Mediawatch Midweek 27 February 2019

Mediawatch's midweek catch-up with Lately. This week Colin talks to Karyn Hay about lame lawsuits targeting US papers, some must-read and must-see local journalism, a politician copping flak for explaining himself on social media - and another copping flak for getting in a ringer to do it. Also: some midweek mea culpa.

Corrections and Clarifications Dept #1: Jordan Peterson

Last weekend Mediawatch looked at media coverage of the tour by controversial author and psychologist Jordan Peterson.

“Just how much his academic credentials as a relatively recently-installed professor in psychology beef up his opinions on political matters ( in New Zealand) is up for debate,” said my report.

He has in fact been a full prof of psychology in Toronto since 1998.

"Woops. Did this happen because in North America tenured lecturers are called professors whereas here a "professor" has a Chair (at least that was my experience 40 years ago)?" asked one listener by email

Nope. I misread some of his profiles and biographical material online.

So I removed the words “relatively recently-installed . . “ from the report and acknowledged the change online.

But in the meantime, Jordan Peterson himself became aware of it - tweeting this:   

RNZ, who didn't do their homework, also described me as a "recently installed" university professor, a profession I have pursued for three decades at Harvard and the University of Toronto. https://t.co/52OZqQdAX4

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) February 23, 2019

Some on social media saw this as evidence of a bias against Peterson on my part or an effort to discredit him.

I’m pretty indifferent about his theories and opinions - and his fame and influence - and just looking at it from the point of view of how it all appeared in the media.

Some New Zealanders are still entitled to wonder why the opinions of a foreign prof of psychology on matters such as the viability of our small towns or gender balance among cabinet ministers were regarded as so newsworthy by some in the media here.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post published this interesting piece by a marine biologist on Prof Peterson's theory of what we can all learn from lobsters.

Corrections and Clarifications Dept #2: MediaWorks radio and Nelson fires:

Sunday before last, Mediawatch looked at how the local and national media responded to the Nelson Tasman fire emergency - and how locally-based stations Brian FM and Fresh FM covered the crisis.

Brian@brianfm.co.nz emailed to say thanks.Cheer, Brian.

But I also made this point:

"Local stations of national radio networks like NZME's The Hits and MediaWorks More FM were limited in the coverage of the fires as they are 'networked' to the national output."  

MediaWorks got in touch to say there are local announcers for More FM and The Breeze in the Nelson and Marlborough area and we overlooked their contribution.

More FM and Magic Talk are MediaWorks’ key Civil Defence stations and they work with key agencies and local networks to get the best information on air in times like this.

Increased local hours were run on both More FM and The Breeze local stations in response to the Nelson fires.

Josh Fogden, Nelson’s operations manager at MediaWorks and a More FM host, helmed a 10-hour local on-air shift on that Friday and The Breeze Nelson host Blair Kiddey did extra local shifts on the weekend too.

During Civil Defence emergencies, MediaWorks says it drops network content and increases local hours and this can and is done at a minute's notice.

Corrections and Clarifications Dept #3: Sizzle and sausage

After our Mediawatch Midweek two weeks ago, Bob from Auckland emailed to say:  

"In your discussion on Brett Phibbs, you described him as the Chief Reporter at Herald. Brett was their former Chief Photographer," he write. (Just a slip of the tongue . . . )

"Later in the interview, you referred to the National Party Kiwidbuild advert as "claiming that Labour’s policy was all sausage and no sizzle'. The audio clearly was 'all sizzle and no sausage'.

"I mention these apparent pedantic matters out of respect for the importance of your work. Please do not take offence at my drawing attention to these small errors," said Bob.

None taken . . .

On the subject of National’s social media messages . . .

Simon’s selfie-style CGT explainer

Simon Bridges got pushback from critics condemning capital gains tax as “an assault on the Kiwi way of life.”

Bridges posted this on Facebook and Twitter for his followers last weekend - on “what the Kiwi way of life means to me... “

Here’s what the Kiwi way of life means to me... pic.twitter.com/ZOFyOcEdaw

— Simon Bridges (@simonjbridges) February 23, 2019

Predictably it drew a lot of put-downs on social media.

Greg Presland - Labour Party activist, lawyer and Chair Waitakere Ranges Local Board said simply: Explaining is losing ...

I guess it’s just a taunt, but it’s a depressing response from a politician.

Perhaps Bridges deserves credit for elaborating on his soundbite / slogan - and for doing it himself . . .which is more than you can say for this piece of political comms from Australia featuring a 72-year-old retiree called Jim. 

He appears to be an ordinary voter worried about Labor’s plan to end cash refunds for franked dividends. The concerned citizen stars in a campaign video released on Friday by Georgina Downer, the Liberal candidate in the Adelaide seat of Mayo.

"Mr Bonner's history with the Liberal Party stretches back to his stint as a press secretary for prime minister Malcolm Fraser in the early 1980s. He went on to hold senior positions with the ABC before returning to Liberal ranks, eventually becoming South Australia state director of the party from 1998 to 2001," said the Sydney Morning Herald.

Lame lawsuits levelled at US papers:

Remember Nicholas Sandmann, The Covington Catholic High School teenager whose standoff with Native American activist Nathan Phillips in Washington DC went viral last month?

The Covington Kid Is Suing The Washington Post for $250 million - for “engaging in a modern-day form of McCarthyism.”

"It’s the exact amount Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, paid in cash for the Post when he bought the paper five years ago," Vanity Fair says:

“It is extremely difficult to win defamation lawsuits against major media organizations; the First Amendment gives plenty of leeway to journalists. But of course, most quarter-billion-dollar defamation suits aren’t meant to be winnable, they’re filed to make a point," says Vanity Fair

It reminded me of a spurious lawsuit I heard about years ago - a woman in LA trying to sue the LA Times for for the death of her little dog - because the delivery kid threw the hefty weekend edition onto the porch and it crushed it.

Did it actually happen?

In 1996, the yarn featured in an LA Times story called The Following L.A. Stories Are Not True. (Well, Maybe a Little True).

“The story originated with "Mission: Impossible" actress Barbara Bain, whose pooch was the alleged victim of the unintended bomb of award-winning newsprint. Writer Gregg Kilday, then a columnist for the Herald Examiner, says he heard Bain give a first-person account of the incident during a party and he reported the story a day later. .

"There may have been an element of exaggeration in the way that actresses are capable of, but the story was so good I didn't press her on it," he recalled.

Barbara Bain is also familiar to some viewers as Dr Helena Russell in Space 1999.

"Bain's business manager at the time phoned The Times to say that Kilday's version was not true. Times' officials later determined that it was possibly the carrier's car, not the paper itself, that had killed the dog, Bain has declined to comment further on the incident that became the source of the story," said the LA Times in 1996.

But after that Carolyn Strickler, the retired Times archivist and company historian, wrote to the Times to say she remembers a file on Bain's threatened lawsuit against the Times.

A journalist at rival the Los Angeles Herald Examiner paper - Jeff Kaye - wrote this in Hollywood Reporter in 1998:

"We got a tip that a newspaper boy had hurled the Times’ behemoth Sunday edition onto her pooch. We also ran an editorial cartoon," he recalled. 

"It depicted a cop, notebook in hand, talking to Barbara Bain. Beneath them was the dog, flattened, big Xs in his eyes, the Times laying atop him. The cop was saying to the actress: “Y’know, Miss Bain, this never would have happened if you had been taking the Herald Examiner.”

He said it was a thin, scrappy paper which went out of business soon after.

So that paper and dog both died - but the LA Times didn't get sued.