67. We're still stuck on this bloody election trail

After months of campaigning, and political machinations, and outright lies, and the usual betrayals and downfalls, the 2017 general election still ended up exactly where everybody fucking knew it would - with Winston bloody Peters arsing about with the balance of power.

The proportions of power changed changed, but all those polls that Peters continually derided as garbage turned out to be pretty fucking spot-on - the numbers seen on Saturday night were very close to the ones seen in recent polls. Especially the various poll of polls, which were so much more than just a "an intern with a calculator", as some sneered.

So now the entire system of government is stuck in a holding pattern as the various coalition negotiations go on, and it could be weeks before anybody has any idea who is going to be in government, and we all just have to sit back, think of Aotearoa and take it.

In the meantime, as we wait out the inevitable hesitations of the negotiation process, we can expect the usual bullshit - endless analysis and opinion, but nothing to really back it up. Peters' refusal to talk about any possible coalition deals before the election means we're all stumbling around in the goddamn dark, wondering if the old fool will go out as an establishment man to the end, or an unlikely savior for the cool young things on the left. What sort of legacy does Winston want? Does he even know?

And it hasn't taken long for the various under-performers to lash out at the mean old media coverage, for not giving their boring-arse personalities and policies more airtime or page views. While there was some moaning about this kind of thing when the pre-election debates were all going on, Act leader David Seymour was one of the first to lay into the media coverage after the ballots had been counted.

In one of his first post-election interviews, Seymour lambasted RNZ, saying his party suffered due to an over-representation of the bigger parties. If only he had that kind of platform, he reasoned, then everybody would have seen how wonderful and smart Act's policies are, and the voters would have come flocking.

Unfortunately for Seymour - despite whatever they're putting in the water in Epsom - the rest of the country are just never going to vote for somebody who looks and acts exactly like Rimmer from Red Dwarf, (a Lister or Cat candidate, on the other hand...). It didn't matter how much media time he got, nobody really wants a Rimmer in their government.

Seymour also conveniently forgets that there is a fucking shitload of stories on the election campaign to follow up on, along with a massive cast of personalities and an absolute tsunami of press releases . There just isn't room - or enough reporters - to cover it all, and someone has to miss out.

In the end, news editors can only go for the most newsworthy - the biggest election bribes, the most idiotic moves, the most egregious abuses of power. There are more than enough of those to go around. Some politicians have become masters at manipulating this news flow, and it can appear that the media is unable to resist it, but you can't just ignore this shit.

So when, say, Simon O'Connor makes a totally bone-headed comment connecting suicide and euthanasia, then he has to be called out on it. And when Steven Joyce says there is a fiscal hole in Labour's accounts, it doesn't seem to matter that everybody except Bill English says he's wrong, he just sat back smugly and let the doubt take hold.

There is the argument that the news media shouldn't rise to the bait, but all it can do is show the facts - John Campbell's slow, methodical reading of all the economists who said Joyce was full of shit has been an election coverage highlight - and hope like hell that its audience can look at the data and make up their own goddamn minds. Any more hand-holding, and you're in the realm of pure bias, but it's not like this crap is totally ignored..



Still, thank fuck it's almost over, because this is all getting a bit much. The great game of politics and media needs something new, because this relationship is getting old.

- Ron Troupe

66: Fix your heart or die

We're all up to our fuckin' necks in election coverage, so no 'top class whinging' until all this shit is over. Normal service will resume next week.

In the meantime, here are our favourite quotes from the BSA, from their summary of a recent decision against a fuckwit who got all hot and bothered by RNZ's use of some words from one of its national languages. Considering the BSA usually goes out of its way to be polite about the people who lay complaints, this is fuckin' scathing:

"The Authority further noted that, even if the complaint referral had been validly made, it would have found the content of the complaint to be trivial and vexatious, and would have declined to determine it."

"The complainant wanted to complain about a presenter on RNZ National who ‘calls herself “A HO” at the end of each news bulletin’. He said that the presenter also used ‘Te Ngae’ ‘as an alternative’. The complainant said that the presenter ‘reads the news in English, not Mardi’ and that the presenter made herself ‘a laughing stock’ by using the term. He said that this amounted to ‘over Maorification [sic] of Language’ which was ‘offensive when words [like] “ho” are used. It is an Americanisaton of the expression “Whore”’."

