At about ten past six last night I switched off my TV in disgust. Then I sent a text message to Mark Jennings, TV3's head of news and current affairs, telling him I wouldn't be watching 3 News again anytime soon. I doubt that he'll lose any sleep over that, but at least I felt marginally better for having registered a protest.
What I'd just seen on 3 News made me feel literally sick to the stomach. The network reported that Kaikohe police had arrested a 15-year-old girl for an assault that was captured on video and put online.
Journalist Karen Rutherford's report on the incident included the video footage. It was hard to watch, as only real-life violence can be - the more so when the perpetrator is a teenage girl.
The assault was shocking in its savagery and intensity. The victim, a girl of similar age, was reportedly ambushed as she got off a bus. She attempted to defend herself but was overwhelmed by the sheer fury of the attack, which involved knees to the face and head as well as a hail of punches. The assailant looked as if she had done this sort of thing before.
That a 15-year-old girl should be capable of such sustained and clearly premeditated violence was only one of several reasons to be shocked. Another was that someone, probably an associate of the attacker, captured it on video and put it online for others to enjoy. A third was that bystanders stood around and did nothing.
But this simply tells us there are feral people out there who indulge in behaviour (presumably learned from, if not encouraged by, their elders) that most of us find reprehensible. We knew that anyway.
What was inexcusable was that 3 News magnified and compounded the outrage by screening the footage - and not just briefly, which would have been all that was necessary to convey what had happened, but at length. And repeatedly.
I replayed the item this morning. Rutherford's item ran for more than two minutes, during which there were six video segments - that's right, six - showing the attack. The longest ran for about 13 seconds and cumulatively the footage ran for nearly a minute.
It was stomach-churning, and what made it all the more repulsive was that the incident was reported with the hypocritical tone of moral disapproval at which television journalists excel.
We were told that the Kaikohe police were disgusted that someone had filmed the assault, and an academic interviewed by Rutherford suggested that the person who did the filming was no better than the perpetrator of the attack.
Amen to that. But where does that leave 3 News, which obviously liked the footage so much that it showed parts of the attack two or three times? A few seconds would have been sufficient to show us how ugly it was, but the footage was gratuitously replayed over and over, even as Rutherford was telling viewers in tut-tutting tones how despicable it was.
If the person who shot and uploaded the footage was morally complicit in the offence, then 3 News is too - in fact far more so, because 3 News took what would previously have been seen by only a very limited online audience and replayed it, at length, on national television.
I would feel complicit too if I continued to watch a news bulletin that demonstrated such an abysmal lack of ethical judgment, so I won't.
5 comments:
Unfortunately TV1 news also ran this story at length, with similarly gratuitous use of the bystander's video.
Karl
It seems as we grow older, our world is shrinking through boycotts.
I wrote to Levi’s more than a decade ago saying I had purchased my last pair as a result of their running a ‘stalking’ advt at the movies where the stalker peeled off his Levi’s as he grabbed his victim who appeared to welcome his attentions.
It was with some pleasure I noted they went into chapter 11 shortly afterwards. No doubt unrelated.
Likewise I have boycotted Lynx deodorant for the gratuitous use of sex to sell their products. They don’t appear to have suffered economically – yet.
And I have purchased my last Time magazine after reading an article that blamed the Christians for causing their persecution by Muslim Jihadists in Syria.
I support their right to free speech and opinion. Thankfully we are not obliged to reward their attitudes or behaviour.
I agree in many ways but on the other hand I thought that the violence was so shocking that it might make people think. There are people like teachers who have to teach and otherwise deal with people like this on a daily basis. Just think what you woul do... I was a teacher and we had to step into just such a confrontation always aware that we could be accused of violence just in order to stop what was happening. Just imagine the family background of a 15 year old girl who is capable of such a sustained and frenzied attack on another person. Incidentally my experience of such attacks was overseas not in this country but I see in the last 20 years we have managed to catch up!
The time may come when you'll feel compelled to stop watching telly altogether.
I cannot watch any news on TV anywhere because I know it is not only indoctrination on many levels but it is almost always biased left wing propaganda.
If people don't believe it go to another country and watch what says about issues in NZ. Its totally left wing and hopelessly biased to give a certain impression. That is not news, that is fiction.
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