147. Free footage can still come at a cost

Serious car crashes on Auckland's motorway system are, sadly, a daily occurrence. Most of them are due to the usual shit, like drivers paying too little attention and using too much speed, and sometimes they're because some dopey arsehole is trying to escape the police by going the wrong fucking way.

Sadly, this is also a frequent problem - happening at least every couple of weeks - and unless they result in some terrible tragedy, they usually don't top the TV news bulletins, or lead a website for most of the day.

Unless there is some great footage of the crash, and then all bets are off, pal.

This happened last week, with a fairly serious crash closing down a good chunk of the southern motorway for a couple of hours during a week. There weren't any serious injuries, thank goodness, but there was some spectacular video of the head-on crash. It wasn't great quality - and was obviously filmed off another screen - but it showed the full impact in unflinching detail.

The origin of the video was pretty obvious. You could clearly see it had been taken off a screen at one of the police's control rooms, a breach of the wall of silence that usually surrounds police operations. The question of how it actually got leaked to the media is a bit rougher, but once one news organisation had it, most of them gleefully slapped it up on their websites, hiding the source of it all behind the generic 'supplied' tag.

Few of the newsrooms that used the footage seemed to consider that right from the start there was something dodgy about using it. It was obviously taken by a phone camera in a secure environment and after the crash had been shared with the world multiple times, the cops unsurprisingly put out a statement saying they were looking for who was responsible for the leak (with this twist in the tale usually appearing on the same story that was still using the footage in question with blithe indifference).

In other words, it really was great video, but somebody is going to lose their fucking job over this.

On one hand, the footage did serve a public interest - it literally showed the sickening impact and effects of a crash on a motorway in a way a thousand words could never capture, and is sure to stick in drivers' minds as they fang it on the motorway, and maybe making them a bit more cautious with their motoring.

And the video wasn't gross, or gory, or anything like that. You couldn't even really make out any details of the cars involved, just their fearsome impact. Our police force likes to hold onto information as much as possible, but it's totally arguable that splashing this across the news websites did actually serve a public good.

On the other hand, the poor soul who took that video, and almost certainly didn't expect it to be snapped up so forcefully by almost every organisation in the country, is definitely losing their fucking job over this. The news media makes a great show of protecting its sources, but it won't be hard for the cops to figure out who was in that secure control room at that time, and they're up shit creek without a paddle.

And they can expect little help from the media companies that used the footage, and made money from it by slapping ads in it. They're hardly likely to share any of that revenue with the person who will be getting by without a paycheque for a while.

There were a couple of newsrooms that didn't touch it, but that was probably because they couldn't source it themselves, and still had enough self-respect not to just rip it off from a rival newsroom and claim they got it supplied like everyone else. But that restraint was more than overwhelmed by the big news websites that went hard on it, and led their site on stories related to the crash for several days (it's not like anything else was happening in Auckland last week, like, say, a huge generation-defining protest that causes severe disruption right round the corner from the country's biggest airport or something).

Which is all just a bit gross, because it wasn't a huge fucking story, it was the kind of thing that happens all the bloody time, and no amount of jaw-dropping video is going to change that fact.

It's hard enough getting vital information out of the police as it is, and this isn't going to help matters, especially when the cops are guaranteed to clamp down on the leaker, to deter a repeat performance.

All over a fucking minor car crash that looked impressive, but wasn't that important. Good job, everybody.

- Margaret Tempest

146. Rip offs and attributions: Clean your own house

News organisations have been ripping off the competition's stories for as long as journalism has ever existed, but the news media is still pretty fucking rubbish at dealing with it all.

Scoops are strange things - you want to get a story that nobody else in the world has, but you also need it to be picked up by other newsrooms, if it's ever going to have legs. Some extraordinary stories get broken every year that weirdly don't get any traction, because they're only really pumped by one organisation and nobody else really notices.

Most journos are usually quite happy for others to pick up the ball and run with it, as long as the original source gets its full attribution. You can't just say 'other media report', you have to name that place, and you should also try and throw a weblink back to the story that set everything off. It's only polite.

And for god's sake, don't put a bloody byline on there, unless you're actually contributing something substantially new to the saga.

This isn't very hard, and with newsrooms constantly trying to match everyone else's story, it's vital that you can trace it all back to the original producer, if only for issues of clarity, reducing the garbled whispers that come from endless reproduction. These rules are there for a reason and while they might be unwritten, everybody is going to remember you if you break them.

But it still isn't happening nearly as often as it does. A couple of weeks ago, one of the terrific journos at the country's biggest newspaper took a public swipe at the main opposition for failing to adhere to any of the basic rules of a matching story, and with good cause. And yet, at the same time, a different reporter at that opposition was accusing the newspaper of doing exactly the same thing.

It wasn't a case of 'whataboutism', it was just a coincidence that they both happened at the same time, but that repetition showed that it was an issue that was far from being resolved. (It was also the rare argument on social media where everyone involved had a decent point, even if - as usual - there was more hot air than action.)

Look, it's bloody easy to snipe at each other for doing something a colleague in your own newsroom is guilty of, but maybe we should be looking inside at our own actions, and focus on that, instead of spitting at the opposition. You're not going to properly influence people at other organisations - you might inspire them to do a better job of attribution, but you're just as likely to piss them off - but you can tell your colleagues two desks away from you that they should treat other people's stories the way you'd like yours to be treated.

Corporate culture absolutely frowns on ever giving your competitor any recognition, but at the very least, admitting that somebody else got the story before you did will give a moral high ground, and that kind of personal smugness always triumphs over corporate loyalty.