"RNZ did not accept the complaint as it related to the complainant’s personal preferences."

"We consider that the tone and language used by the complainant, both in the content of his complaint and in his correspondence with Authority staff, to be offensive, derogatory and dismissive of the proper purpose of this Authority."

"The policy behind section 11 is that the time and resources of the Authority, which are sustained by the people of New Zealand, should not be wasted on having to deal with matters which objectively have no importance."

"In this case, we observe that even if RNZ had responded to this complaint formally, we would have declined to determine it, as we consider HM’s complaint to be both trivial and vexatious."

"His complaint disregards te reo Māori which is an official language in New Zealand and he has persisted in wasting Authority time and resources on a matter that is without foundation, either procedurally or substantively."

The BSA just told you to go fuck yo'self, fool. Classic.

65: The Tuesday morning that changed the news forever

Everyone remembers where they were when they heard about the World Trade Center towers coming down in 2001. The horrific dust clouds from those collapsing buildings are still blowing around the world and right through our heads.

Maybe you were a kid at school, feeling sick and talking with classmates about the uncertain new future, maybe you were woken up by a loved one's phone call and told to turn on the bloody telly, maybe you were out of contact for a few hours and came back to find the whole world had turned upside down.

It was 16 years ago now, but unless you're a teenager or younger, you know exactly where you were.

There were far greater examples of man's inhumanity to man throughout the 20th century, but this attack, right at the heart of capitalism, right on the goddamn doorstep of the 21st century, shook western civilisation to its core. It led to more useless bloodshed and an air of fear and paranoia that has slowly and painfully led us here, where there are genuine fears of a nuclear Armageddon in the year 2017.

Any chance that we were on the fast-track to universal enlightenment was kicked in the fucking balls by the September 11 attacks. All that raving in the '90s about a glorious new aeon were just the same old shit.

And after a public display of naked aggression that was unparalleled in our modern age, the first thing everybody did after they saw the skyscrapers coming down was turn on the news, and look for some kind of information or explanation, just to help us make some sense of it all. News ratings spiked, circulations went through the roof and the internet instantly became the news delivery source for the next generation.

9/11 was the first multi-media terrorist event, but we've come so far since then. Now there are live blogs and video feeds, tweets. You can Facebook Live the end of the world when it all goes down, and everybody has got a HD camera in their pocket, as long as the battery lasts.

But as connected as we all are, there is also that feeling that you could be missing out on something huge, happening right now. That you just need to check in, to make sure North Korea hasn't been destroyed, or to find out the latest score in the cricket. Smartphones give us that connection to the world, through a huge variety of feeds, wiping away any suspicion that we're missing out on something important. We haven't been able to look away for 16 years now.

TV has tried to get in on the act, by filling the hole with 24-hour live news, which is fantastic when there is a big world-shuddering event going down, but not so much when they have to fill the rest of those hours throughout the other slow news days and resort to mindless, dull punditry to fill in the gaps between the ads.

Newspapers are, of course, still trapped into printing schedules, so can only really provide valuable context, background and reaction. Radio has always been super-immediate, but doesn't have the pictures to grab the attention. Unsurprisingly, it's online that the real 24-hour action is happening, with big news websites crunching through huge amounts of news every day - something like the NZ Herald is easily putting several hundred stories every day.

It's taken years for the big media websites to learn the lessons spelled out on a sunny Tuesday morning, 16 years and one day ago. They're still not quite there, still blindly reaching out for an audience that it knows is out there, selling its soul to social media and acting affronted when it bites back.

But we have also come a long, long way. Look at the 9/11 websites, and how crude they are, and how unacceptable they would be in this data-hungry age. If some thin-skinned buffoon sets off the end of the world any time soon, or even just ignores the disastrous effect of unquestionable climate change, we all face potential catastrophes that will dwarf the horror of 9/11. But at least we'll all have a front row seat.

- Margaret Tempest

64. Fuck you, Mr Peters (again)

While the authors of this blog maintain an absolutely professional attitude to dealing with politicians in our day jobs, we can be just as opinionated about them in our private lives as anybody else and it's fair to say we fucking loathe Winston Peters as a bigot, a hypocrite and an old fool.

