Lazy media run crime statistics propaganda without revealing National Party as source

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Have no doubt why the National Party Opposition churns out so many press releases in the Christmas-New Year break. The Sunday Star Times yesterday splashed one about crime statistics on its front page. At least that story revealed, a third of the way down, that National was the source of the information. The page one lead of today’s Press in Christchurch is the same story, more locally angled, without evening mentioning the source. There is no need to bribe, buy or bully the media when it will run your propaganda like this for free. This example of lazy journalism is a disgrace to the profession.

This “news,” which purports to rank various cities by the number of serious recorded crimes for each 10,000 residents, was compiled by the National Party research unit and issued by justice spokesman Simon Power to feed to the media at this quiet time of the year in the hope of getting it published to make the Government look “soft on crime.” Any journalist worthy of the name would know this is naked political propaganda of the most transparent kind and handle it accordingly, either by tossing it in the bin, or by checking the “information” contained to see if it stacks up and if it does not, saying so. It should never appear on the front page (or in radio bulletins as also happened yesterday) as if it were factual, reliable information from an impartial source. To publish it without even telling people this is from a political party shamefully ill-serves readers, who are deprived of knowing the source in order to make up their own minds about its credibility or otherwise.

I’m not criticising the National Party here, despite my wishing last week for political parties to give the public a holiday break from the torrents of political press statements usually issued at this time of the year, which the media calls “the silly season” because the newsmakers whose actions and utterances normally fill newspaper pages and broadcasting news bulletins are on holiday, leading to the media often publishing any old rubbish out of desperation. The National Party did not hide the fact it compiled these figures. The journalists it fed them to knew full well the political motivation behind them. The lazy, incompetent manner in which this propaganda ended up on front pages is a coup for the National Party. The researcher and press secretary who engineered it should be awarded bonuses. The reporters who wrote it up so uncritically should hang their heads in shame. The news editors who let it through should be demoted to the subbery.

If the media want to run stories about crime statistics, which they do frequently, there are more reliable places to get the information than a political party, whether an opposition one or the Government. The police themselves produce a large number of detailed reports and statistical reviews that are freely available, including this website of crime statistics broken down by region, which can be verified if there is any doubt about their credibility – the page clearly states at the very top: “Statistics New Zealand now provide the ability to query the New Zealand Police Statistics – allowing you to gather detailed crime information about your local area since 1994.” Any journalist should be able to gather this information quickly and accurately in this way. It is how the National Party researcher will have done it. If a journalist feels that official police information is not to be trusted (remember, the police have their own spin doctors who dress material up to make the police look as good as possible, though Statistics NZ data is impeccably impartial), they can go to one or more of a number of media-friendly criminologists, such as Greg Newbold at the University of Canterbury, who are a mine of up-to-date, impartial, trustworthy information.

But no, the Sunday Star Times, and The Press,  Radio New Zealand and the Dominion Post (which has a small piece on page A7 today, not online, that cutely quotes Simon Power casting doubt on his own claim that Wellington is the safest city), all find it much easier to take a press statement generated by a political party’s spin machine and run it unchallenged as if it is unbiased news, with The Press not even revealing the National Party is the source. It saves them from undertaking even the quick hour or so required to get similar but credible information from the police and Statistics websites, information that might make a good story if some journalist bothered to do it.

With sorrow I am reminded, yet again, of the pithy verse by Humbert Wolfe, first published in Britain’s Punch almost 80 years ago. Just substitute “Kiwi” for “British” and weep:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do unbribed
There’s no occasion to.

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Filed under Journalism, Justice and Law, Politics

Tags: National Party, Political propaganda, Sunday Star Times, The Press