Peter Williams
Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality check.radio three days a week.
In the immortal words of tennis legend John McEnroe: “You cannot be serious.”
Whatever slight remaining credibility 1News might have had as a genuine, unbiased, commercially neutral news organisation disappeared completely on July 20, because they did not lead their bulletin with one of the great moments in New Zealand sporting history.
Instead they spent 16 minutes, yes 16 minutes, on a football match that New Zealand wasn’t playing in but which was the culmination of a tournament that TVNZ had the rights to broadcast.
Any sensible person looking at the news events of the day through a genuine editorial lens would have automatically said ‘Ryan Fox is our lead story.’
On any other day that the World Cup final isn’t on, Fox’s win is your lead story, and probably would have at least a two-track treatment at the top of the bulletin with more in the sports news. It is such no-brainer that it shouldn’t need any editorial context to explain why it should be the lead.
But TVNZ had paid a lot of money to buy the rights to broadcast the World Cup and in the television game producers and management like to gain what they call extra leverage by stacking their news bulletins with unlimited access to footage of the matches they’ve paid for.
By contrast non-rights holders like the Stuff-produced bulletin on TV3 or The Crowd Goes Wild on Sky are allowed only a limited amount of rights holder footage each day. For example, in my time at 1News we could have only two minutes of rights-holder action per day from the Olympic Games when Sky had the rights. Presumably the same duration rules apply these days.
Because it’s played only once every four years, the FIFA World Cup Final is one of the biggest sports events in the world in terms of a global TV audience, competing with the Super Bowl, European Football finals and various Olympic medal showdowns. But the Open Championship is one of the world’s most famous annual events – one of four so-called “majors” in golf.
Normally the final round would be mentioned in the sports news but when a New Zealander wins it for only the second time since it was first played in 1860 it is quite the biggest of big deals.
It should have been the lead story on the six o’clock news and given an in-depth treatment with reaction from his family (his father is quite famous too) and our other winner of the tournament who has recently celebrated his 90th birthday.
The love-in with the football final could have followed that – although I’d question the real news value of more than a quarter of an hour dedicated to a tournament that New Zealand left long ago.
That all the so-called experienced editorial brains in that newsroom didn’t appreciate the context of the open golf just defies belief.
I was in that newsroom the day Michael Campbell won the US Open in 2005. I’m certain it was the lead story that night and so it should have been.
The Rugby World Cup wins of 1987, 2011 and 2015 were all the lead stories at six o’clock, even when TVNZ didn’t have the rights for the Twickenham match of 11 years ago.
Michael Campbell himself was on a Facebook video sparking a discussion on whether the manner of Ryan Fox’s win makes it the greatest New Zealand sporting achievement of all time. We have to reserve judgement on that for now, but I’d suggest it would already be in the top five!
A couple of my old newsroom colleagues Kay Gregory (a golfer) and Ian Woodley (not a golfer) also took to Facebook expressing outrage at the 1News editorial decision. Kay even suggested that delightfully old fashioned way of complaining – ring the corporate phone number and complain. I’m sure hundreds would have done that unprompted anyway!
The complaints will fall on deaf ears. The commercial realities of the company paying for the World Cup rights are far more important than an annual golf tournament played on the other side of the world and broadcast here on their competitor.
In Britain, both the BBC and ITV are rights holders for the World Cup and both broadcast the final live. Because England weren’t in the final, neither network led their news programmes on Monday morning with the Spain-Argentina match.
But then Britain is in the process of getting a new prime minister.
If Chris Luxon had been rolled on the day of the World Cup final would that have been deemed important enough to be the lead story on the six o’clock news?
If there is a desire to improve trust levels in the media industry, there was no sign of it on 1News the day that Ryan Fox did what only three other New Zealanders have done in 166 years.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
