Some more reflections on how the news media has been covering the Christchurch earthquake (#eqnz on twitter).
My previous post reflected my reaction as a member of the public without much access to technology and media during Saturday and Sunday. I was aware of difficulties in quality media coverage getting off the ground in the first few hours after the quake but was reasonably happy with what I saw during Saturday and Sunday when I could access media.
However it’s becoming more apparent that there were issues and that they need to be looked at.
TV3′s lack of continuous coverage on Saturday has created some ructions within that broadcaster. Mike McRoberts has expressed his frustration about this as reported in today’s NZ Herald.
RadioNZ did have a special morning report on at 7am, but resumed ordinary programing and didn’t get it’s act together until well into Saturday morning. That’s simply not good enough.
TVNZ had ongoing coverage throughout the day and into the night. Not sure exactly when they kicked it off.
Prime TV too seemed to have coverage throughout the day. And well into the night. (update on this coming)
I’ve had a number of emails from people reading my previous post saying that they got better coverage from overseas media.
And I’ve discussed the important role that social media has played. Allowing people to make contact with each other via their mobile phone applications for Facebook and Twitter. And providing people with up to date information that the news media wasn’t providing.
It appears that social media was the place where meany people went to get information. I think it’s certainly worth investigating more the important role it plays. Many organisations, including Civil Defence are now using social media effectively, in particular Twitter.
I received info on this new Govt website on the Canterbury Earthquake today via Twitter before any other media.
Blogs like Red Alert are also playing an important role.
My colleague Brendon Burns and Lianne Dalziel are reporting directly on Red Alert from their Christchurch electorates on the extent of the devastation and the human stories they are encountering. All Chch based MPs are affected and working tirelessly. I, like many of my colleagues, feel a bit helpless.
I hope that all NZ media reassess their ability to respnd quickly in an emergency to provide the nation and those directly affected with accurate information and quality reporting. One of the things this emergency has revealed is that there appear to be no working journalists overnight in our country and that our ability to respond quickly at a weekend leaves quite a bit to be desired.
Our public media services; radio and TV and web-based are the most critical at a time like this. We need them to be resourced and responsive.
One worrying trend is that with so few professionals left on the job there are significant gaps in the fact-checking process allowing unscrupulous political operatives to get away with planting falsehoods.
I’m sure they have learned a few things from this experience.
Good on the MPs for getting out there and doing stuff
Once TV3 got up and running I found their coverage better than TV1. It seemed to me that TV1 was dwelling too much on the sensational and frankly I got sick of the sight of John Key.
I wanted to hear the assessments from the real experts – not a second-hand version/PR exercise from Key. On the other hand, TV3 got out and about and showed much more of the on the ground stuff and the plight of ordinary people in suburbia. Good on them for that.
What a stupid, uninformed post. Stuff.co.nz and nzherald.co.nz were providing comprehensive coverage from as early as 5.30am. Stuff had staff based in Wellington and numerous staff from The Press working on the ground in Christchurch. They had plenty of photos showing the damage and first-hand accounts from many people. The Press even shot video from a helicopter showing the damage.
I agree that TV3 was poor, but they had technical difficulties (no access to power).
TV1′s coverage was excellent once they started broadcasting at about 8am, going all through the day.
As for overseas coverage being better, America’s ABC reported that hundreds of buildings were on fire and “villages” were flooded. Another overseas station also had a map showing Wellington was where the quake struck.
Television have essentially set themselves up as entertainment mediums. Their reaction time will never be quick when it takes so long for “talent” to get through hairdressing and makeup.
Geezus, what about the state of our political blogs??!
I think the job that the NZ media did was ok.
True, I got most of my news from people in America tweeting and asking if I was ok… the tweet-sphere was way faster than The News, but then it would be. The role of The News as emergency infrastructure has diluted radically – what we should be asking (in this context*) isn’t whether they did a good job, but how we can make the infrastructure that twitter (etc) uses, indestructible. As indestructible as radio, say.
Many to Many is better than One to Many… because Many to Many contains One to Many. The internet is now vital infrastructure.
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*In this context.
Outside of this context, The News is piss-poor. They love a good earthquake because it’s “easy news”. They don’t need to do any research, it doesn’t offend anyone powerful, and it allows them plenty of opportunity of taking thousands of hours of film, which they edit down to 15 seconds of someone crying.
It saves them from doing what they normally do… which is hang off the court’s RSS feed (or whatever) turning violent-crime stories into ongoing-soap operas. Taking “accidents” and railing on and on and on and on about them until we’re lumbered with another nanny-state-oid law…
…struggling to get the bones of this evening’s “package” together… and padding the rest out with sports. If necessary, sneaking a sports story into the main news. Sports sports sports. As much as you can get away with.
