Has anyone else been struck by the extraordinarily low-key media coverage of the inquest into the Christchurch mosque massacres?
Day after day, major news outlets have, at best, played down the proceedings. At worst they have ignored the inquest altogether. The coverage has been so conspicuously subdued that I can only conclude it’s deliberate.
RNZ is an honourable exception, but even there the coverage has been relatively light. Television has reported the inquest only spasmodically and you have to search the Stuff and NZME websites for any reference to it.
This is perplexing. March 15, 2019 was one of the most traumatic days in New Zealand history – arguably more so than previous tragedies such as Pike River, Mt Erebus or the Wahine sinking, because it was the result of a deliberate act. Only the Aramoana massacre of 1990, in which 13 people were shot dead compared with the 51 in Christchurch, comes close.
It follows that the nation has a vital interest in knowing not just how and why the mosque killings happened and whether they could have been avoided, but also in establishing whether the response by police and emergency services was adequate.
A royal commission of inquiry in 2020 dealt with those first questions, but it falls to the inquest under deputy chief coroner Brigitte Windley to investigate the latter issue.
What has emerged in evidence so far is not encouraging. Witnesses have told of confused, chaotic, slapdash and even heartless responses to the shootings; of indecision, communication breakdowns and rigid adherence to health and safety rules that meant medical help for the surviving victims was delayed.
Until yesterday, perhaps the most disheartening revelations were that paramedics didn’t enter the Deans Avenue mosque until 30 minutes after the killer had left and that surviving victims were abandoned altogether for 10 minutes after reports came through of the second outbreak of shootings and police left the scene to rush to Linwood.
Now it has emerged that distraught relatives of the victims at Deans Avenue were told to leave the scene and even threatened with arrest when they wanted to comfort the wounded. An American police expert on terror attacks told of “heartbreaking” witness statements and gave his opinion that people who were already inside the mosque should have been allowed to stay unless they were interfering. Another overseas counter-terrorism expert said there was no excuse for leaving the shooting victims alone.
No doubt the inquest has also been told, or will be told, of acts of heroism and compassion by first responders, including the two courageous and quick-thinking police officers who apprehended the killer. It’s likely too that the coroner, in her findings, will make the point that this was an unprecedented event and that confusion and errors of judgment were probably inevitable.
That Brenton Tarrant was arrested only 19 minutes after the shooting began, and before he could continue his murderous rampage at Ashburton, was remarkable. Failings by police and ambulance staff should never be allowed to overshadow or diminish that fact.
But at the same time, the public is entitled to know where the system failed and how it might be improved. That’s what makes the news media’s apparent lack of interest so puzzling.
In past eras, an event such as the Christchurch inquest would have been given saturation coverage. Reporters would have been present throughout and filed blow-by-blow accounts of every witness statement.
That this hasn’t happened is partly an inevitable result of the hollowing-out of newsrooms and the shrinkage of newspaper space. But the level of coverage also reflects editorial priorities.
Not so very long ago, news editors would have regarded the inquest as an essential “running” story – one that automatically commanded daily prominence. Now it has to compete for space with such essential news as why you should avoid French and Italian wines on aircraft and the $100 million wedding of a woman even Stuff admits no one has heard of.
Clearly reporters are present at the inquest for at least some of the time, and equally clearly the stories emerging from the inquest are a compelling matter of public interest. Yet far from being highlighted in news columns and bulletins, those stories are given surprisingly subdued treatment. Why?
For once, I’m not suggesting there’s any ideological or political factor involved. More likely it’s a simple matter of editorial judgment, in which case I think it’s badly flawed.
I can’t help wondering whether the national memory of March 15, 2019 is considered so painful that media decision-makers decided we should be spared any unnecessary reminders. Or are the shootings regarded as a stain on the nation’s reputation that has now been made worse by the shame and embarrassment of an inept response, and therefore something to be reported grudgingly and reluctantly – if at all?
15 comments:
A cynical person might notice the PIJF running out and the subsequent lack of public interest journalism.
Editorial judgement went out the door with the judgement of management when they all signed up for the PIJF blackmail and bribe criteria.
Karl, I agree with your comments about having to compete with articles on wines and, in my view, assorted soft news or titillating items, or the reposting of someone's ''controversial'' post on social media that has and will draw ''outrage''. And clicks.
Clickbait to attract advertisers.
I recall a Stuff senior from Wellington HQ (still there) on one of the tours of the office heralding changes back in 2014-15, advising us that we would have to change our priorities, especially for online material.
A news event or story might be important in its own right but if only 10 to 15pc of readers were likely to read it our focus should be elsewhere.
Human interest and the type of material I mentioned above were seen as better options by HQ.
