rivettingKateTaylor

There are times when I am horrified to be a member of the media.

Admittedly, I am the first to perk my ears when I hear a siren, but that is the natural curiosity of a journalist.

Admittedly, I turned into the TV/internet coverage/radio news religiously during the unfolding of the Pike River mining tragedy. But I missed the news of the second blast dashed any remaining hopes there would be any survivors. I had had enough of seeing the grief etched on the faces of the miners’ families. The shot of the older man with a tear slowly rolling down his cheek after one of the first meetings will stay with me for a long time.

If you are interested in finding out what the media thought of the media’s actions during the past two weeks, here is a link to MediaWatch which was broadcast on RadioNZ this week.

Mediawatch talked about reporters approaching grieving families (some of them pretending to be officials, another leaving a microphone on a subject and recording the subsequent conversations of that person), the competition between media outlets, cheque book journalism and the overseas journalists who pushed papparazzi boundaries… journalists doing what is known as the “death knock”.

I hate that. And yet we inhale the coverage as it spews from our media outlets.