NONSENSE JOURNALISM

“Breaching lockdown for flour” proclaimed the Dominion-Post heading in a lead article by a Peter Fuller.

It opened with the assertion, “People are flouting lockdown rules by driving across the windy Rimutaka Hill road to grab a bag of flour in the Wairarapa,” so Fuller asserted.

A further 400 words of padding waffle produced not a shred of evidence to support this claim. Instead it quoted a police officer who said, “it seemed illogical that people were travelling long distances for groceries but they may (get that, may) have been looking for products they couldn’t find elsewhere such as flour”.

The police are probably bored out of their brains with the infantile role now forced upon them. They should watch out for Fuller and could have some fun.

Tell him they stopped three motorists who may have been going to an orgy by line-dancers in Martinborough and watch the Dom’ announce this with perhaps, a “Frenzied Line-dancing Orgy in Wairarapa village” heading.

In fairness to the newspaper, that edition had a first-rate article by the always thoughtful Thomas Coughlan. The world’s best newspaper, the Financial Times would have willingly run that.

If Fuller’s effort was disgraceful, it was certainly matched that day by an even worse effort from the New Zealand Herald’s website.

The heading, “How top US media sees us” turned out to be a farcical contribution by veteran Audrey Young who should know better.

Proclaiming our battle against coronavirus is now “front and centre of the world,” with the influential Washington Post reporting a triumph of science and leadership, turned out to be a tiresome aren’t we wonderful contribution by a New Zealand journo quoting New Zealand sources.