In my opinion, The News is an abject failure… actually worse than that… it’s sickeningly irresponsible abject failure, that exists only to turn “news” into a type of entertainment… for the sake of ratings – rather than what we need it for.
But over the earthquake? I think they did ok.
“The internet is now vital infrastructure.” A human right maybe?
I’ve been thinking lately that the nightly TV news broadcasts should really just become a 1 hour daily Internet highlights show. I wouldn’t mind an editorialised round-up of the day’s Internet activity from a team I trust. It’s already heading in that direction and it’s only going to continue further when all of our TV is coming down IP pipes and we watch everything on-demand.
Already news websites, rich in multimedia, provide much better information and detail than TV sound-bites. The only thing I want to know from TV news now is what editorial decisions they’ve made — what they’ve decided to push as news for the nation to debate and discuss — as they still maintain *some* relevance in that regard (like talkback radio). Ironically, I don’t watch the TV news to learn of these editorial decisions, I just check the throng twitter update.
This. It’s no longer a question of internet access being a right but of being a necessity.
Heh! What irony in watching the Bouffant From Belmont pontificate about the media writhing for ratings when it is the same government he supports which has cut state broadcasting funding and is demanding a higher return – he lauds the basis for, and then chides the actions. Still, one way to make sure his wee speech isn’t covered in news tonight – way to go Pete.
As Fairfax’s official twitterer (Hah! What a title…), I can inform you that we were tweeting within minutes of the quake, had the breaking news banner up within 10 minutes after the quake struck, a story within 20 minutes, had a full news room assembled within the hour and worked non-stop all Saturday updating the site. I can’t, for the life of me, work out what more we could have done?
In an emergency, and the aftermath, the essential question is: “How do you get / deliver information, without power? Or even a phone?”.
Sure, for me sitting in my comfortable Auckland home, with my cup of coffee, TV did OK, the internet did better. But that’s just a passive consumer’s perspective, as if I was watching coverage of the World Cup or the election.
We have become Murdoctrinated, to see the media as a channel for delivering entertainment. When we REALLY need the media, to give us information, and possibly save lives, we need strong public radio. Nothing else can be relied upon in an emergency.
Radio New Zealand was on air when the earthquake struck, at 4.35 a.m. But only a few months ago, there was a proposal to close it down, between midnight and 6 a.m. Have we all forgotten already? How stupid would we have to be to do that? Ask Jonathan Coleman.
Save Rado New Zealand. Save lives.
“RadioNZ did have a special morning report on at 7am, but resumed ordinary programing and didn’t get it’s act together until well into Saturday morning. That’s simply not good enough.”
What utter ignorance. How can you lecture the world on the state of news when you get basic facts plain wrong?
Not only did the have a 7am special MR, from 8am Kim Hill’s usual show was wall to wall earthquake, with a co presenter and live interviews with a range of people on the ground until after 10am.
It was only after 10am that usual programming was resumed, and fair enough too as it became apparant that much of what was being said had already been said. It din’t need further milking and no doubt they were gathering resources for the midday news.
How is that ordinary programming and not good enough?
Yes, i thought Mary Wilson & Kim Hill did a great job with the Saturday morning session. It shows, to do a good emergency coverage, they need an experienced team to draw on.
And what would have happened if the quake had happened over the summer, when half of Nat Rad is on holiday? It’s time that break stopped. I always switch to listening to Aussie ABC News Radio online over the summer – they don’t go on holiday.
That, really, is my biggest complaint about the MSM broadcast of the earthquake. Sure, the information needs to be available but not to everyone all of the time and going over the same point over and over again is worthless.
A broadcast immediately alerting everyone about the disaster and then hourly updates every hour should be enough for broadcasters such as TV/Radio. Those who need it can get the constant updates through the web on a dedicated site and through social media such as Twitter.
The average run of the mill mobile phone runs on batteries and can be recharged with a solar/wind re-charger which should be in your emergency kit. The network(s) should have diesel generators ready to go for when power is cut. Telecom exchanges do but it appears that the mobile networks don’t.
This is going to sound terrible, all genuine sympathy aside, I saw a tiny bit of cctv footage of the quake on the news, I’d like to see more of those shots, they are riveting.
There I said it and I do feel awful for all the trauma of everybody.
