Radio New Zealand’s Mediawatch
this morning featured an interview with Stuff
journalist Nicola Brennan-Tupara, who’s promoting the notion of “constructive
journalism”. She’s seen it in action in Denmark, where the Danish Broadcasting
Corporation has evidently adopted a policy of not depressing the hell out of
the Danes by relentlessly bombarding them with bad news.
It’s an approach I have some sympathy for. A good editor will
always try to ensure that bad news is leavened with more positive stuff. But
the inescapable fact is that news, by definition, is about the unusual;
anything that’s outside the norm. And what’s outside the norm is often bad.
To give an example, it’s not news if the 6.47am
commuter train from Masterton to Wellington arrives safely and on time. But it is news if the train breaks down and
catches fire in the middle of the Remutaka Tunnel.
You can try to brighten up the news with cheerful items, but
tragedy, misfortune and conflict are always going to make up a substantial part
of any newspaper or TV bulletin, and editors would be failing in their duty if
they set out to suppress it. After all, the function of journalism is to
reflect, as accurately as possible, the world as it is, not as some of us might
wish it to be.
Besides, “good news” journalism has been tried before and it
doesn’t work. Some people might complain that they don’t watch the TV news
because it brings them down, as Brennan-Tupara says (heck, even I sometimes give
the 6pm bulletin a miss at the end of a gruelling week), but they will soon see
through a bland, sanitised news diet that misrepresents what’s happening in the
world.
Of course there’s scope for news items that present the
better side of the human condition, which is what Brennan-Tupara seems to be on
about. But a zealously pursued “constructive journalism” policy risks being
misleading and even downright dishonest. It could also serve as a smokescreen for
social engineering, of which we have a surfeit already.
Incidentally, it’s worth noting that much of the bad news
that features so frequently in the New Zealand media – for example, stories about
poverty, inequality, homelessness, climate change and obesity – is promoted by
agenda-driven leftist reformers whose doom-laden claims are unquestioningly
accepted by sympathetic journalists who shirk the hard questions.
Much of this is opinion dressed up as news and given a spurious
aura of credibility because those pushing it have academic titles like “doctor” and “adjunct
professor”. If there’s any category of bad news that could be dialled back (note
that I say “dialled back”, not suppressed), I’d suggest this might be a good
place to start.
