Bad news in thinner media ranks
Another week and another group of journalists made redundant. I would caution against any business leader greeting this news with a shrug of resignation. These redundancies are not something to shrug about – truly.
More redundancies create more pressure on those remaining, and inevitably copy quota will be filled with wire stories from overseas. What’s so bad about that, I hear you ask, there are some high quality reporters in distant part.
Aside from the fact journalists in overseas media are losing their positions even more quickly than those in New Zealand, Two recent stories highlight the risks of imported stories.
Case 1: The regulatory body in the UK recently took a precautionary position on topical oral pain relief gels. No one had died, and in fact no one who’d followed the instructions on the packaging had shown signs of illness.
This was interpreted by the Sydney Morning Herald as “Fear ulcer drug could be fatal for children”. Within hours the Stuff website, a close relative of the SMH, was carrying the same story.
No checking to see whether the products in New Zealand were the same or different as those in the UK. It was easier and cheaper to run the overseas version. Not one media outlet in NZ commented on the fact that the Irish regulatory authority took the position: bugger off, this product is safe.
It appears the media are no longer prepared to make simple checks on the status of a local products. There are exceptions, and in this case, TV3 did its homework well.
Imported stories do not recognise that products (even of the same name) and regulatory requirements are not the same the world over.
Case 2: Just this week, again it was the UK media who reported on some so-called research by the Children’s Food Campaign, which among other things led to headlines like “baby food worse than junk food”.
This story was picked up and commented on here, again without anyone bothering to check whether the products highlighted are sold in New Zealand. As for the fat content compared to a hamburger; technically this is correct but no one is going to give the child a box of the product at one sitting, which is what would be required to make the headline true. No one goes around saying breast milk has more fat than a hamburger, because it is totally irrelevant.
However as the ranks of journalists thin, I fear we will become even greater hostages to imported sensationalism, and there is a good chance that someone will spin a story about the level of fat in breast milk.
For those thinking that dealing with fewer journalists might be easier, I suggest a re-think.
Tags: journalists, redundancies, Sydney Morning Herald, TV3
May 8th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Both examples are totally relevant to me Paul – and show the far-reaching influence (and accompanying responsibility) of the media. Firstly, my dentist told me on Monday that Bonjela was unsafe for my 7-month old – a comment she based on the overseas reports. Secondly, on reading about the criticism of UK baby food I checked the nutrition information label on a box of rusks in my cupboard – and confirmed they were not hamburger-like at all!
May 8th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Journalism at a brass tacks level should provide a service to citizens, consumers, viewers, readers or whatever we want to identify people as with accurate and useful information. This information can then be used by its consumers to make choices. These choices range from purchasing safe baby food through to a voting in a political leader. Right now, as you so saliently point out Paul, a downsizing of the fourth estate is resulting in the shrinking of clear, correct and importantly locally focused information. Not helpful, not helpful at all.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Paul you will have noticed Fairfax Magazines have opted for a 9 day working fortnight ..even more thinning of the news-ranks.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:41 pm
An article appeared in this morning’s ‘The Business Herald’ regarding thinning media ranks. In a survey from the States conducted by the Associated Press Managing Editors on how newspapers are coping with the current downturn, 71 percent of respondents said “cutbacks have somewhat affected or greatly affected the quality of coverage”. The article goes on to mention how newspapers are shrinking in order to cope with audience and advertising defection to the web. Having more ‘hyper- local” news and trimming down international stories is claimed to be a current tactic they are trying to concentrate more on in order to cope with reduced staff. I can think of at least one major NZ metropolitan newspaper that has trimmed down its international section within the past 6 months…
The timing of this article is ironic and a rather a cold comfort given tonight is the 36th Qantas Media Awards.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Congratulations to the many outstanding journalists recognised in Friday’s Qantas awards, of particular note the New Zealand Herald’s Chris Barton. His insightful and valuable work over decades earned him the Qantas Fellowship to Wolfson College in Cambridge. Let’ss hope in Cambridge Chris is given some respite from the increasingly gloom here in New Zealand as quality places to publish are becoming as rare as the kakapo. http://tinyurl.com/qnylcl