By God life can be exciting in New Zealand.
Look at these heart-attack inducing headings from yesterday’s Stuff web-site.
“Stuck in the lift for 45 minutes”
“New subdivision plans revealed”
“Auckland ferry passengers left behind”
“Michael Jacksons son turns 18”
Amid this dross and downplayed was one sensible one, namely, “The Millane murder case and it’s media storm”
All credit to Dr Sarah Baker, a communications lecturer at AUT who spoke out on this.
Why she asked, didn’t another murder case that same week, namely Chinese woman Xi Wang, murdered by her ex-partner while holding her 2 year old, get the same attention?
I can answer that. In the largely futile attempt to find real news in bland New Zealand, our media do one of two things.
They either make it up by taking a minor issue and puffing it up to a major one, or alternatively, as with the Millane murder, they climb on a media bandwagon and add layer after layer of trivia and repetition until it’s become the story of the century.
With the Millane murder, the NZ Herald was the principal culprit, giving it a 2 months long World War 3 treatment. Every year about a dozen woman, disproportionately maori, but also occasionally tourists, are murdered in New Zealand. It’s a sad but reoccurring story and each case if briefly reported. The Millane over-kill was farcical.
As said, it’s not easy being a journo’ in this country. Here the media face the opposite problem of their Australian, American, British et al counterparts, namely what to leave out.