Don't panic, media just love giving our nerves a shake-up

Chilean fishing boats hit by a tsunami after the quake this week. PHOTO/FILE

So who's shaking in their boots? And clearly I mean this figuratively, not literally, since this week's obsession with earthquakes (particularly those a very long way away that caused a very small amount of loss and damage) had absolutely no impact on New Zealanders whatsoever.

So why was it headline news?

The answer is, we love to be scared. And the media know it.

Earthquakes, homicides, missing planes, shark attacks, nutters with guns. What they all have in common is their ability to strike any one of us down, at any moment. And that's what we love about them.

Many years ago when I was a rookie journalist for One News, based in Dunedin, my first job in the morning was to ring around the local constabulary, sniffing for a story. If I found a likely candidate, I briefed the producers in Auckland who then made a call on whether to pursue it for the six o' clock news or not.

One sleepy Sunday (always a news producer's Achilles heel due to a lack of business and politics to pad out the hour), I hit the jackpot: a woman found dead in her home in the equally sleepy southern town of Gore. Or was it Milton? It didn't really matter for the Auckland producers, who'd heard of neither and were unlikely to ever step their suede loafer-clad feet in either.

What mattered was that a woman was dead. And what mattered specifically after that was how she died.

As my cameraman and I sped to the scene, word came out that it was most likely a domestic assault. In other words, a bog-standard, husband-versus-wife, non-scary - and by default non-newsworthy - death. To quote my producer, it was "just an ordinary murder". I was told to pull out.

Still young and naive enough to feel indignant about this quick dismissal of a woman's life (and death), I ignored orders and continued south to Gore (or Milton). When the inquiry shifted mid-afternoon and the magic media words "home invasion" started being used by police, this defiant decision made me the golden girl of the newsroom for 24 hours.

The same woman, the same life, moments ago of no news value whatsoever, suddenly became the lead. I was to suit up and prepare for a live cross to the anchor at 6pm and stay on-site for further "developments" later in the hour (of which I was to source).

Over the course of a short career, this happened often enough for me to find myself suddenly drawn towards photographing happy brides and bouncing babies instead of chasing down breaking "news".

Years on, I still consume world events with a large dose of scepticism, knowing as I do that "if it bleeds, it leads" and (since the Christchurch earthquake), "if it shakes, it rates".

Even though we all knew quickly Chile's magnitude 8.2 quake was going to have little impact here, that didn't stop the simulated graphics showing wave movements across the Pacific and interviews with anyone sporting a Kiwi accent who happened to be in South America.

Closer to home, we've had a few tremors around the central North Island lately, which caused no waves at all except an extra few radio waves as we all frothed about the (non) event.

I suppose we ought to be glad we have such dedicated news media to tell us all about these "scary" events, otherwise (heaven forbid) they'd go entirely unnoticed.