Some in the media learned the lessons of Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods, just as the emergency management authorities have done - and they made a concerted effort to take this week’s weather warnings seriously. Others, not so much.
A car driving through floodwaters in Whangārei on 9 May 2023. Photo: Supplied / Dee Attwood
As a storm struck on Tuesday, Newstalk ZB host Simon Barnett opened the phone lines for callers to deliver on-the-ground weather updates from around the country.
Among them was a truck driver who gave him an eye-witness update on the road conditions in Waikato, along with a colourful description of the driving conditions.
"The weather down here's shocking. It's starting to flood. It's diabolical," the caller said.
"Some of them [sic] guys are driving to the conditions. And there's some guys driving like idiots, as per usual."
Barnett’s news you could use approach stood in contrast with how some hosts from his network handled the last weather disaster to strike the country - Cyclone Gabrielle.
Back then, Newstalk’s breakfast host Mike Hosking and his wife, early morning presenter Kate Hawkesby, pooh- poohed what they saw as overblown weather warnings.
"What we've done is whip ourselves into this extraordinary frenzy," Hosking said.
"We panic," Hawkesby replied.
"We're almost in a state now where we want to be told what to do all the time, and we almost enjoy it where it's like 'hunker down, don't go to school, don't go to work'."
They were joined in their jeering by Newstalk’s mid-morning host Kerre Woodham, who bemoaned the timidity of Auckland schools that decided to close for the day.
"What message does this send to our children? Yet again their education must be sacrificed for the greater good, be it Covid, be it floods, be it cyclones - there are greater priorities than education," she said.
It turned out Cyclone Gabrielle was a big deal. It killed 11 people, cut off whole towns, and damaged and wrecked hundreds of homes.
Newstalk received formal complaints about its hosts minimising the unfolding disaster, even as the station billed itself as an official source of news updates and Civil Defence information.
"They can thrive on contrarianism if they wish but in times of crisis, they have a responsibility to concentrate on clear concise comprehensive information rather than their commercial interests," former New Zealand Herald editor Gavin Ellis said at the time.
Given all that, you’d think the station might have changed tack this week as another front closed in.
But some presenters followed a similar script to the one back in February.
On Wednesday Mike Hosking made a quick assessment before deciding to read out on air a storm update from authorities.
"Just in from - who is it in from? The state of emergency people? The Civil Defence people?" he asked, before receiving a reply confirming the source of the release.
"Oh Waka Kotahi. Okay, take it seriously then," he said (in a tone which suggested he didn't)
Earlier that morning he introduced an interview with Auckland Chamber of Commerce chief executive Simon Bridges saying the city had experienced a bout of "weather panic" as a local state of emergency was declared.
"Everyone scarpered home and yet was it really necessary - or was it a short downpour we overreacted to?" he asked.
While he acknowledged authorities had difficult decisions to make given the disasters of Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods, Bridges played along with Hosking’s premise.
"These floods weren't actually as bad as the 27 January ones. Yep, there was a worst set of floods that you underreacted to, but let's not treat this one more seriously than it needs to be," he said.
"And that is exactly what happened yesterday," Hosking replied. "And when you push back to those people they say 'better safe than sorry'."
In Hosking’s eyes, the media were catastrophising because they’re obsessed with weather stories.
"I blame the digital media - the Herald, the Stuffs, the RNZs. I've never seen the media obsess about weather more. There are hundreds of stories about forecasts that may or may not come to pass, storms that may or may not happen, squalls that are coming in or not, and we've just got this mindset that everything's a disaster."
It’s true the weather is a big driver of traffic for our news organisations.
In 2022, meteorologist Ben Noll told Stuff New Zealand has a good argument for being the most weather-obsessed country in the world.
The article used some in-house statistics to buttress that claim, saying Stuff readers click on weather stories millions of times every month, including in summer.
But the media is also a vital source of information during weather disasters, and sometimes that can be lifesaving.
Two hours before Hosking questioned the storm shutdowns on air with Simon Bridges, Kate Hawkesby put similar questions to another spokesperson for Auckland businesses.
But Heart Of The City’s Viv Beck didn’t accept the authorities had been too cautious issuing a state of emergency and urging workers to go home.
"We can't do it willy-nilly but yesterday was precautionary," she told Newstalk ZB.
"There was a child missing up north and people have been badly affected again. Most people I'm talking to believe it was an appropriate thing to do," she said.
The Whangārei High School student was swept away during a class caving trip in Abbey Caves. He was later found dead.
News organisations this week questioned why the students were in the cave in the first place.
On Newshub at 6 Isobel Ewing looked at whether the school’s decision lined up with its own policies which call for teachers to assess water levels and weather risk before caving trips.
On TVNZ’s 1News Simon Dallow quoted a parent who described the decision to go, in spite of MetService weather warnings, as a "monumental mistake".
"Why were they at the caves? I mean, wasn't there a heavy rain weather warning yesterday?" Heather du Plessis-Allan asked Northern Advocate reporter Brodie Stone on Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
Du Plessis-Allan and others made a good point: heeding the warnings of forecasters and authorities can help stave off disaster.
The reporting of the last few days has shown many people do understand the importance of listening to those warnings.
TVNZ reporter Isabelle Prasad asked Aucklanders how they responded to the latest storm in light of the two disasters that hit the city earlier this year.
"What's the most different is how fast we're moving this time. It's foreseeing what's going to happen. Just leave. Don't wait," said one parent at an Auckland school.
Those vox-popped Aucklanders affirmed that it can be hard to tell which low pressure systems are going to fizzle out and which might send water up to your neck.
But if the message that it really is better to be safe than sorry seems to be catching on with the public, it’s still not getting through the studio doors of the nation’s most popular talk radio network in the mornings during the week.
