It's not a big deal in live television, this kind of thing happens all the time, and as embarrassing as it might seem for the professionals involved, it's never not funny. On-air live bloopers used to fade away into the ether, but now every live broadcast can be recorded, edited down to the purely funny shit, and shared with absolutely everybody else in the world. There are people in outer Mongolia right now who know who Natasha Exelby is.
It wasn't much of a surprise that almost everybody who saw the video thought it was hilarious as hell, because television news takes itself so seriously, and everything is so professional and direct, that when the lid is ripped off, it's always funny.
What was a little surprising was that the following reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Any kind of fuck-up by anybody in the media is usually greeted with fervent tut-tutting and moaning about a drop in standards, but almost everybody who saw this blooper was on Ms Exelby's side.
When it looked like the presenter might be losing her job over it, there was outrage, from both media colleagues and the wider public. Fellow news presenters, even from the direct competition, gave examples of their own terrible screw-ups. Even Russell Crowe chimed in to support her, and her employer rushed out to clarify that she was just being rostered off air for a while.
Usually, the sniping and sneering about some fuck-up is enough to force people out of their role, but this was the case of the exact opposite, where someone had a mortifying and embarrassing moment, and everybody wanted to keep her around.
It's so easy to think of the people professionally reading your news as total automatons, so to see someone react with a genuinely silly expression on their face is deeply humanising, and it's lovely to see there is still empathy out there for somebody in that situation.
It's so easy to forget that everybody in the media scene is an actual human being, and beneath the implacable features of the people reading the news on the telly, there are real people who are horrified, or amused, or sympathetic towards the stories they have to read out straight.
It's not just broadcast journos - reporters of all descriptions have to deal with some shit. They have to overcome horrendous feelings of intrusion to do death knocks, and hear horrific things during criminal trials that can't be shared with the rest of the world. Half a decade after the event, there are journos who are still genuinely traumatised by having to cover the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake, working on stories of grief and tragedy for months on end.
But all that needs to be suppressed for live TV, and while presenters and reporters go for the neutral tone, they don't always get there. And sometimes they're surprised by shit, and sometimes we all get to see that human beneath the make-up.
Maybe it isn't so surprising that everybody let Exelby's slip slide by, and stick up for her right to be a dork on TV. This is, after all, why we all love presenters like Hilary Barry and Judy Bailey, because they do always wear their heart on their sleeves, and while they tell the vast majority of the news with a straight face, they don't mind letting the emotion slip through. After all, they're only human.
- Katherine Grant
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