KEY POINTS:
A couple of weeks ago, I complained bitterly about the state of the media in this country - of which, I accept, I am part.
Basically, it was the coverage of the Tuhoe hikoi that got up my goat, as Cath Day-Knight would say - the sensationalist, once-over lightly reportage, the use of emotive and inflammatory images, the undue attention the marchers got rather than an indepth look at the reason why Tuhoe feel so strongly that the police raids are a race issue when it was nice, wee, white, whale-loving girls and boys who got scooped up in the police net as well.
Who would have thought that just 14 days later TVNZ's nightly current affairs show would deliver the most execrable piece of television I think I've ever seen. I've done some awful telly in my time - please God no one remembers Animal Antics or the Pascalls Celebrity Challenge - but the four-minute snigger fest that Close Up delivered on Tuesday night takes some beating.
Nicky Watson has lost her dog. The 7-year-old Chihuahua, named Cricket, went missing in Matarangi on Saturday and a tearful Nicky has searched night and day for him to no avail. I don't know who approached whom, but somewhere along the line Close Up got involved. As any desperate pet lover who's lost their much- loved pet would do, Nicky jumped at the opportunity to broadcast Cricket's details in the hope someone might have seen him.
Meanwhile, back at the office, the boys were rubbing their hands in glee. It gave them the opportunity to run endless shots of Nicky with her norks hanging out; they got to sneer at Nicky's inability to spell Chihuahua; they got to promo the fact that Nicky Watson was going to be on the show. And, as the ratings proved when Nicky's documentary was screened, anything featuring the Nickster's going to be a hit.
But even the most optimistic of the Close Up team couldn't have dreamed that Nicky would have provided them with the television gold she did. Weeping and swollen-eyed, she told the reporter that she must have called Cricket's name a million times. "You're hoarse," replied the reporter. Nicky looked at him wide-eyed and ingenuous. "No," she said. "My dog." Laugh? The reporter could barely contain himself. And what made it worse was the lame attempt at the end of the story to justify running it.
Mark Sainsbury explained that Nicky's pain is felt by thousands of pet owners whose much-loved animals go missing every year and they should go to a website that aims to reunite pets with people. As if that made it okay to waste four minutes of everybody's lives with a piece of nonsense aimed at mocking a desperate woman who's lost her dog.
Why not be honest and tell the viewers that although there are a million lost pet stories every year, we're going to screen this one because it features Nicky Watson? Oh, I'm sure she's terrifically easy to send up. I'm sure she's nowhere as bright as anybody on the Close Up team. And she's certainly made a career out of living in the public eye. But really.
I thought the Close Up team was better than that. They've done some great stories over the years. This was not one of them. Yes, it was easy. Yes, people at home chortled away at the dozy blonde who couldn't spell Chihuahua and misunderstood a question. But is that really what Close Up is there for?
Sometimes, on talkback, I'm mean to a person. They annoy me and I use a medium I'm comfortable in and a superior vocabulary to belittle the individual. Most of the times, I feel I'm justified. The person is drunk or racist - or both. But occasionally, I'll have post-caller remorse and lie awake at night wishing I could have another chance to treat the person better.
I wonder if the reporter who interviewed Nicky feels like that?
