Editorial - Tuesday December 11, 2012

Idiots with egos

'Idiots with egos' is the label one critic has applied to the Australian radio rejects, as they are now, who made the prank call to London's Edward VII Hospital pretending to be Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Charles, a joke gone so terribly wrong that it apparently led to the employee who initially took the call to end her life.

Whatever ego Mel Greig and Michael Christian possessed before inquiring after the well-being of the Duchess of Cambridge will have well and truly dissipated now, but the idiot tag would seem well deserved.

Unfortunately idiots are not in short supply. The radio station will very soon find a couple more. In fact idiocy would seem to be one growth industry in a world still in economic crisis. And as the Maxim Institute's Narelle Suisted pointed out in this newspaper last week, in terms of media idiocy we have ourselves to thank.

Quoting a panel convened by Maxim to address the prospects of improving the standard of public debate in New Zealand, Ms Suisted wrote that choosing to buy sensationalist media or clicking on titillating headlines will ensure their continued production. Ultimately it is the consumer who decides what the media serve up.

This discussion most memorably arose after the death of Lady Diana Spencer, when people questioned the role of the paparazzi in the crash that killed the future King's mother, the more rational commentators pointing out that celebrities were only pursued by camera-wielding packs because willing consumers made the images they captured immensely valuable. It would seem obvious that the likes of Greig and Christian only make prank calls on radio because they believe listeners will reward them, not with cash but with ratings.

Now that this prank has gone so tragically wrong, those who until now have supported this brand of 'entertainment' are abandoning it in droves, listeners and advertisers alike. All a bit late, but at least there might be a lesson for others. Unfortunately, however, the furore will die down, and this exploration of the bottom of the entertainment barrel will soon be forgotten.

Greig and Christian, and the radio station that has so far stood by them, are not entirely without a defence though. The conversation between the two impostors and staff at Edward VII was reportedly given the nod by the station's lawyers before it went to air, and they might have expected to be rebuffed, given their execrable accents, their inane patter and the reasonable assumption that security would quickly cut them off.

They might also have expected, however, that if they were successful in making some sort of meaningful contact, their victims would pay a high price. They would have known of the extraordinary media and public interest in the royal pregnancy and illness, particularly in Britain, and should have realised that anyone they managed to con would be subjected to intense media attention. They clearly never imagined that the prank would end up costing someone their life, but they might well have expected that it would cost a career or two.

Inevitably there is now talk, here and elsewhere, of curbing enthusiasm for prank calls by radio stations, although at this stage it mainly seems to be coming from the stations themselves.

The Radio Network is reportedly reviewing whether its stations will abandon the practice altogether, which wouldn't be a bad thing, although the constant need to nurture ratings will probably count against such a sweeping response. And there wouldn't need to be one if a lapse in judgement on this scale was to be career-ending, and if advertisers expressed a distaste for such stunts.

Nothing encourages the media in general to eschew potentially damaging brain explosion material more than their sense of self-preservation. Cue the Maxim panel.

In the meantime, some who have a penchant for going too far might remind themselves that pranks are supposed to be funny. This infamous phone call was obviously intended to be just that, but a little thought for the victim/s before releasing it for global consumption might have raised qualms about the potential outcome.

Those who have said that no one could have foreseen that it would cost someone their life (which at this stage we can only suspect it did) may be right, but even without such a tragic outcome it was only ever going to be played cruelly at the expense of innocent people. Minimal consolation will be taken by its victims from the lack of malice aforethought.

Representing whom?

The Brendan Horan saga has exposed the biggest flaw of all in our electoral system. Here is a man who apparently has no intention whatsoever of giving up his seat in the House of Representatives, despite the fact that he represents no one.

Like all list MPs, Mr Horan won his seat in Parliament by virtue of party votes, that in his case were almost certainly generated by his leader. Now that that leader has decided he no longer wants him, and he has been expelled from the party, he has no option but to leave Parliament altogether.

The erstwhile NZ First MP says he intends to be the best independent MP we have ever seen. Apart from the fact that his independent predecessors have set a very low bar, he is talking nonsense. He intends to get on with his work, he says. What work? He doesn't have a single solitary constituent to work for, he doesn't have a party to work for, so how on Earth is he going to fill his days?

Whether or not he has done anything wrong, legally or morally, is irrelevant (although it doesn't help that he is now reported as having offered to pay $25,000 to his family, in reparation for the $85,000 that he has consistently said he didn't take from his now late mother's bank account). The point is that his party leader no longer has faith in him, and that he has been expelled from the party he was elected to represent.

List MPs are beholden only to their parties, no one else. They do not have constituents to fight for, or to fight for them; without their parties they are nothing. And with no offence to Mr Horan, he has displayed nothing in the short time that he has been in Parliament to suggest that he has any more to recommend him than any of the parliamentary failures who have preceded him. He is not entitled to the job, or the salary that he clearly believes is not only his by right but will prove to be money well spent.

This is another flaw that the current review of MMP should address (but probably won't). This ridiculous situation has taken MMP another major step towards exposure as the farce it has always been, and if Mr Horan will be remembered for anything it will be for that.

He has proved to be just another common or garden unqualified politician who believes, with no supporting evidence, that he is bigger than the game, and that his welfare is more important than the standing of our House of Representatives as an institution that is deserving of respect.

John Donne wasn't thinking of Brendan Horan when he wrote that no man is an island. Mr Horan is precisely that. If he had any decency at all he would accept that he no longer has a place in Parliament and would leave with what remains of his dignity.