ORDINARY NEWS

Not good news. Not bad news. Not even fake news. Just ordinary news where once proud and professional news services that made an effort to promulgate quality offerings now just quickly churn out any sort of shit.

I've always had a high regard for the famous news services like BBC, NYT, CBS, Washington Post, Guardian, The Times etc and proud of the fact that New Zealand's National Programme (Morning Report, Midday Report and Checkpoint along with the hourly news bulletins) have set and adhered to high standards. Commercial radio, television and most newspapers have long since given up this ideal and have gone for the lowest common denominator that brings in revenue.

Reliable and responsible news services have been under threat for some years now with the growth of social media platforms and the decline of many forms of traditional news services.

They have been losing some of their listeners, viewers and readers and not attracting enough new customers to compensate. As a result recruitment and maintenance of well-trained news professionals must be a problem. It's strange to think of it now but once being a newsperson was once seen as a kind of vocation.

Stories in the top media were properly researched and vetted before publication and, depending on the political leanings of the particular medium the stories would match the editorial policy. This seems to have disappeared with now the main driver being speed of issue which precludes checking and editing along with sensationalism.

Nowadays I'm pissed off at the way news has slipped in regards to quality production to the point where I don't buy newspapers anymore, never watch TV news and am very circumspect in regard to internet news. My good old standby has been National Radio so yesterday I was disappointed at a news report on the 6PM news following Checkpoint. The story was on the robbery of a Manurewa dairy where the owner has been robbed so many times that he wants to sell up and move away. The reporter, some young guy was interviewing local youth. This dairy was most recently robbed - read violently attacked with one of the cunts culprits jumping over the counter and stealing the cash register while police were just down the road. This jerk of a reporter said to the youths:

"Those guys must have been brave doing that with the cops so close"

What the fuck!

Brave?

What was this fucking idiot thinking. You do not use language like that that can create heroes out of scrotes.

Worse still, it was allowed to go to air so the vetting process is stuffed. Years ago (in my time young fella) this wouldn't have happened. One of the excellent Radio NZ producers or sub-editors would have picked it up and deleted it (and hopefully kicked the naive reporter up the arse - sorry Richard).

I was so incensed that I sent a text to RNZ complaining about it - oh the joys (sometimes) of social media.