By Mike and Barney Chunn

Something is rotten and it needs to be talked about. We’ll do it here. We’ll talk about two countries with two very different journalistic approaches. Australia and New Zealand. It goes like this.

ABC News in Australia recently ran a piece on the Gallipoli Art Award and the award’s recipient, Geoff Harvey. The item consisted of an interview with the winning artist, in which he discussed the themes  of and inspirations behind his piece. This was interchanged with close-up and long shots of the painting, hanging on the gallery wall. The journalist, Ann Maria Nicholson, also interviewed runner up Leo Robbs about the themes and intention of his work, as well as a primary school student who had entered a work with her classmates, about what inspired their entry. The whole item was informative and reasoned. It discussed the works that had been entered and the themes and inspirations that marked the competition.

TVNZ’s Close Up recently ran a news item, announcing the winner of the Olympic Games Songwriting Competition. The item consisted of journalist Matt Chisholm playing excerpts of the song on a cellphone to a number of people on the street, and prompting their opinions with leading questions. Upon gathering a pile of negative responses, the item proclaimed Stand Tall – in essence – a song people don’t like. There was very little mentioned of the song itself. There was no interview with Sam RB. There was no discussion as to the music itself and the inspiration behind it. No athletes were interviewed. It was all about people who had negative responses to it.

Here we have two competitions, similar in that they are awarding a piece of art that is created in response to an event. The events are markedly different, but the competitions themselves are similar. The journalistic approach taken to the reporting of the outcome of these two events however is incredibly, and disturbingly, different.

Sam RB was named the winner of the Olympic Songwriting competition with her song Stand Tall. The song evokes a sense of pride and accomplishment. Even from the title it describes pride in yourself and the ability the rise to the occasion. The lines: “You stand above - You stand beyond” say it all.
 
However the merits of the song (of which there are many in my opinion) are not the subject of this blog. It is the response that one of our premier television broadcasters had to the announcement of the winning song.
 
The competition itself was a public competition held over a number of months, with the individual voting via Facebook on the NZ Olympic Team page. Over 25,000 votes were cast for the ten competing songs over 8 weeks, with Stand Tall receiving the most votes: a clear winner, there to provide a soundtrack to the athletes competing in the Olympics.

TVNZ’s Close Up barely mentioned how the song was chosen and incorrectly stated that I (Mike) had a hand in its selection as the winning song. Their “cell-phone market research” is now almost famous for its banality. The TVNZ website coverage is (in it’s majority) quotes from comment pages, filled with errors and colloquial banter. Journalism used to be a presentation of fact; an investigation of a subject to be correctly and succinctly laid out for the public to digest. When did this paradigm not only shift, but complete a full 180 degree turn? We no longer seem to have experienced journalists writing informed articles, but a public message board for online anonymous blaggards, with no professional intention or content, getting centre stage in our online media.

We were frankly appalled at the nature of the coverage. This was an opportunity to be part of the new 21st century New Zealand, in which we no longer put down those who strive for success and pursue creative endeavour.

To rely on public ‘opinion’ as a journalistic method is a sad day for journalism, and reduces New Zealand’s reporting integrity to that of cheap reality television. It is poorly done and has its foundation not in facts and fair intention but in cheap spin.

Sam RB’s Stand Tall will be proven to be a fitting anthem for our athletes in London these Olympics. The song may not be to everybody’s taste; that is the nature of the beast, yet it invokes with subtlety the emotions of the event in a way that characterizes our country.

Most of all, our nation’s media will have to realise that if it continues to value commentary over fact, division over insight, and cheap set ups over a desire to better understand a subject, it will continue to lose its already rapidly diminishing credibility.