Astonishingly, despite not having a new idea since the 1980s, he's campaigned this year on a platform of change and new directions, like he hasn't been in Parliament for fucking decades. Even more astonishingly, he still has enough support from other scared old people, to the point where he is still likely to hold the balance of power after the forthcoming election.

But the ball always bounces perfectly for the leathery old shit. It looked like he could be in trouble last week, with the revelation that he had been overpaid for his superannuation for years, to the point where revealing an exact figure would have been truly embarrassing. But it only took a few days before he managed to be the fucking victim again - a true, solid man who was being undermined by lesser creatures.

Even without getting into the morality issue - why the fuck does a working person on a stunningly good public salary need to claim the money for anyway? - there were legitimate questions about how a man who is extremely up-to-play on the ins and outs of the super system could miss the wrong data for years. Suggesting it was a simple, honest mistake might impress the rubes, but since he's a leading politician who has been hip-deep in the finer details of the pension for years, it just makes him look incompetent as hell.

But somehow, the shit just slid off him, and by the end of last week he had managed to portray himself as a victim of a smear campaign, threatening prosecution on anybody involved in leaking the information.

Mr Peters has, of course, never stopped himself from using his own leaked information to smear his opponents, but got right on his fucking high horse when it started coming his way. Suddenly, a man who has built his career on some jaw-dropping leaked data was the paragon of privacy, outraged that people would use the same tactics he had happily employed for years.

Peters set his sights on the usual political targets, and unsurprisingly, a lot of it was also apparently the media's fault for daring to report on an interesting news story.

The news media has long been a target of Mr Peters' ire, but it's only got worse in recent years. After he made the outrageously racist claim that Herald journalists were only working on stories about the property boom because they were Asian, Mr Peters didn't really suffer any consequences, so it's no surprise that when it comes to his latest media criticism, he once again played the man, not the ball.

It was, admittedly, a pretty fucking lame assault - claiming that the Newshub reporter who confronted him about his super overpayments was a young, inexperienced reporter out to prove himself by beating up a nothing story.

Which is the usual heaping pile of bullshit. The reporter involved has been around a while and knows the fucking score, and only the most catastrophically inexperienced journo would hear that a major political figure was overpaid his pension for years and think it was a non-story. To ignore that would have been the true incompetence, but no, it's all part of some sordid conspiracy to bring the Last Honest Man In Parliament down, apparently.

Mr Peters is getting nastier as he gets closer and closer to death, and the truly funny thing about his nastiness is that it just doesn't work politically - his poll numbers have been fucking tanking for weeks now. While he is still a folk hero to the kind of morons who gladly drink poisoned Kool-Aid if Winston said it would get rid of immigrants - there were plenty of voxies last week from the usual idiots who sneered at the media to just leave him alone - he's scaring off the more moderate voters, who can see through his thin veneer of charm.

Still, at least he has some real competition for biggest shithead of the campaign this year, after Paula Bennett revealed in the weekend that a little concept like 'universal human rights' wasn't really something she subscribed to. It's an interesting tactic for National to try appealing to the moron vote as much as Peters has been doing, although Bill English was hitting the morning shows hard yesterday to let everyone know that Paula didn't really mean what she said (an admirable trait for a career politician), so maybe they looked at those poll numbers for Peters and realised there are only so many idiots willing to buy your bullshit.

Mr Peters has, with dull predictability, written off his terrible poll results as 'fake news' and they're still not terrible enough to stop him from having that grip on power later this month, so he's unlikely to change. Maybe all we can do is ask the press gallery to soak up some more of his bile, because he might think he's being big and clever by blaming the media for everything, but he just looks like a fucking tool.

- Ron Troupe

63: Let's be careful out there

The recent case of a Swedish journalist who disappeared while out covering a story really does sound like one of those Nordic noirs - there was a headless torso, a missing reporter, and a submarine.

But behind the weird and nasty novelty factor of the case lurks a terrible truth that a lot of the biggest media companies  are ignoring - they are often sending reporters into real danger, with inadequate preparation to deal with the situation if anything goes horribly wrong.

