On a day when Auckland was the focus of the biggest story in world sport and the Football Ferns ended up making history, deadly shootings a stone's throw from football teams' hotels and the fan zone confronted media primed for a good news story.
The New Zealand Herald on Friday reports the shooting tragedy which shook the city the day before - the same day the Women's World Cup kicked off there. Photo: New Zealand Herald
“I've seen this fan base travel all over the world. This is the farthest they've come yet, but the numbers are amazing,” Philadelphia Inquirer football reporter Jonathan Tannenwald told RNZ’s Morning Report last Wednesday, after one fan of the US National Women's Team told the show she'd have gone to Antarctica to back their team's bid to retain the FIFA Women's World Cup.
RNZ’s Corin Dann warned Tannenwald the weather here could have a pretty Antarctic tinge to it in winter time.
“Not everybody on this team is from Los Angeles where it's sunny all the time,” he replied.
But 24 hours later, the weather was the least of their worries on the day of the big kickoff as the sort of story more familiar to Americans unfolded in central Auckland.
Among reporters swiftly on the scene in lower Queen Street were those deployed for breakfast show broadcasts marking the World Cup opening at the nearby fan zone on the waterfront.
That was due to open officially at midday, but all that changed after a witness called police at 7:23am to report there was a man with a gun in the building.
Emma Olsen was live on the AM show on Three just minutes later with the hotel of the team from Norway in shot over her shoulder, and pointing out the fanzone was just a stone’s throw away
Shortly after, AM show viewers saw a bloodied police officer emerging and being led to an ambulance.
Meanwhile on TVNZ’s Breakfast show eyewitness Nancy in a neighbouring locked-down building said they were following events on NZHerald.co.nz and stuff.co.nz.
Both the online sites were already running live blogs at that point with eyewitness accounts and images as well as the more limited official information as well. Both were excellent sources during a confusing but clearly dangerous situation.
TVNZ’s Breakfast stayed on air until after midday to keep viewers up to date.
Essential information about transport changes and coordinates and closures also had to be communicated.
Mike Hosking kept listeners up to date with that in his top-rating Newstalk ZB breakfast show, but also criticised local councillors for issuing ‘stay safe’ messages he thought were unnecessary. He also criticised the police for not issuing enough.
“Is that all they’ve got to do. Really? What I'm trying to say here is - without crossing a line - the police need to say something fairly soon because there's a lot to be said - and the longer they leave this the more vacuum there is,” he said.
Mike Hosking then launched into an interview about Nigel Farage’s banking problems in the UK, before returning to the drama on his doorstep.
“The mayor of Auckland has suggested that the shooter is dead. And apart from that, the information flow is starting to slow indicating that things might be concluding,” he told listeners.
The claim of the shooter’s death was made by the mayor just minutes earlier on TVNZ’s Breakfast, during a pretty hard to hear phone interview, almost in passing and during a laundry list of information about transport services and road closures.
“We're not bothering the police just at the moment; they're under immense pressure,” Brown said when asked if he heard that from police or if it was just unconfirmed reports he’d heard.
“That's what I think, but no one's absolutely sure of that,” he replied.
Before long the police confirmed the shooter’s death, as did the prime minister in a later media conference.
The mayor pointed out this dreadful situation “couldn't have come at a worse time given the world FIFA soccer thing.”
While the Women's World Cup organisers wouldn't have been thrilled to hear the biggest sporting event ever held in this country described like that, plenty of others were making the point about the timing.
The PM also spoke about the world's gaze being on the city, and said FIFA organisers had been reassured the tournament would proceed as planned that night.
“As the eyes of the world fell on Aotearoa for the launch of the World Cup. our violent streets were laid bare for the world,” said the New Zealand Herald’s online summary of international media reaction.
That picked out the Daily Mail - world leaders in online clickbait - calling it “a mass shooting” after “a gunman stormed a high rise building just hours before the World Cup opening match.”
The BBC World Service had a more measured version of the facts in its news bulletins, following the latest from the war in Ukraine.
When Newstalk ZB opened its talkback and text lines, callers made comparisons with South Africa's urban problems. One even called to complain people on cycleways were ignoring the cordons.
Mayor Brown appeared on RNZ National’s Nine to Noon and Newstalk ZB later in the day to talk about the impact of Auckland’s international image.
“Nobody wants to be the public face of a city that has had a tragedy like that - but you have to step up to it. I've been on Australian TV, and others, pointing out that it is safe here. Americans are a bit more used to this than us and we are but we are not,” he said.
“It's a shock to Aucklanders; we all feel terribly upset and sad for the people whose lives have been ripped apart - and also for the workers. It's been important for me to let the rest of the world know that this is very, very unusual,” he said.
He was far from the only one on Thursday characterising the shootings as a US-style event.
“Unfortunately, I feel like in the US. We’ve dealt with this far too many times,” the US player Lynn Williams told a media conference.
But John Riley, the father of US-born Football Ferns’ co-captain Ali Riley told the AM show: “I've never actually seen a policeman pointing a gun at anyone - and it’s just quite shocking here today.”
“We thought of the victims and the first responders and they made us so proud and we wanted to just help bring something amazing today,” Riley said after the surprise win over Norway on live coverage carried to a huge audience by Sky Sports, Prime TV and Stuff.
“You will never see this again. You could never dream to see this again,” Herald football writer Michael Burgess wrote after what he called “one of the most extraordinary matches in our sporting history”.
Let's also hope the same is true of what happened in Auckland on Thursday morning.