Don’t hate me
I feel the media have done a reasonable job of covering the quake, once they got running. If I do have one criticism, it is that they simply cannot, even in a natural disaster emergency, drop the info-tainment garbage. Radio especially. There seem to be loads of affected people in Christchurch desperate for basic information and updates, relevant to their community or suburb. Yet all they get is big noting politicians and endless reality bites. Perhaps the government needs special powers to take over a local radio station and simply broadcast essential information to affected citizens, leaving the others can get on with the ratings war.
There is other news that I’m hoping an MP will blog on…
Great coverage from Al Jazerra- better than the BBC incidentally.
Key shown on TV to be out of his depth when interviewed while Hone Carter stumbled when asked to comment on the quake from the Beehive CD bunker… sounded like an accountant isolated from the human response and situation.
Newspaper coverage in the ME quite extensive.
Everyone will be impressed we got hit by a 7 plus and don’t have 25,000 dead. Seriously.
Having been rudely awaken at whatever time on Saturday morning, I was more than happy with the half hourly updates on my battery powered radio because unlike the rest of you, I had no electricity. In fact, National radio was excellent. Keeping myself busy cleaning up the mess around my home and wondering where to stand during the aftershocks was far more entertaining than watching Mike McRoberts, twittering, playing with my testicles or whatever you jafas do on a Saturday morning or posting on red alert, which seems to be the first on the mind for one or two posters above.
Oops, Spud that was a typo. ‘my’ should read ‘your’.
LOL
Oh boy I need a drink 
Now it could just be that after 4 nights of broken sleep I’m just starting to get a little fractious.
Most of us had no power. Some people still don’t. We had no TV. No radio unless battery operated. No internet unless by phone. Even then, I heard that the cell phone relayers where on battery back up and might not last. Whether that is truth or fiction, I don’t know. Isn’t that the point? We didn’t know fact from fiction.
While “the coverage” might have been satisfactory from a “news worthy” point of view, for people on the ground it wasn’t great as far as helpful information went. Heaven forbid that the news should provide information! By the time we got power on there were photos but no indication of which streets or suburbs. No idea which suburbs had power or not. No idea where traffic lights were working and where they weren’t. Took a while for me to learn which streets formed the cordon for the CBD no go zone. Really basic, really localised info. As much as it pains me, I think talkback radio actually came into the fore here.
Credit to the rolling update on Stuff. I’ve checked it regularly. It’s good on the big issues e.g. schools closed but still not fantastic on highly localised issues needed on Saturday.
To end my moan, right now I’m sick of this phrase “aftershocks”. Not too many days ago an earthquake of 5 was a bloody earthquake. Not a damn “aftershock”. An earthquake in its own right. To say Christchurch is experiencing ongoing aftershocks is an understatement. It also does little that the media seem to be repeating there COULD be an “aftershock” of up to 6 on the Richter scale still to come.
Every time a truck goes by or the wind makes something shudder, we’re still flinching. I don’t know what the risk/likelihood etc is of a “6″ but if it’s a “maybe but probably not” rather than a “quite possible” then I wish they’d shut up about it.
I hope you feel better soon Erin, goodluck.
NatRad easily had the best coverage. Funnily enough, Mike McRoberts took a swipe at his own broadcaster.
Radio NZ did an excellent job. I was surprised when I turned TV1 on and there was nothing there – not even anything scrolling along the bottom of the screen. Once they got going they were quite good – not as informative as the radio though. With TV3, I don’t know why power in Christchurch was a requirement for them to broadcast. Why couldn’t they broadcast from another base?
I think the comment Erin made is key here. It’s all very well for us to criticise the media while sitting back passively looking for news about it, but what’s really needed is information on the ground. How many people got sick after drinking water? Could that have been avoided if people were told to boil their water? What areas should residents be avoiding? Where should people go for supplies? Where should those people without a roof over their heads go?
So the criticism about the news shouldn’t be about our own entertainment, because this is precisely what’s wrong with our news, but about how the media could have helped. In this case, I think the media rose to the occasion. Radio is THE only reliable way of communicating those essential messages to people. It’s portable, it has a lot less power requirements, it doesn’t rely on any sort of heavy infrastructure.
Draco, sure, the Internet in this scenario would be nice if you can get it. I don’t believe that there is any value on relying on it. The reasons above are the reason that radio is relied upon in a disaster. It’d be a bit like me demanding that we have decent espresso during an emergency. Sure, it might help keep people awake and aware, but I don’t think it’s value should be overstated like a lot of people seem to do with the Internet.
On a personal note, I was rather amused when I saw a small piece of footage claiming that entire “villages” were under water due to burst pipes in Christchurch.