And in other news...

I like to keep myself informed of current events from my nation and around the world. However, over the past few years I have found myself drifting further and further away from the nightly television news report. I can only handle a certain amount of bad news, but that is not the only reason for this. It is also because the news is tending to make me more and more angry. Unfortunately this is not a righteous anger that is formed out of a disgust at the atrocities taking place around our world. Instead it is an anger at the standards of reporting, which at best leaves me with more questions than answers, and at worst spins me off into a rave.

The questions are often never-ending and for years I have felt like a dunce because I do not understand what on earth people are talking about. Only recently has it dawned on me that I am not a dunce – the journalists are. But perhaps that is too harsh. I am sure they are highly intelligent people who understand what they are reporting on, but it is not their job to educate – it is their job to get ratings and push their agenda.

Is that too cynical of me? The other alternative is that they are just plain lazy and expect that the news is the motivator for us to go out and find more information on our own.

 I do not know what the reason behind it is – all I know is that when I tune in at 6pm, I am not getting the news, but a buttoned-up version of Entertainment Tonight.

My most recent rave was on the day that the new social development reforms were passed. Since I do not rely on television for this information – I knew what most of these reforms were, but I was expecting to hear an overview of them. Actually I was looking forward to this as I was watching this with my husband and I knew he would not know anything about them so it would be great to have something else to talk about. (If you have read my earlier blog on The Unexpected Benefits of Parenting, you’ll understand why).

However I did not hear any mention on what the reforms actually were. Instead the majority of the report was spent on an administration error -  a letter was sent to someone by WINZ informing them that they had been overpaid by 1 cent, which had to be returned, otherwise they would need to repay 2 cents.

I knew exactly how this report was going to go. The minister in  opposition will complain that this is a waste of time and money. The social development minister will say this is obviously a mistake and measures will be put in place to ensure it doesn't happen again. End of.

I must be an oracle because that is exactly what happened. They did not mention the actual reforms and their impacts at all. This is the kind of reporting I loathe. And where in the news report was this story? You might think it was in the final ‘and in other news’ spot at the end of the show – where stories like this belong. But no – it was the second story of the night.

The only good thing about this report is that at least two sides of an argument were presented – as meaningless as it was. However, the next time you watch the news, count how many reports are given where only one side of the story is told, or the full picture is not given. Does anyone who is not a teacher know why charter schools are bad? I am a parent and I would love to know but the news isn't telling me. Does anyone who is not in Christchurch know why the government has to close so many schools? I care about what is happening in my nation, especially Christchurch, but all I see on the news is a lot of angry people and no one explaining why their demands are not being met. If you do know the answer to these questions – was it the nightly news that told you, or did you have to find out some other way?

I live in South Auckland and so I am used to hearing lots of bad news about the area I live in. I do not expect news stories about the great goings on in Manurewa. However, it does annoy me, even bore me that there seems to be only one story to tell. If the news were a soap opera, people would stop tuning in because you are constantly seeing the same thing happen over and over again, year after year. Just like the love triangle between Ridge, Brooke and Taylor in The Bold and the Beautiful – and that’s been cancelled in NZ.

There is so much going on in our nation and our world. Why do we have to keep hearing about the same things?  One thing that the Kony 2012 campaign by Invisible Children taught me is that people have the capacity to learn and care about so much more than what is currently presented to us. They just need to be presented with the unbiased facts – and rightly or wrongly most people rely on the nightly news to do this.

Thank goodness for Google.

In summary, here is a clip of someone who is much more intelligent, funny and cynical than me, giving his version of what we receive each evening at 6pm. Here’s the great Charlie Brooker…