Ed Said: Have you heard the news?

14 March, 2022

Mankind has, for thousands of years, had an inherent desire to communicate and share information, and find new and improved ways to do so. In the US for example, even 150 years ago these methods were primitive but showed just how important news – and the mail – was to people. Back then the area beyond the reach of the telegraph was bridged by stagecoach, steam ship, train, and for a brief heady period, the Pony Express – used mostly by businesses and newspapers. Relay riders raced many hundreds of miles on horseback across dangerous terrain and under threat of Indian attack because ‘the mail, and the news, must get through’.

Of course today, in this digital age we are able to send and receive huge quantities of news, mail and data with any number of devices, at any time, from just about anywhere. Presented with a streaming 24-hour smorgasbord of information, and misinformation, many tend to overindulge, or simply consume too much of the wrong thing. Even the Ukraine invasion is being described as the world’s ‘first TikTok war’.

It’s no secret that many kiwis are of the view that in this country the Government controls the media. But how is this even possible? Surely not through the pockets and purses of publishers and editors? How could journalism, and publishing at it’s very core of objectivity and credo be so bent? The simple answer is, it isn’t. The long answer is, it’s more complicated than that. Those who are up with the play will be aware of the Government’s $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund. Conspiracy theorists here make the connection between the fund and media, and attest that news produced here must all be ‘media lies’. But there is a strange irony that many of those that harbour a deep distrust of mainstream media are themselves hefty consumers and purveyors of fake news.

Manipulating the nation’s news obviously isn’t the aim of every world leader. While some here rabidly push the idea that Government controls the media, the opposite would be said for Donald Trump, who took every opportunity during his tenure to express his absolute contempt for it. Instead he posted wild theories on social media platforms and let them fester while he went out for one of his many rounds of golf.

In the movie ‘News of the World’, Tom Hanks is superb playing the part of post-Civil War Confederate captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd who travels the wild west reading the news. He is at times a lonely, sad and flawed figure, and there are many sub-plots (fake news, media manipulation, racism), but part of the ‘romance’ of the film is how the news is presented. Wherever Kidd would travel – isolated towns that heard little of the outside world, where many probably couldn’t read – a paying crowd would ensue in the evening to be read the news. The delivery, storytelling and theatre of those moments made even the most banal happenings from far-flung places seem important, and made listeners feel like they were connected in some small way to an outside world that was a long way away by horse and cart. That’s the power of the news.

Mark Twain, in his reporting days, was instructed by an editor never to state anything as a fact that he could not verify from personal knowledge. Sent out to cover an important social event soon afterward, he turned in the following story: ‘A women giving the name of Mrs James Jones, who is reported to be one of the society leaders of the city, is said to have given what purported to be a party yesterday to a number of alleged ladies. The hostess claims to be the wife of a reputed attorney’.

Amusing isn’t it. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Richard Pooley
info@mangawhaifocus.co.nz

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