So you can be assured that many of the reporters who were sent on the trail of a fairly rude traveling family who were in NZ recently hated every fucking second of it, and they were right to hate it, because the whole story was total bullshit.
For anybody who was fortunate to miss the wall-to-wall coverage that appeared recently – a group of tourists were initially videoed and shamed for leaving rubbish at a beach, with the added delight of a young boy telling people to piss off, and that somehow warranted endless anecdotal stories about other encounters with the group. The NZ Herald website was leading with this shit for days at a time, and the story made it to the top of the TV broadcasts. (It was also, inevitably, picked up by overseas outlets, although most of their coverage seem to be making fun of NZ for being so goddamn precious.)
While this is totally the silly season, and the time for bullshit stories, there were so many aspects of the coverage of this story that stunk to high heaven, and the stench is going to linger for some time.
For starters, there was the dubious mob mentality of the coverage, with the media whipping up a public frenzy to the point that the clan in question were jeered at in the streets. New Zealanders apparently like nothing better than getting up on their high horse to shit on somebody below, and the push-back against these people was far beyond any alleged wrong-doing.
Especially when so much of the stories that were published were nothing more than dubious anecdotes which didn't always stack up with reality - for days there was no actual relevant information, such as whether their activities had been reported to police, or whether they even Irish in the first fucking place. Instead, all we got was more crap from random people complaining that they had farted on a plane or something.
And there were some big questions that did need to be answered: if they were being deported, what were they being kicked out for? Being loud, belligerent jerks? Does this set a precedent that means we can kick out every overseas tourist who comes for the rugby and ends up making a total tit of themselves on K Rd at two in the morning? Or does it not count because they're not on camera? And because they're usually not Irish?
We can only hope that those members of the media who feverishly promoted this story take some time for self-reflection in the near future, because the entire news media made themselves look like complete idiots with this coverage, especially because there was just no news value to it. These were just random civilians who apparently offended the whole nation. The only concrete charge any of them have admitted to so far was a fuckin' shoplifting beef, which was still splashed across the websites as if this was national news (spoiler alert: no, it fucking wasn't).
Looking at the overseas coverage, it was clear that other countries were straight-up laughing at the way we were losing our shit over them, and here at home, it was doing irreparable harm to the perception of the news industry in this country, and it was also so goddamn needless.
After all, there is a place for name and shaming, and that's social media. This is the kind of thing that Facebook was invented for, and the snobbery of the coverage fits in nicely with all the other conspiracy bollocks and dull promoted content that fills our social feeds.
But in chasing the hits and clicks and views, news websites are gladly coming down to Facebook's level, and trafficking in the same bullshit, because that what Chartbeat says people like. And with Facebook currently shedding users by the tonne - driven off by fear of data collection or Facebook's business practices, or just genera apathy - it's a bad, bad model to emulate, especially if you're trying to build up trust between the news business and its consumers.
But you can expect more of this shit. On the same day the NZ Herald led all day with its coverage of this travelling family, chief editor Shayne Currie gloated that the website was catching up to Stuff in raw numbers, so they'll definitely be after anything that gets more of an audience.
Which means more of this crap that should stay safely ignored in your Facebook feed will be given the headline treatment soon at the website of the country's biggest newspaper – we can all expect more hard-hitting stories like 'This fast food doesn't look like the ad!' and 'Is this asteroid going to kill us?'
Meanwhile, all this rubbish pushes out the genuinely good work a lot of talented reporters at the Herald are doing, because they don't get the insta-clicks, and are never given another opportunity to build an audience.
After all, why should we care about things like corruption and injustice when there are some Irish scum to point at, make fun of and kick out of the country for being a bit uncouth? Good fucking job, everybody.
- Margaret Tempest / Steve Lombard
Next week: The roast is over - more shit our local media should never have touched.
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