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.