In the past, reporters have almost always had - at the very least - a photographer with them, to back them up, especially if things go south. But with staffing levels being cut back further and further, reporters are now expected to head off on their own to cover things, loaded down with all sorts of gear - camera, audio recorder, notepad and everything else a reporter needs, except for actual human back-up.

That's not a real problem - not when you're off to cover a ribbon-cutting ceremony, some political announcement, or anything else that features a large media contingent.

But reporters are also constantly being sent out into openly dangerous and hostile areas, at weird times of the night, and that can be a big worry. Caught up in the rush of breaking news, reporters are sent out without a second thought for their own personal safety.

There are chief reporters at some of NZ's biggest and best newsrooms that have actively refused to send young reporters out in the field on their own, deciding that they can't send the night-shift reporter to cover a gang-related homicide in Mangere late on a Saturday night, because it's just not safe for them to be out there, especially if there is a pissed-up crowd gathering. But other chiefs don't even give it a second thought, and send their reporters into situations that are, simply, dodgy as fuck.

The actual assault rate is mercifully low, but journalists can be chased away from properties, or even off the public street, by people who lash out in grief or anger. Reporters at the scene can be dealing with people who have recently dealt with great loss or trauma, and need to tread carefully.

It doesn't help when a lot of the reporters sent out on these jobs are young, and keen to get out there, and might not have the experience to know when to push an issue, and when to back the fuck off.

It's also not helped when fuck-headed politicians whip up frenzies against the media - it's genuinely astonishing that the poor souls who cover President Trump's nasty and narcissistic rallies haven't been seriously assaulted, and it's surely just a matter of time.

Any journo who has been in the business for a few years  has been threatened with violence, and while the vast majority of this is from fucking nerds too scared to get out from behind their keyboards, it only takes one crazy shithead to do something terrible.

It's not just the danger of a late-night call-out, it's the ongoing risk of going to stories that might be nothing more than puff pieces, before things go sinister and wrong. The biggest personal risk to the well-being of reporters might even be just outside the workday, with shiftwork requirements that see journos forced to get to and from work at extremely risky times of the day - late nights and early mornings, with most big newsrooms found in the central city. A Radio NZ journo in Wellington was tragically killed while walking home after an overnight shift, just a few short years ago, and it's sadly guaranteed to happen again.

And the case of the submarine death also shows that even covering something as innocuous like some bloke with his private sub can have a horrific ending. The true story of what happened on the sub is still unrevealed, but it still shows that the simple act of going out there and getting the story can have an incredibly tragic result. Everything possible should be done to avoid this.

-Katherine Grant

62: Are you old enough?

If you just judge the news media by the keen young things that front up for the latest live cross to the TV news studio, it would appear that reporters are getting younger and younger every year, and it's only a matter of time before a toddler is solemnly reporting from outside the High Court.

There is always a constant injection of youth into the profession, and it's desperately needed. That kind of enthusiasm and idealism is absolutely vital - a newsroom that is full of nothing but cynical old hacks is a newsroom that is dying on its arse.

Of course, the young ones are also the only ones willing to put up with some terrible working conditions, as they strive to make a name for themselves. They'll put up with the shitty hours, and usually don't have kids that prevent them from devoting themselves fully to the job, and - crucially - they don't mind getting paid absolute peanuts for the first few years of their career. (Then they graduate to almonds.)

The majority of young reporters don't stay in the trade long enough for the jadedness to seep in, and they're off to comms or PR or teaching or any other bloody thing, happy to be out of the grind. You're lucky if half a dozen graduates from any j-school class are still in the business after a decade.

The ones that stay, though, they are in it for life, and for the long haul, and they're ready to age disgracefully within their profession. They're in it for the news, or for the platform, or just because they're not much use at anything else.

Unfortunately, after a lifetime of tiny pay rises, they're also expensive, and can sometimes come with a worklife that is full of baggage, and there are plenty of journos that have a stellar career right up until their forties or fifties, and then find nobody is returning their calls anymore.

This is a definite problem in the digital age, where even the people running some of the biggest news companies in the country actively seek only young people for online roles, because they're convinced the younger generation is the only one which understand this new-fangled internet.

