Even worse, there can be cases where a tiny bit of information spills out, sometimes on a release, sometimes on a goddamn tweet, but it's only enough information to raise more questions. And then police seemed surprised when they get a dozen calls at once from bemused and intrigued newsrooms, who need more that that.
A particularly pungent example of this was a police tweet that went out a year or so ago, which casually announced that several officers had been shot, but then there was nothing else. It was obviously something of concern, but it was more than half an hour before anybody even knew if these poor fuckers were even alive, or what was going on.
And sometimes, only putting out a tiny bit of information can actually do harm. An example of this was seen over this previous Christmas period, with an American motorcyclist at Mt Cook who went missing.
Half a day after the guy had been named, and a photo put out, police announced that he had been found - that's it, just found. The natural assumption was that he had been found safely, because this happens 20 times a week - police are looking for a kid or husband who hasn't been seen for a while, and they're almost always putting out an all clear soon afterwards. Any journo knows that a late afternoon release about some poor addled dear with Alzheimers wandering away from a resting home isn't worth even turning around into a story, because they will be found before they can finish the intro.
Unfortunately, police neglected to mention that the missing motorcyclist was actually found dead, an appallingly tragic outcome that could have been worth mentioning. Stories on local websites were duly updated to say he had been found, and the story had been bumped down online queues, as it was obviously a happy resolution. Otherwise they would have said something, right?
Right?
It took them 14 hours to mention this fact. The American's friends and family would have been using the vast resource of the internet to look to see what had happened to their loved one, and would only have discovered online stories saying that he had been found. And then it turns out he's actually dead. Sorry about that.
Police may argue that they were waiting to inform next of kin, but they had already revealed his name, and given everybody a photo. Just saying he had been found raised unnecessary hope that everything had been okay, and there was a fucking good chance those next of kin were going to see the online stories before anything else.
It didn't need to happen - they could have just kept their fucking mouths shut until they were fully certain of their information, and who really needed to know about it, or they could have just done the classic double-speak, of saying a body had been found in the search for the missing man, which doesn't confirm anything, but deeply indicates that things are not going to end well.
Instead, it came across as another example of NZ police deciding they knew best about the release of information, blindly following their own rules and regulations, instead of showing some fucking common sense.
Despite what your Uncle Clive reckons on Facebooks, journos do actually want to print the truth, and want the correct information, and it doesn't helped when they are blocked at the source. Police can use the news media to reduce soft speculation and create hard confirmations, and this half-arsed method of information-hoarding only creates the conditions for further misinformation and errors.
Things would work out much more nicely if everybody could work together on this, rather than resorting to bullshit power plays.
- Steve Lombard
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