Nobody is in news journalism for the money – if you think it's an easy way to fame and fortune, sign on up and you can wave at your peers as they sail past you on the pay scale. There are a precious few who do well out of it, and actually make a decent living from reporting and presenting the news, but they are a definite minority, (and you all know who they all are).
There is far more money in comms and PR and other media work, and anybody who sticks around the newsroom knows this.
And yet, a fucking great journalist at a public broadcaster, who has a proven track record of holding power to account, can still face accusations of being paid off by big business. It still happens a lot, and it just happened to Guyon Espiner the other week.
Espiner, after years of early morning seat-of-the-pants brilliance on Morning Report, has now moved into a role on the in-depth team at RNZ. They've set him loose on long-form stories, giving him the opportunity to spend days digging around, without having to cut things short for the next weather report.
Espiner's first effort in his new role was a multi-part look at Pharmac, the government's drug buying agency, and he delivered the goods, with four stories looking at cracks and inconsistencies in the system. He talked to patients with terminal diseases who had no hope for themselves, but wanted to ensure nobody went through the same pain they did; he talked to doctors who had to tell people they had no answer for them; and he talked to the head of Pharmac, and gave them the chance to explain how they were dealing with the issues.
And he hadn't even finished the series before the smartarses came wading in with their bullshit, taking a somewhat decent point about corporate complicity and trampling it into trash with the hooves from their high horses.
Soon after the first story, RNZ started receiving feedback from some very, very clever people, through emails and social media posts, accusing Espiner of getting paid off by big pharmaceutical companies to help shill their agenda.
There is some truth behind the bullshit - Big Pharma have a lot of money to throw around, and have discovered that a good way to get into new markets is to use the news media to highlight sob stories, and desperate pleas for last chance drugs. They've sponsored this kind of content, which tries its best to look like news, but is always obviously advertorial - it doesn't take a genius to spot the difference.
Journalists like Espiner don't give a fuck about the big business side of thing, they just want to understand how some people fall between the cracks. Nobody is asking for the kind of healthcare you see in places like the US, where people are literally dying for the price of insulin, they're just pointing out that a mega business like Pharmac will make mistakes, and it is not helping some people in incredibly desperate situations, and those are some stories worth telling.
A crusading journalist has the goal of helping ordinary folk suffering extraordinary hardship, and that goal may align with Big Pharma's bids to get their new drugs in there, but that doesn't mean they're working together. There is no goddamn collusion.
The accusations of getting paid off were bad enough, but there was also the annoyance of the comment brigade and their blithe, dumb assumptions that people working on these kinds of stories are not aware of the pharmaceutical lobby's goals and methods, like it never came up in the days and weeks Espiner and the crew at RNZ spent on it. Trust us, it comes up all the bloody time.
And frankly, just because there are these connections to the drug companies is absolutely no reason not to put Pharmac under pressure, to hold it accountable, because there are real people suffering under the current regime.
These poor sods, many with terminal diseases, just looking for something to take a bit of pain away for a while. Nobody needs to be paid off to tell these peoples' stories. They just need a bit of human fucking empathy, and somebody to tell their story, in the hope that nobody has to go through the same shit they do. Sniping about big business and throwing around disgraceful accusations of pay offs certainly doesn't help.
Still, if that's your thing, there's more of it coming, so fill your boots, pal. The early morning RNZ show First Up is doing a video series on people who have some big questions for Pharmac. We're sure your snarky sceptisism will really fucking help them.
- Steve Lombard
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