Monday, 20 September 2010

Media Miasma

A Mess of Left-Over Pottage

OK, so the MSM are an easy target. But since it is supposed to be the Fourth Estate its ineptitude and irrelevance necessitate that it to be exposed repeatedly. (The good thing, of course, is that modern technology enables "private citizens" to do just that, whereas previously the media itself was its own watchdog--a very unsatisfactory arrangement to be sure. The internet has enabled anyone to become an Afghan mujahideen with a Stinger missile.)

Now that we have assured ourselves that we are not just taking cheap shots, let us duly hold up to ridicule this latest dish of pablum from the NZ Herald. As all our NZ readers will know, people living in Auckland are in the midst of a city-wide election campaign--in fact the first election for a municipality that combines three former cities and a slew of local bodies into one "super city". Consequently, there is a bit more interest in this municipal election than is normally the case. Plenty of issues to be concerned about, one would think.

One Jocelyn Muir and her editors at the Herald have gone straight to the heart of the matter and published a piece on the nutritional nous of the mayoral candidates. We kid you not. Under the headline "Front-runners flunk food test" we read that the Herald has engaged in a coruscating initiative to find out just how the various mayoral candidates understand good nutrition. Is this relevant or what?

Apparently the Herald is struggling to fill space so it has to dream up such faux news as follows:
The candidates were asked, "If you had $10 to spend at the supermarket for your family of six's evening meal on a given day, what would you buy?"

The Weekend Herald asked the Nutrition Foundation, without identifying the candidates, to analyse the meals and say which would be the most nutritious.

The cost of each meal's ingredients was also calculated, bearing in mind the candidates were told they could assume they had salt, pepper, oil and butter at home.
Mesmerising stuff. We are getting right to the heart of Super-City issues now. What would we do without our Fourth Estate?

John Banks, one of the leading mayoral candidates, was slammed by the righteously indignant Herald and the adjudicatory Nutrition Foundation.
John Banks' sandwich pie, excluding the sandwiches, would cost $6.44 - whether there is any additional cost depends on whether a cafe was willing to provide the sandwiches free or or not.

He said he would go to a local coffee shop and ask for any unsold sandwiches they were going to throw out. He would take them home, mix them up and top with eggs, milk, salt and pepper to make a pie of some sort.

The Nutrition Foundation said: "Would not recommend this. Our major concern is about food safety - sandwiches from a coffee shop may or may not be suitable for use after being in a coffee shop all day.

Would be able to buy supermarket own brand bread cheaply, add sandwich fillings and make 'some sort of pie', but this might be more like a dessert than a main meal. Would have very low vegetable content."
Terrible, terrible, terrible. One pictures the knitting needles at the Nutrition Foundation klacking indignantly. Then, pan to the grim brows knitted together as Mz Jocelyn and her editors caucus together, debating how to frame what will surely be the major scoop of the campaign. One gnarled, ante-diluvian sub-editor, rasping out his recommendation between expectorant-interposed puffs on his roll-your-own, argues that Banks be framed as the pro-recycling, environmentally friendly candidate with a common touch, who understands what it means to be poor and survive. But Mz Jocelyn passionately compels her colleagues to frame Banks as the ignoramus of yesteryear. "Don't you get it", she shrills. "In the real world--our world--the world of the metrosexual man, of the SNAG, of the DINKI, nutrition is THE BIG ISSUE. You are what you eat. We can draw a bright line between nutritional nous to IQ." Her colleagues nod sagely. One murmurs something about the science being settled. The decision is clear.

The caucus breaks up and Mz Jocelyn departs with a deep sense of purposeful satisfaction in her bowels. She has made a difference. The world will be a better place as a result of her work. She has unmasked Banks as the one who would sell the whole city down the Manukau for a mess of not just pottage, but left-over pottage. Ugh. She involuntarily shivers. But the moment passes, and once again she basks in the warm glow of knowing that she has saved the world for democracy. Her lecturers in journalism school would be proud of their latest protege.

The editors at the Herald surely are. She has grasped the essence of what it means to be a "make-a-difference" reporter in the noughties.

How the mighty have fallen--into irrelevance.

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