Under the heading ‘ENTERTAINMENT’, on Saturday the Herald headed an item,
“Contestant Dead after TV tragedy.”
Very entertaining, doubtless having readers rolling in the aisles.
Not to be left out, the STUFF website ran the same item under the heading MOST POPULAR.
So there you have it, at least according to our newspapers, namely that Kiwis are delighted and entertained by an accidental death.
And another,
Today the Herald headed an item on the New Zealand Americas Cup boat,
World in Awe at Team New Zealand’s boat.
The world? Really! I wonder how many Mongolians, Arabs, Russians, Hungarians, Albanians, Brazilians, Africans etc. etc have even heard of the Americas Cup, let alone being awe-struck by this boat. An appropriate heading would have been Auckland yachting community in awe at new Kiwi boat.
Coincidentally, a few weeks back when writing a similar piece about the Herald’s heading blunders for this site, the phone rang.
Lo and behold it was Shayne Currie, the long-time Herald editor and now company manager.
“Mental telepathy conveying guilt” I cried and told him of his co-incidental call.
Then followed the standard exchange I’ve had with him, (and other editors) over the years.
“You don’t even read your own bloody newspaper”. I accused.
“I do so”.
“You don’t”
“I do”.
Anyway, after this had gone on for a while he mentioned he’d be in Wellington in a week and we duly met up.
I can’t now recall the number Shayne told me as to how many sub-editors the Herald had in its heyday; four decades back but I do remember being astounded by it. Today there’s but a small fraction of that many.
Nevertheless, it can’t be bloody hard and these regular heading blunders are an embarrassment for the journoes writing the items.
9 Comments
It seems to me that the headlines are designed to grab attention and have nothing to do with the truth. Sad really. Leaves me without trust of ANY news media outlet in NZ.
Headlines have always been designed to catch attention. That is the point of them. But there is no excuse for them to be misleading or ungrammatical or downright wrong
And that sums it up perfectly.
There’s a beauty on Stuff today: Kate Middleton and Prince William’s dog dead…(under the Bravo heading). An absent-apostrophe crime to keep us amused.
The problem is subs today come from a generation not taught English properly neither at school nor in journalism training. How else can the constant poor use of grammar and bad spelling and general sloppiness be explained?
One explanation is that they just don’t care. The generation they come from will never hold them to task as they don’t see the errors or are too busy looking at Facebook or Twitter or some other junk platform all full if the same inaccuracy.
I doubt the Journoes writing these items feel any embarrassment. A tragic death is not entertainment. Team NZ is not World news. Reason being, the NZ Herald “cut’n’paste” idiot mob don’t realize they have produced cringe worthy content. On the flip side, ignorant also, are the majority of their readership. Or should I say reader?
So, here we are in our NZ bubble, the masses deluding themselves into believing team NZ has any form of world interest or significance.
Todays NZ Herald cringe worthy item “Woman says she was turned away from police training because of her ADHD medication” A Whanganui woman says she was left in the lurch after police revoked her entry into officer training due to the medication she uses to treat her ADHD.
No less, this is NZ Heralds Premium paid content, written by none other than Katie Harris, the Multimedia Journalist. ADHD, according to the internet, once diagnosed treatment can help, but this condition can’t be cured. The complainant, left in the lurch? Far from it, her application was revoked.
So my question of Katie, the writer of this report. Was the story more about a woman rejected for an official position? Happy, smiley, family pics and all. Or, was the story more about a mentally ill person, unfortunately being unsuitable for a position? Because, or her illness, nothing else.
One of our offspring is a journo in Oz- he has high standards, Enough said about most of the rest.
Today’s Herald has someone moving 12,000 cubic meters instead of metre