Economic realities of getting eyeballs and clicks were a factor. We were competing with social media and people's different concepts of news.
In the process, community newspapers suffered and are a flimsy shadow of their former selves, filled with daily paper reruns. Here down from 48-64 pages a week to 16-20 at best.
The story priority aspect has morphed into political/socialogical agendas and goals being the priority on the daily and online side. It is also apparent in the communities. Play down alternative views and keep the light clickbait going.
I wonder if the inquiry re Chch is being handled almost below the radar so as not to stir some pot or other? Once upon a time this would have received Crewe inquiry/controversy level of coverage. Puzzling.
I was always uneasy how this terrible tragedy was used as a propaganda exercise by the media to glorify Jacinda Ardern. I recall she became the main focus of the story very quickly.
Paul Peters: last week The Hutt News - the valley's Stuff-owned weekly - didn't even have a story about the area is purports to cover.
It was full of reprints from Stuff's daily fare. I haven't bothered with this week's issue to check.
As for the Coroner's inquiry. I have little interest. I really don't like this thing being dragged up yet again.
I have watched bits of it on the TVNZ news, which is when the flatmates and I have tea. I have been uneasy with some of the quetionings.
Lawyers seem bent on nailing to the wall people who were confronted with an unprecedented, and violent, event nearly five years ago.
I loathe and detest lawyers, who were never there and didn't have to make the decisions the victims of their inquisition had to make, for doing that.
I am reminded of a Supreme Court sitting I attended as a young radio reporter in the early 70s.
A man, his wife, their daughter of 13 or 14 and her friend about the same age were camping by a river.
A gang of bikies turned up. They harassed the family, particularly the young girls, at whom they made comments threatening rape.
The father went into his caravan and reappeared with a .308 rifle. He pushed a round up the spout and fired into the air.
That had the desired effect. The bikies roared off. Being the cowards they were they made straight to the police station.
Nek minnit, armed police arrived at the caravan site.
The man was arrested.
In the court hearing a snide, smart-arse, posturing prosecuting lawyer tore a rather inarticulate - even shy - man to shreds with his questioning.
Justice Sir John White - whom I admired for his concision, short sentences, and clarity - restored some balance to the proceedings.
He in effect directed the jury to find the man not guilty 'because he had been put in an impossible position where he had no recourse to police help'.
I actually think it's a sad and tragic story. I think the coverage has been about right. I don't want it to be a blaming exercise for the first responders as they were confronted with an unprecedented event.
Karl, while not questioning how you've found the coverage, I've found it fairly well done in the outlets I follow -- and I was in Australia the whole of the last seven days, so I have been relying on websites, not TV and RNZ bulletins. Ditto the coverage before this last week.
Stuff is a strange place, stories don't stay on the front page for very long. An hour or so if you're lucky. Unlike say the BBC where a story can sit on the front page for a day or three.
I haven't seen a printed NZ newspaper for more than a week to see what was in them. I'll get the Ghost and the NZH in the morning. God, was it great to be able to pick up the printed The Australian; what a wealth of coverage of all kinds of things that never make the news here. I read almost every story in it, astounded that such diverse news is being covered.
Well, as I wrote at the time, "What makes Tarrant’s crime so heinous is that it is absolutely contrary to Western morality – you do not take others’ lives. For Muslims, taking non-Muslim lives is an obligatory part of their religion and just another day at the office. Average daily murder rate in the name of Islam since 2001? 36 dead, 48 injured, day in, day out, for more than 18 years. For the mosque massacre, cui bono? Islam above all, Ardern for her handling of it, and Dr Paul Spoonley with his somewhat obsessive pursuit of the extreme Right. Cui plagalis? Anyone with an etic knowledge of Islam, Christians, whites, Western civilisation, and reason having to give way to feelings and emotion. Tarrant deserves life without parole for the damage he’s done, not to Islam, but to what he holds dearest, Western civilisation."
Per capita, this was our equivalent of 9/11. Whether violence is done by Muslims or to Muslims, Islam gains more converts. The Christian morality of blessed are the peacemakers, turn the other cheek, and love your enemy, is losing out to Islam's appeal of violence, deception, supremacism and patriarchy.
Sic transit, gloria mundi. This is what defeat looks like - eventually you just lose interest in defending your values.
The experience of 2010/11 and the ChCh earthquakes so frightened a number of would-be rescuers and enforcement agencies that they almost had to consult a H&S manual to know what to do.
Readers may recall the video footage of a St Johns ambulance official in 2011 trying to prevent a noble citizen from entering a collapsed building in ChCh to see if there was someone inside who needed help. The gallant individual told the StJ guy “f**k the rules” (or similar) before disappearing into the shattered mess. [I gather he emerged unscathed, not having found anyone to rescue.]
