A New News?

A New Kind of News?: The sheer scale of the Christchurch tragedy, and the myriad calls upon officials' time and energy, leaves little or no room for the public relations specialists to present their client's version of reality. The resulting, searingly honest, coverage is what real (i.e. unmediated) journalism looks like.

A NEW NEWS? Tim Watkin, over at Pundit, is trumpeting the free-to-air networks’ continuous, advertising-free coverage of the Christchurch Earthquake as a "game-changing" journalistic adventure.

"Rather than a journalist doing the thinking for the viewers and the carefully condensed report presented," says Tim, "the thinking (and feeling) is done live in front of you, and sometimes is exposed as shallow or headline-driven. It's real, for better or worse."

To say this was overstating the case would be an understatement.

New Zealanders are quite used to journalists reporting live from the scenes of natural and man-made tragedies. And when there is actually something to report – as there undoubtedly is in the devastated city of Christchurch – New Zealand’s television journalists generally do a very good job.

What the earthquake coverage has revealed, however, is how spurious and trivialising most of TVNZ’s and TV3’s "live crosses" really are. The sequence usually involves an embarrassed journalist, positioned well away from any action, telling us what the presenter has already told us (if we’re lucky, in slightly more detail).

What is truly unusual about the free-to-air networks earthquake coverage is the extreme fluidity of the events their journalists are being asked to report. The sheer scale of the tragedy, and the myriad calls upon officials’ time and energy, leaves little or no room for the public relations specialists to present their client’s version of reality.

For what may be the first time in their brief careers (so many of these journalists are barely out of journalism school) young reporters are free to present us with information and images that have not been carefully prepared, edited and slanted – either by the "official sources" on the spot, or back in their own newsrooms.

This is what real journalism looks like and sounds like. Trained observers and communicators, unencumbered by all the usual editorial and political shackles, giving their audience accurate, up-to-date information to the very best of their professional ability.

Tim’s effusive posting is also quite likely a reflection of the sheer novelty of being able to work outside the rigid constraints of a fixed advertising schedule. As he rather breathlessly explains: "The news crashes on through 6pm, Close Up doesn't wait for 7pm for a Mike Hosking interview, Breakfast starts at 5.30am and runs until noon; even Coronation St is sacrificed."

If he but knew it, what Tim is actually celebrating is not some sort of quantum-leap into CNN-land, but the enormous flexibility and freedom which flows from broadcasting undertaken not for profit, but for the public good.

The camaraderie and un-self-conscious display of professional expertise, which Tim describes in the TVNZ control-room, is what happens in any workplace where the workers themselves, rather than their bosses, are given responsibility for production.

It will, of course, all come to an end in a few days time. TVNZ and TV3 cannot afford to keep their broadcasts advertising-free indefinitely. All-too-soon the economic realities of for-profit broadcasting will assert themselves and Tim and his colleagues will go back to their usual job of delivering eyeballs to advertisers.

Still, I’m glad the young producer of Q+A drew our attention to the quality of the work the networks’ staff are currently delivering to their fellow citizens. The tragedy, of course, is that it requires a national crisis of these proportions to shatter the normal templates of broadcasting practice.

Just for a moment we are being given a glimpse of an alternative broadcasting universe. One in which the workers in the control room, the workers operating the cameras, and the journalists delivering the story, are free to communicate with their fellow citizens about things that really matter.

By showing us human-beings helping one another, comforting one another, risking their lives for one another, they have given the lie to the twisted version of human nature transmitted to viewers during "normal" programming.

In this awful – but genuine – "reality show", the survivors of the Christchurch earthquake do not lie or back-stab, manoeuvre or compete. Instead, they tell each other the truth, they put their arms around perfect strangers, and they co-operate heroically for the common good.

What we’ve been given, Tim, isn’t just a rare opportunity to see what real journalism looks like, but a chance to learn how very, very far from the vicious depiction of humanity, typically delivered by commercial television, our fellow New Zealanders truly are.