Balanced coverage of the abortion debate? Don't hold your breath

Justice minister Andrew Little has announced details of the abortion bill to go before Parliament, and already it’s abundantly clear that we shouldn’t expect balanced media coverage.

The tone was set in an opinion piece today in which Stuff political reporter Henry Cooke wrote that the government was finally moving after years of “shameful inaction”. Politicians had put abortion in the too-hard basket ever since the “absurdity” of the current law was passed in 1977, he said.

Well, at least we now know not to expect neutral coverage of this divisive issue from Cooke. So how do things look elsewhere?

Er, not good. TV3’s 6 o’clock news last night, in an item foreshadowing today’s announcement, featured a sympathetic interview with a woman who said she was made to feel like a criminal for wanting an abortion and didn’t think there should be any statutory limits on when terminations could be carried out.

Political editor Tova O’Brien didn’t declare an explicitly partisan position but the thrust of the item was unmistakable. In a three-minute item, there was no room for anyone from the pro-life lobby.

How about state radio, then? The signs are not promising there, either. Radio New Zealand last month ran an Eyewitness programme eulogising the women who ran the Sisters Overseas Service for pregnant women wanting abortions in the 1970s.

Again, the documentary wasn’t explicitly pro-abortion, but it didn’t need to be. The women of the SOS were presented as heroines fighting for a self-evidently noble and righteous cause.

As an aside, Eyewitness recalled events of that time with such confidence and authority that listeners could have assumed the reporter/producer had personally lived through it. In fact Claire Crofton, who made the item for RNZ, is a recent arrival from Britain. She revealed in another recent programme that she’s a Brexit refugee, which possibly says something about her politics.  

Is it too much to expect that on a highly sensitive political and moral issue such as this, one that resonates deeply with New Zealanders on both sides of the debate, we might be spared propaganda made at public expense by an outsider?

Meanwhile, the anti-abortion organisation Voice for Life has accused another RNZ journalist, Susan Strongman, of collaborating with Terry Bellamak of the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand in an exercise apparently aimed at discrediting pro-life pregnancy counsellors.

According to VFL, a post by Strongman on the ALRANZ Facebook page was introduced as “a request from a friendly journalist”. It said she was keen to hear from anyone who had sought pregnancy counselling “only to find they [the counsellors] are pushing a pro-life agenda”.

The post continued: “Have you ever been shown tiny fetus toys, offered baby clothes or given inaccurate information on the risks of abortion? If so, I would love to speak with you for an investigation into New Zealand’s crisis pregnancy centres.

“You can remain anonymous, and Terry can vouch for me as being a reliable and trustworthy journalist.”

Strongman finished by giving her Radio New Zealand email address and added “or you can get my mobile number off Terry”. How cosy.

VFL complained to Radio New Zealand, claiming the purpose was to undermine the fund-raising efforts of organisations such as Pregnancy Help and Pregnancy Counselling Services.

The reply from Stephen Smith, acting CEO and editor-in-chief of RNZ, blandly assured VFL there was no collaboration between Strongman and ALRANZ and that the story she was working on was not initiated by Bellamak’s organisation.

It went on to say: “RNZ journalists have contacts in many organisations and are committed to following a well-established editorial process to ensure that stories are fair and balanced.” Not exactly a resounding denial, then.

In the meantime, anyone wanting to satisfy themselves that Strongman’s stories on abortion are fair and balanced is unlikely to be reassured by a tweet that she posted on May 16. It concerned a story Strongman had written for RNZ about a woman whom she claimed contemplated suicide after being refused a second-trimester abortion.

Strongman then added: “This is what can happen when an abortion decision is not yours to make.” In those few words she segued from reportage to activism. On the strength of that, I wouldn’t trust her to write balanced stories about abortion.

As the abortion debate heats up, we can expect to see many more examples of advocacy journalism for the pro-abortion case. Overwhelmingly, the default position in media coverage is that the abortion laws are repressive and archaic and that reform is not only overdue but urgent.

But at times like this the public more than ever look to the media for impartial coverage. Is it too much to expect that journalists set aside their personal views and concentrate instead on giving people the information they need to properly weigh the conflicting arguments and form their own conclusions?

Why I'll no longer be watching 3 News

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.