Midweek Mediawatch: Attribution anger & anti-social media

Mediawatch's weekly catch-up with Lately. Colin Peacock talks to Karyn Hay about attribution anger; greenwashing in the Koru lounge, tenant journos and rental health . . . and tech titans dissing our courts and killing off Richie. 

More anti-social media 

Google named the man accused of killing British backpacker Grace Millane in its "what's trending in New Zealand" email last December, despite him having name suppression.

Justice minister Little and PM Jacinda Ardern met with Google representatives immediately after the incident and expressed their concern about the breach.

Yesterday Andrew Little said Google has told him its not going to change its “system”. RNZ’s story sums it up: Google's contempt for NZ law unacceptable'.   

There's a similar case in Ireland over another ghastly killing where Twitter and Facebook are being summoned to explain why they've allowed breaches of suppression of two teenagers accused of murder.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s contempt for celebrities here is in full view as it continues to allow - and profit from -  clearly bogus ‘endorsement’ ads.    

Facebook ad fakery update: while Duncan Garner’s image is stolen to to push dodgy Bitcoin schemes, @JohnJCampbell is co-opted to sell … nice holidays in Aspen? pic.twitter.com/ejaFWjXPYP

— Russell Brown (@publicaddress) July 2, 2019

But this one is the worst: a pic of Richie McCaw in front of one of the choppers he flies with the fake news clickbait caption: “Richie McCaw in fatal helicopter accident.”

If you click on the link (don’t though . . ) it takes you to an ad for some quack remedy for erectile dysfunction. 

Not sure which is the greatest injury to the rep of the great ex-All Black: falsely reporting him dead - or claiming he endorses that kind of ‘medical’ help . . .    

Two scoops of attribution aggro

Recently on Mediawatch I talked to freelancer Anke Richter about the Daily Mail Australia ripping off a paywalled story she wrote for the Herald. 

Shortly after the RNZ/ Newsroom co-lab podcast The Detail did an episode all about the paywall - and Herald editor Murray Kirkness said this: 

"We all know there's no such thing as an exclusive any more. i can break a story and RNZ will steal it and have it on the website within minutes. And I'm the same. We quite happily beg, borrow and steal from any source we can."

But not all reporters are happy with how it's done.

The Weekend Herald had an exclusive interview on the front page with former defence attache Alfred Keating: The peculiar world of toilet spy Alfred Keating. He's about about to start a sentence of home detention here for covert filming in a toilet in our Washington embassy (the DC WC story?) but insists he didn't do it

It was behind the paywall online. 

The same day Stuff published a ‘matcher’ online with the byline of one of their reporters. It drew this response from investigative reporter Kirsty Johnston: 

"Shout out to Stuff reporter Brittney Deguara who wrote off an exclusive, paywalled interview that took the reporter a year to nail down...and put her byline on it. 

RNZ’s Indira Stewart‏ replied in kind naming and shaming a Herald reporter about a story of her’s for RNZ’s First Up. 

"Shout out to NZ Herald reporter Meghan Lawrence who did similar to a story I did on Fonterra and a guy who loved the milk tankers. Why do reporters do this unashamedly? Have respect for someone's work, but most importantly - have respect for the talent and their story. We're the lucky ones who get the privilege of sharing it."

It’s very unusual for reporters to make it personal like this. 

24 hours later the boot was on the other foot when Stuff’s Sunday Star Times had its main feature story “matched” online by the Herald. 

Blair Ensor’s Springfield Store and Cafe: Come for the award-winning pies, stay for the abuse

However, both parties have acknowledged - fleetingly - the origin of the respective stories and taken their own reporters’ bylines away. 

But this is a trickier one. The Springfield Cafe story is an old one - The Herald has covered it before in 2016 in a piece headlined "New Zealand's own Fawlty Towers".

Concensus seems to be that editors at Stuff and The Herald should just drop their reluctance to acknowledge their rivals.

Those who backed the failed merger of NZME and Stuff - including all the senior editors - will be thinking that this problem wouldn’t be going on now in the first place if the merger had got a green light.

Air NZ dumps papers - papers dump on Air NZ

Earlier this month on Mediawatch, Jeremy Rose looked at 'flygskam' (flight shame) and while there are lots of media stories about offsetting carbon emissions from flying, no-one ever wondered whether offsetting for a few dollars actually encourages more flying (and carbon output). 

Turns out offsetting isn’t popular with Kiwi flyers anyway.  

“Air New Zealand is boasting that the number of customers paying to offset their carbon footprint has increased by a third however, they're offsetting less than 1.5 per cent of the airline's total carbon emissions,” said a Stuff story on Tuesday.

That's a blow for Air New Zealand's mission to make itself the world’s “least unsustainable airline” and make sure its customers know about it. It sends out giddy bulletins to its subscribers.

This week it removed all newspapers from its lounges “as part of its commitment to sustainability” and urged customers to use the free wifi to browse the news online instead. 

As members of the Kiwi journalists Facebook page observed, this does nothing to support the sustainability of the newspaper business. 

RNZ’s Janice Swannick asked a good question: "What about their in-flight magazine?"

The Herald pointed out newspapers are greener than the mags. 

I would take Air NZ’s environmental carbon-minimising claims more seriously if they didn’t keep emailing me urging me to buy more petrol for personal gain.

Meanwhile, our major news publishing companies have a different kind of sustainability problems according to Australian reports highlighting their plummeting market value. 

Slack landlords feel the heat from tenant journos on rental health

Monday July 1 was the day several law changes came into effect including the petrol excise rise, the latest tobacco price bump and  - the one that kept talkback going for about 48 hours - the plastic bag ban.  

But the law change many journalists feel most keenly is the one requiring landlords to insulate rentals - or face fines. 

An unknown but substantial number of landlords haven’t met the deadline in spite of  three years’ warning.  

Praise to Stuff’s political reporter Henry Cooke for thoroughly going into this and producing fact-filled “know your rights” stories for tenants. He says the punishment could be $4,000 for each landlord which should be returned to tenants.

Henry is a tenant and he shares his flat with other journalists. I bet more journalists than ever before are tenants these days. I reckon they will follow through on this and we will see stories about it. 

PSA: This is tomorrow https://t.co/9MEH69lA5m

— henry cooke (@henrycooke) June 29, 2019

Another good stuff backgrounder by Brittney Deguara: New Zealand isn't a sub-tropical destination and our homes are 'piss poor'

Meanwhile, former RNZ-er and Wellingtonian Elle Hunt, now a journalist in her native UK - wrote memorably about her bad memories of flatting in the capital.