Besides, it's not like these corporations are ever loyal to you, as countless journos have discovered in the past decade or so, when years of long service was unceremoniously ignored and reporters dispatched from the business. Frankly, journos should be trying to keep on the good side of their counterparts at rival organisations, because you'll probably be working with them one day, and they'll always remember how you treated them.

It never takes much to properly attribute. While it's never as simple as this 600-word rant insinuates - some reporters will be chasing the exact same thing and will both have the same data, so it's not necessary to acknowledge the other work - but throwing in a link to a truly great scoop doesn't hurt anybody. 

Giving people credit where credit is properly due is always a good thing for everybody. You can throw shade at the opposition for doing that as much as you want, but you'll get more accomplished by taking care of your own house. 

- Katherine Grant

145. It's just a game, (and it's just a name)

The whole fuckin' country got very excited about the Cricket World Cup in the past week, with a fever sparked by an unexpectedly brilliant performance by the Black Caps in the semi against India, and fed by that extraordinary final. The team's performance - and especially the heart-breaking way they missed out on the world title - was proper news, leading the newspapers, websites and broadcast bulletins for several days.

There's nothing wrong with supporting your team, and getting excited about some scintillating sporting action, but there are limits to it all. After all, New Zealand seemed to have a limitless supply of grief and empathy to share in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks, but it swiftly ran out when people started suggesting that sport doesn't really fucking matter.

Sport certainly does matter, to a lot of people. It's very, very important to them, because they have their identity and sense of worth wrapped up in the sport they follow. It can be somebody's entire life, or just something to watch at the pub on a Saturday night, but most people are genuinely interested in the sports results to some degree.

And as we've seen in the cricket, sport is full of stories of courage and resilience and last-minute efforts, and while nerds might complain about it leading the news sometimes, the reporting on sport is a great and vital thing, offering illumination and entertainment as much as any other part of the news media.

This coverage is an essential part of the news diet, and a crucial offset to the doom and gloom of regular reporting. (If you're just consuming the court stories and road toll, you'll have a pretty fucking grim view of the world.)

And this goes right down to grass-root levels, and Stuff's fairly recent destruction of sports reporting at the district level is a goddamn tragedy, because the great story of sport is more than corporate interests and professional perfection, it's the mums and dads who are out there every bloody week to support their kids on the field, and cheer on their neighbours at representational games. They're the people that you need to be connecting with.

And ultimately, away from the individual stats and stories, sport is just a great big metaphor for everything, for humanity's struggles and the individual's opportunity to shine, of the importance of teamwork and the value of community, and all that can be genuinely inspirational stuff.

But it's still just a fucking metaphor. It's not life, and there are always more important things to be worried about.

If, say,  a sports player uses the wide platform given to them by their physical talents to spew out mental fuckheadery, with their narrow-minded ideology not even giving them the chance to see the harm they might be causing, they can expect to be called a fucking idiot, and nobody gives a flying fuck how well they run with a ball.

And if the local premier rugby team in the city where the mosque atrocities happened is named after ancient groups of Christian arseholes who specifically went out into the world to slaughter as many Muslims as possible, maybe it is worth having a goddamn discussion about that bloody name.

Anybody who wants to argue that the Crusades were hundreds of years ago, and so are not very relevant, can be ignored as a simpleton who doesn't have any sense of history or culture or society, and is actively ignoring the fact that no shithead is going to name a huge professional sports team The Nazis for at least a thousand years.

There's not much else to argue here - the Crusaders name has served the franchise well, but it's a valued history that only goes back to the start of the professional era, so there's no case for a legacy argument.

On the other hand, it's easy to argue for a name change while still supporting your local team, because it's easy to have a sense of priorities, and realise that that name now sends a horrific message to people in your own community who have been brutally attacked.

And it wouldn't diminish the legacy of a team that were one of the very best professional sports teams in the world - it won't undermine the great things achieved by men like Blackadder, McCaw, Carter, Mehrtens and so many more. Those records stand for all time, even if it's under a name that might not exist anymore

The Crusaders rugby team could had a chance to send a message to the world, that they can change with the times, even if iditotic polls argue for the status quo (the fears of the minority should never, ever be dictated by the mob), but decided to put it off with a cowardly promise to look at the issue next year. Or the next. Sometime.

(Maybe they still will, but it's as unlikely as England cricket declaring that the Black Caps should be co-champions - that might sense a message of insanely good sportmanship, which is unthinkable in today's winner-takes-all culture.)

The decision to put it off deciding on the Crusaders' future might have pleased the most pin-headed of their supporters, who can toast the move with their shit local beer, but they've shown the world that the deep and nasty racism that has always lurked in the shadow of the Port Hills hasn't gone fucking anywhere.

Just change the fucking name.  

So yeah, it's okay to cheer on the Black Caps in their improbable bid for the world championship, and okay to feel a bit robbed by that bullshit boundary rule and the fact that some batsmen are now apparently allowed to hit the ball twice, and it was worth the saturation coverage, because this country always judges ourselves by how we deal with failure.

But it's also important to remember that it really is just a bunch of grown adults chasing a ball around a field, and that while it's some heavy fucking symbolism, it's still just symbolism. Real life is always more important.

- Steve Lombard

Too fucking lazy

We're not too busy to bitch about anything this week, but we have been feeling pretty lazy about things. Normal service should resume next week. For sure.

Love,
Media Scrum

Too fucking busy

We're too fucking busy to bitch about anything this week, even though there is always something worth moaning about in this hellish nightmare that we call the modern news media. Normal service should resume next week. Probably.

Love,
Media Scrum