The dumbest Stuff or Herald headlines (& other news media)

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#3450913 9-Jan-2026 00:31

I'll meet you in the middle and comment on the common redundancy , along the lines of 'person dies in fatal accident'.

Well duh.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

PolicyGuy

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#3450929 9-Jan-2026 08:46

The RNZ App this morning

This is not news, let alone "Top News" - "Bottom News" perhaps 🤣

I know it's the MSM Silly Season, but really ...

Jase2985

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#3450977 9-Jan-2026 10:59

Behodar:

Kookoo:

Your definition is wrong.

The definition given in the OED is "die through submersion in and inhalation of water".

so you can't drown in anything but water?

Rikkitic

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#3451040 9-Jan-2026 11:40

Jase2985:

so you can't drown in anything but water?

I read a cool sci fi story once in which someone drowned in a vat of frictionless ball bearings.

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#3451816 11-Jan-2026 14:06

RNZ: "As this graph from the IEA shows, the role of fossil fuels is set to decline sharply after 2030."

Here's the graph. You'll note that it has no scale (rather, it's been cropped out) so we have no idea whether it backs up the claim or not. It may not start at zero. It may even be logarithmic.

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#3451907 11-Jan-2026 17:08

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/583731/auckland-tenant-kicked-out-of-apartment-after-balcony-escape-and-police-callouts

Yes, I know it's normal to use stock photos, but c'mon RadioNZ, if you're copying from the NZ Herald a story about something happening in Auckland NZ, then you could at least use a stock photo relevant to NZ, instead of showing something relevant to New Hampshire in the USA.

freitasm

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#3452180 12-Jan-2026 10:43

From RNZ.

No wind today. Shouldn't the headline be "More than 50 flights cancelled as high winds battered Wellington" as the article itself refers to yesterday?

Otherwise people read that crappy headline and think the airport is closed now.

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#3452181 12-Jan-2026 10:49

freitasm:

From RNZ.

No wind today. Shouldn't the headline be "More than 50 flights cancelled as high winds battered Wellington" as the article itself refers to yesterday?

Otherwise people read that crappy headline and think the airport is closed now.

That is a very important concept, where headlines are (and remain) in the present tense well after they were published.

Too often, when looking at a story published today, there will be "related" articles that on first glance make you think that the "related" headline pertains to something happening now, when in fact it was ages ago.

freitasm

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#3452182 12-Jan-2026 10:52

geek3001:

freitasm:

From RNZ.

No wind today. Shouldn't the headline be "More than 50 flights cancelled as high winds battered Wellington" as the article itself refers to yesterday?

Otherwise people read that crappy headline and think the airport is closed now.

That is a very important concept, where headlines are (and remain) in the present tense well after they were published.

Too often, when looking at a story published today, there will be "related" articles that on first glance make you think that the "related" headline pertains to something happening now, when in fact it was ages ago.

Still, the even had passed before the reporting was done.

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#3452185 12-Jan-2026 11:17

freitasm:

Shouldn't the headline be "More than 50 flights cancelled as high winds battered Wellington" as the article itself refers to yesterday?

freitasm:

Still, the even had passed before the reporting was done.

Absolutely. A possible further improvement might if the word "were" had been included:

More than 50 flights were cancelled as high winds battered Wellington

Rikkitic

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#3452186 12-Jan-2026 11:18

RNZ standards seem to have really slipped. Unfortunately, RNZ is what we have, instead of ABC, BBC or TVNZ 7.

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#3452192 12-Jan-2026 11:48

And the story has been copied by the NZ Herald with the same poor headline.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/more-than-50-flights-cancelled-as-high-winds-batter-wellington/DXQAB6DC75AUNMNJKFHEA5JQUM/

Am I seeing things or are RNZ stories routinely appearing on the NZ Herald, Stuff and 1News websites; is there some copy-paste sharing arrangement in place now?

I can understand RNZ and 1News (TVNZ) sharing stories as they are SOE's however NZ Herald and Stuff are private companies.

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#3452193 12-Jan-2026 11:50

They likely have a syndication agreement. It helps cover the cost of writing the stories.

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#3452249 12-Jan-2026 12:28

>Here's the graph. You'll note that it has no scale ... It may not start at zero. It may even be logarithmic.

To give the devil his due... the graph meets its intended use as propaganda - and represents the author's delusion about the _relative_ share of energy supply in the future. A scale or any more information would just make it easier to query.

Projecting humanity's energy use 4 decades into the future like this is a joke.

As is ignoring completely the resurgence of nuclear - as the peril of the 'unreliables' becomes evident to non-engineers. With France and China leading the way - and US AI data centres (very quietly) at the vanguard in US nuclear growth.

But, of course, the energy mismanagement in Germany, the UK, California and Australia is a much sadder joke - and one that may turn into tragedy before it is corrected.

The easiest way to detect the silliness in the new IEA graph is to look at similar projections from 5, 10, 20 years ago - and see what pipe dreams they were. Coal/oil/gas use is only going to be displaced by nuclear - or by a magical breakthrough in energy storage - and until that happens, coal/oil use is going to continue to grow, as the world's energy use rises.

Africa is getting tired of being told (by the west) that it can only get money for wind & solar. South Africa (for example) has been building coal plants steadily - and is trying hard to get a second nuclear plant under way.

China, of course, dwarfs the rest of the world in energy usage - it now uses 3 times as much coal as the rest of the world did at peak - and is constantly building nuclear plants (which it's now got down to 5 years).

Contrast that with us trying to build 7 km of highway (Penlink) in 5 years ;-) But I digress...

We in NZ are able to enjoy a rosy view of solar and wind - as we live in one of the handful of regions that possess enough hydro to back up the unreliables - to let society function without rolling blackouts. It still imposes on us the cost of duplicate sources - with commensurate rises in electrical cost and lack of international competitiveness.

I believe it's already cost us some of NZ's long-term industrial jobs (10 mills in the past 5 years) but hey, we can always add more government jobs, eh?

But if we drink much more of the koolaid - and shift more heating from gas and cars to EVs - we may just FAFO.

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#3452424 12-Jan-2026 20:55

pdh:

We in NZ are able to enjoy a rosy view of solar and wind - as we live in one of the handful of regions that possess enough hydro to back up the unreliables - to let society function without rolling blackouts. It still imposes on us the cost of duplicate sources - with commensurate rises in electrical cost and lack of international competitiveness.

I believe it's already cost us some of NZ's long-term industrial jobs (10 mills in the past 5 years) but hey, we can always add more government jobs, eh?

But if we drink much more of the koolaid - and shift more heating from gas and cars to EVs - we may just FAFO.

Ain't that the truth

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