If the Inquest does little else other than expose the corporate and p-c mindset that has contaminated the upper echelons of St Johns for example, it will have achieved a worthy goal.
There was a sort of "rahui" placed on the event from the start, wasn't there?
The banning of all the terrorist's material, both the video footage and his insane, rather childish "manifesto"; the call by Ardern not to use his name; the intense sensitivity of reporting that tended not to question any aspect of the response, at all - all self-imposed.
I guess that has continued. There was a sense, and there was a definite push from the top, that a line had to be drawn under the event and that expressions of "Aroha" were the only way forward (along with radical changes to laws around speech, of course, led by Big tech and governments).
That's not to say there was not a degree of over-the-top propaganda following the event, there was, it was just based around Ardern: like the extraordinary exhibition of the headdress Ardern wore in the days following the massacre at Canterbury Museum, which was exhibited for more than half a year in a box like a relic, illuminated, surrounded by dozens of pencil drawings of mosques from around the world; supposedly the purpose of the exhibition but clearly an afterthought or justification for the exhibition of the Queen of Kindness' holy veil.
The Mosque shootings atrocity was shamelessly exploited by politicians, academics and media on the Left both to promote Ardern's international brand and to vilify males of European heritage in particular as "white supremacists" and potential mass-murderers. The subsequent Royal Commission then proceeded to construct a cock and bull argument for "hate speech" laws with draconian prison penalties, in order to promote "social cohesion". It was a shameful time in our history. Perhaps a lingering sense of embarrassment is responsible for the lack of coverage of the Coroner's fact-based, dispassionate investigation of the tragedy. One question - why hasn't Ardern been required to give evidence to the Inquest?
I think the answer is simple. It is old news - it is not as dramatic or click worthy as new progressive news. Who wants to read about something that happened 5 years ago. Its just not sensational.
NZ Media is stuffed. I read UK and overseas sites and the platform from time to time. I refuse to give them the satisfaction of being a number on their headcount which they can use to say are their followers.
I want them to dwindle and dwindle until they are irrelevant. Then maybe we can start again without the Tova's and Jenna's and John's and Jacks and Mattis (yay 1 scalp down) and so many more that need to go.
NZ Media are a bit like NZ Post - both were going along great until they made some spectacularly poor decisions and set fire to themselves. Now both are dying and awaiting the final bell.
Odd that an enquiry into a mass murder starts at the point after the last bullet was fired.
Also odd that Ardern isn't giving evidence. Perhaps she was well out of the picture by then. We will probably never know.
The reprisal murders of 269 Christian people at churches in Sri Lanka the following month won't be mentioned.
That is guaranteed.
But what really pissed me off was seeing cops and paramedics having their motivation and their professionalism questioned.
One officer was asked by a lawyer (inquisitor ) if he would have responded differently if the victims weren't muslim!
Nothing quite like inferring a hero might be racist eh!
You are correct to say that NZ in some areas, emphasise some, does not do things well. My guess is that NZ Police have taken a super-cautious lead from somewhere and apply it to all cases.
Pike River was a shambles from the start and it was said that things were made worse by the Police having decision making lines extending all the way back to Police headquarters in Wellington. The wisdom of the day was that there was no better time to enter the mine than immediately following the explosion.
The Wahine disaster of 1968 was another poorly managed situation. Police were said to have prevented local boaties going out to rescue passengers. Fortunately many of them went out anyway. The storm had abated somewhat by then.
About TV coverage. Almost sure that TV1 has only one reporter in Chch and maybe one camera operator. All NZ news shows now are ad shows with so called news to fill the gaps. Oh, and don’t forget the ever present Maori language salutations which nobody understands.
A personal and recent experience with the ambulance service which worked out for us. I am relating this story only to let some of you know how the latest technology is of considerable help in accident situations. My dear wife, partially sighted, had a fall into the sharp edge of a doorway. The fall opened up a major scalp cut. I phoned the ambulance and gave them a description of everything. The technology kicked in and I was able to livestream via iPhone to the ambulance centre. They send a message with a link to start the process. Twenty six staple stitches later that evening in Wgton hospital. All healed over now.
The actual answer is to be found in polling. There is polling that shows whites perceived the endless lambasting of white people as islamophobic and discussion of the political violence at that time as anti white. Noticed this around ~2022 when March 15 was barely mentioned.
Fundamentally the media is concerned about its white legacy audience disengaging over anti-white attacks. Why would you give money or time to people who hate you?
Piss in a journalist's coffee whenever you get a chance. Use adblockers, steal paywalled content etc. That is how you dissent.
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