But there isn't, not really. Most journalists, especially those down on the newsroom floor every day, are happy to see people like Alison Mau and Paula Penfold really get stuck into it. Even though a lot of us still blame Stuff for pushing NZ's news towards trashy, worthless content, we can also applaud their efforts when they really take a stand, or do something really innovative.
And it probably helps that the news media scene has a long history of sexual harassment, which can be objectively seen in the higher ranks of the industry. You can bet your arse there are going to be a few Stuff reporters with some harrowing first-person stories to tell, and their colleagues at every other rival news organisation want to see their own industry held to the same account as everyone else.
Still, that hasn't stop a lot of chin-stroking opinion pieces to appear in recent weeks, which spend a great amount of space looking at the new campaign, wondering what it's all about.
Hosking, of course, got in there early, but he's been joined by Al Nisbet's deeply dumb witch hunt cartoon for the Press; a mind-numbing observation from Davd Cohen in the NBR that even though there are men are scumbags in all other cultures and nations, that doesn't mean there are scumbags here too; a Deborah Hill Cone column in the NZ Herald yesterday, telling harassment victims that they should probably keep quiet for their own good, while implying that the journos involved would throw a hissy-fit if a story fell over; and a piece from John Drinnan where he was very, very John Drinnan.
Leaving aside the fact that these efforts reek of having something to hide, it's baffling that many of these takes come from people who have worked in big newsrooms, and know how much things like this get legally approved. Nobody is going to publish anything until they're really, really sure they've got the proper story, because it would be media suicide to do otherwise.
Everything they receive is going to be collated and cross-referenced and stacked up. They're not going to do a five-part series on something they heard whispered at a Christmas party, they're going to get their facts straight. They're explicitly targeting the richest and most powerful people in the country, people who probably have something nasty to hide, and if they make one wrong step, they're going to be litigated and shamed into oblivion.
It's not going to be easy and nobody is doing it just for the exposure or web page clicks. They're doing it because it's the right thing to do.
Despite the fear-mongering, #metoonz is not a witch hunt, because it's not powerful men destroying poor women for fun and profit. Instead, it's a dickhead hunt - and these campaigns are designed to expose the behaviour of those dickheads and to try to prevent it happening again in the future.
One of the great goals of journalism is to find, name and shame the biggest dickheads in our society, to get some justice for their innocent victims, and to show the world that this kind of shit is not acceptable anymore, and will not be tolerated in any way. This is how we grow as a civilisation, and as individual people, by not being dickheads. It's the only way we're ever going to move forward.
If there is a schism in the industry, it's between the dickheads and the non-dickheads. And trust us, mate - the dickheads are losing. You can tell by how much they're whining about it.
- Margaret Tempest
Editors' note: Media Scrum would like to apologise for doing two posts in a row on the reaction to the #metoonz campaign, but it just really, really fucked us off. So, yeah, we would like to apologise, but we're not actually going to. Next time we'll talk about barbecues or some shit.
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