This isn't dumb just because it overlooks the fact the internet has actually been around for decades now, and multiple generations have grown up in a digital environment. It's dumb because the online department is the one most likely to fuck up in the most egregious ways, and it can take an experienced eye to point out that maybe you should be more careful what thumbnail pic you put on that story, because a bit of carelessness in that regard can swiftly lead to legal action.

A focus on cheap youth can leave those with a bit of history out in the cold, and you can find some staggeringly experienced journos doing any job they can, and that can involve frankly demeaning work with terrible hours, and they're just happy to be working.

But the important thing to remember is that the older journos are just as vital as all that youthful enthusiasm in a well-rounded newsroom, because they have the kind of institutional knowledge that is absolutely necessary in this fast-paced age.

They're not necessarily any smarter than the young pups, but they have made all those fuck ups in the past, and have learned from them, and can spot something that will quickly get everybody into trouble, before it hits the printer or studio.

They can also have astonishingly great contacts lists, and any of them that have done regular news gathering for years will always know exactly who to call to get the right scoop.

Most importantly, they can teach the younger generation a whole slew of journo tricks and methods, built up from decades of experience, and passed down from previous generations. It's knowledge that is eternal, even as the technology behind the news continues to evolve.

Still, while it might seem like there are younger and younger faces in front of the camera, there is still centuries of experience in all the best newsrooms, and editors that still go after experience, rather than a flashy smile. There are reporters who have been doing this for years and still produce fucking amazing stuff, and subs and news editors and other people behind the scenes who have the kind of knowledge that would fill a hundred textbooks. They might seem like a dying breed, but the elder ones still in the mire every day are tough as fucking nails.

After all, none of us are getting any bloody younger.

- Steve Lombard

61: Be calm

It's been a frantic few weeks for breaking news, and with international tensions continuing to go crazy, and the local general election rushing up fast, it's unlikely to die down soon.

As always, there are legitimate questions about media coverage of some of the big events, with some genuine concerns raised about the way Metiria Turei's political career was targeted and destroyed, and these are issues that deserve to be considered and discussed.

But all of that stuff - all of the problematic issues - don't matter in the moment when it comes to breaking news, because it's such a fucking rush getting it out there into the world. From the first burst of info coming through, to the moment all the news has been shared on air, or on the website, it is a heady rush of activity that can leave you shaking.

Some journos are in the game almost purely for this rush, getting the cheapest of thrills through the simple sharing of information. For these poor souls, a sudden, huge breaking story - especially when it doesn't actually involve anything horrifically tragic - beats any drug in the world.

It can also be hugely stressful, trying to get something out when all your competitors are also trying to beat your arse to informing the public, and when your boss is leaning over your shoulder, wondering what's taking so bloody long. This stress is unavoidable under such huge time pressures, but reporters, editors and producers need to keep their shit together, and above all, keep calm.

After all, the best bit in the original Matrix film isn't the crazy kung fu, or Agent Smith's contemptible sneer, or the bit where Keanu Reeves falls down the rabbit hole. It the part where everything is turning to shit and Morpheus' crew starts to freak out, and the big man simply, bluntly, tells them to 'be calm'. And then, without missing a beat, he works the fucking problem.

Morpheus may have a stick up his butt the size of the Sky Tower, but it's a good, simple mantra to follow when the shit hits the fan. It's no use freaking out when a big news story suddenly drops into your lap, it doesn't help anybody.You've just got to work fast and smart, and get it out there as soon as you can. Freaking out over it will just make it harder, and slower.

The human voice is still the best communications technology we have, and will still be used to instantly share information across a newsroom. You'll hear a bit of that when it's all going down, but most journos involved will just have no time for chat - when they're getting the story out there, the volume around a newsroom should be more of a sustained hum than an elongated shriek.

This does, unsurprisingly, freak out some older journos who still miss the incessant clatter of typewriters, and loud shouting from old-school chief reporters, but when it comes to big breaking news, seconds really do matter. Nobody has got no time for anything too noisy, and the journos involved are too busy getting the job done for anything else. Calmness reigns, because it has to.

Mind you, for all Morpheus' calmness, he still gets the living snot beaten out of him by Agent Smith in their bathroom fight, so maybe we shouldn't be putting too much faith in baldy.

- Katherine Grant