{"id":731,"date":"2013-02-02T11:00:15","date_gmt":"2013-02-01T22:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=731"},"modified":"2013-02-03T17:12:29","modified_gmt":"2013-02-03T04:12:29","slug":"good-evening-where-is-the-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=731","title":{"rendered":"‘Good evening. Where is the news?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Microphones\"<\/a>Back in the days when all good \u2018newspapermen\u2019 carried a stenographers\u2019 pad, several sharp pencils, and an Olivetti Lettera 32 portable typewriter, one of my cousins spent her days asking who, what, where, when, and why, and writing up the answers for the readers of a substantial provincial daily.<\/p>\n

Chris was on the paper\u2019s news team.\u00a0 Her job was to report the news.\u00a0 There were two or three other people whose job it was to offer opinions.\u00a0 And the newspaper\u2019s editor went to great trouble to ensure that readers were in no doubt as to whether they were reading news or opinions.<\/p>\n

While Chris was reporting the news in the newspaper, my sister was reading the six o\u2019clock news on TV.\u00a0 That too was largely about who, what, where, when, and \u2013 where it was possible to deduce \u2013 why.\u00a0 Most of the opinions and all the fluffier \u2018human interest\u2019 stuff were confined to the magazine programme that followed the news.<\/p>\n

But all that has changed.\u00a0 Today, it seems that 90 percent of what is presented as news is, in fact, comment or opinion or simply fluff.<\/p>\n

On TV, we now have the people in the studio \u2018crossing\u2019 to a reporter ‘somewhere’, often in front of some sort of landmark, to get the reporter\u2019s opinion on something that they often know little or nothing about.<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, Patrick, the Minister has made this big announcement.\u00a0 How will the Opposition react?\u2019\u00a0 And Patrick spends the next one-and-a-half minutes speculating and \u00a0pontificating, and saying next to nothing.<\/p>\n

Newspapers, too, have fallen into the habit of lumping hard news in with questionable comment.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, we might have read:<\/p>\n

Shortly before ten o\u2019clock this morning, a cheese sandwich was burning out of control at the corner of State and Great Streets.\u00a0 Police closed the lower part of Great Street to traffic while fire fighters attempted to deal with the blaze.\u00a0 At this stage, the cause of the fire is not known.<\/p>\n

But now we are more likely to be told:<\/p>\n

Nineteen-year-old mother of three, Maureen Frogworthy, has slammed the Government\u2019s slow response to a blazing cheese sandwich less than two kilometres from the daycare centre attended by her three-year-old son, Shicayne.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s disgusting,\u2019 Ms Frogworthy said.\u00a0 \u2018My kid could have been trying to eat that sandwich at the time.\u2019<\/p>\n

Ms Frogworthy says that the fire was the direct result of Government cuts in grants to the local Mothers with Two Left Feet support network.<\/p>\n

No Opposition spokesman was available for comment, but Ms Frogworthy\u2019s neighbour, Doris Nogood, has called for the Minister to resign.<\/p>\n

Human interest?\u00a0 I can tell you that Ms Frogworthy\u2019s take on events is of no interest whatsoever to this particular human.<\/p>\n

Now \u2026 can we please get back to news that is news?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the days when all good \u2018newspapermen\u2019 carried a stenographers\u2019 pad, several sharp pencils, and an Olivetti Lettera 32 portable typewriter, one of my cousins spent her days asking who, what, where, when, and why, and writing up the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=731"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":735,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731\/revisions\/735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}