KEY POINTS:
I was having coffee with a mate this week who was incensed by the media coverage of the motley crew of Tuhoe protesters making their way to Wellington. Why, he demanded, was the media giving so much attention to these people as 99.99 per cent of New Zealanders couldn't give a fat rat's arse about these individuals other than to marvel they had the time to meander down the centre of the North Island on some sort of poorly organised road trip.
As a token representative of the media, I explained the reason for the coverage boiled down to the fact that it was a very slow news week and needs must. It was also a highly visual story - heavily tattooed and masked men wielding taiaha make for great pictures - and it means journalists can continue to include the words terror and raids into their copy, which is so much more exciting for them than having to write about greenhouse gas emissions and carbon trading or the Electoral Finance Bill.
I take his point though. Various media organisations have gone out of their way to lend this Tuhoe protest story so much more attention than it deserves. TV One sent their police reporter on the four-day trek. She eventually became the story she reported on; nothing else was happening so she reported that she and the camera crew had been abused. Who cares?
Surely a police reporter could have been getting on with her work in a more meaningful way back at the office, researching stories that had more relevance for ordinary New Zealanders. Such as burglary clearance rates. Or the renewed interest in the Scott Watson case. Other news associations asked professional protesters for their views on the march, breathing new life into what was basically a nothing story.
No wonder journalists rank lower than a snake's underpants in public confidence and respect surveys.
Members of the public know this is lazy reporting. They would far rather read watch and hear stories that have some relevance to their own lives and they can see this march for what it is - attention-seeking nonsense from a group of disaffected losers.
One of my callers said he went down to Molesworth St to have a look at the marchers and suggested next time a Government agency wanted to swoop into the Tuhoe region, they might like to send dentists, dietitians and physiotherapists.
He said he'd never seen so many bad teeth, fat tummies or dodgy hips and walking aids.
According to him, the march looked more like a pilgrimage to Lourdes, than a hikoi on Parliament.
Cruel, but looking at the footage, I had to admit, he had a point. Another caller, Upoko, who identified himself as a Cook Island Maori, said he was fed up with seeing people such as the Tuhoe protesters getting attention.
He said he and his wife had raised three great kids who had good jobs and had never put a foot wrong. As far as he was concerned, the real tangata whenua were those people who were contributing in a positive manner to New Zealand, and he wanted to see the definition of who makes up the people of the land redefined.
Again, an interesting point. But really, it's not the protesters I blame. It's me and my colleagues in the various media.
We haven't done a good job of explaining any genuine grievances the people of Ruatoki might have against agencies of the state. We've simply shown bandanna-wearing thugs waving sticks. We've given far too much time to a story that really doesn't deserve more than a couple of sentences in a news bulletin because we have to fill a five-minute time slot whether there's five minutes of genuine news stories or not.
And when the protest looked like running out of steam, we breathed artificial life into it by doing patsy interviews. I long for the day our newsreader at ZB announces at 9 that everyone should sleep well and safely because tonight, there is no news.
Nobody's died and nothing bad has happened. Surely that would be more honest than manufacturing drama and unrest simply to fill the gaps between the ads.
