Piece of equipment not ready for another 25 mins, so.......
What is the function of newspapers? To deliver factual news, perchance? I think not. I think the function of newspapers is to deliver opinion. Hence, in most civilised parts of the world you have a choice of newspaper that you may make up your own mind as to the facts underlying the articles. We are not afforded that luxury in Auckland - or Wellington or Dunedin. I suppose I could subscribe to the Dom Post and the ODT but I can’t be bothered. If you are the sole supplier of opinion you are in a very powerful position. Totalitarian regimes have known this for centuries, of course. You couldn’t pick up a copy of the New York Times from the same news stand that you got you Pravda from, for instance. I listen to quite a bit of radio – mainly Hauraki to be fair, but I do listen to Larry Williams on Newstalk ZB most days as this is more a news program than a damned talkback show. As an aside can anyone here listen to more than 30 seconds of Danny Watson without vomiting or driving their car into a bridge abutment? I digress. It never ceases to amaze me that after listening to Lazza I sit down for my tea with one of the TV 6 o’clock news programs and the ‘news’ is different. The underlying facts are the same but they are presented in a totally different way. This is spin. It is inevitable, a natural human thing to do and impossible to avoid. This is fine as long as you recognise this as such and look for your facts else where.
What brought all this on was a seemingly innocuous piece about a woman, her collar bone and ACC. This is reported in the tone of aggrieved woman vs. mindless bureaucratic ACC. Woman good guy, ACC bad guy. She had unending pain, intolerable financial hardship and all her concerns are met with armies of heartless men with clipboards enforcing stupid rules to the letter. What is the truth? (Who cares what is the truth is probably a better question, but we move on) The truth, as usual, is at an unknown location some where between the two stances. Obvious. The Herald would have us believe that this place is a lot closer to the woman’s stance than the ACC’s because that is what they want us to think. To find out the truth we would have to do some work. Nobody could be bothered in this trivial example and, I suspect, nobody can be bothered to ferret out the truth behind most of what is in the newspapers when it concerns matrers of much more substance.
With the rise of alternative ways of getting news to the proles (satellite TV, the web etc.) there will never be another Auckland daily newspaper and so it behoves us to use all these alternative methods of gaining info so that we are not hoodwinked by the sole purveyor of print medium. I am very aware this morning that newspapers would be better termed spinpapers.
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