Naff articles on the NZ Herald website

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Mark

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#97990 22-Feb-2012 13:45

Is it just me or are journalism skills in decline ? It used to be articles would get reviewed and researched bfore getting published but now with the interweb we get shoveled articles.

Take this article :

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/movies/news/article.cfm?c_id=200&objectid=10786722

A short article about a much admired actress .. and it ends with :

"She won an Oscar for her role as Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love but is most famous for playing MI5 boss M in the Bond films."

Really ? The "journalist" thinks the Bond movies are her most famous roles ?!?!?

Sometimes I think Wikipedia is all anyone uses these days for articles :-(

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20163 posts

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#585156 22-Feb-2012 13:49

It's called getting what you pay for. Some of them are very young.

alienwithin

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#585157 22-Feb-2012 13:51

oh it's journalism. I mean let's face it there were a lot of breaking news stories the past few years that tv3 news ran that latter turned out to be tv3 created news and had no fact to at all. Used to be when the media made a mistake they would apologise, now they invent so much news they don't apologize because it would mean the whole paper or broadcasts being taken up with apologizes. I don't bother with the news any more, if the world ends I'm guessing someone will tell me ;)

Lizard1977

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#585230 22-Feb-2012 16:26

Plus, she's not the "MI5 boss", she's the MI6 boss! Sheez! Don't these journo's know anything?!? :)

crackrdbycracku

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#585240 22-Feb-2012 16:36

Try comparing the NZ Herald website to the Daily Mail website some time.

It is where they cut and paste [cough] ... I mean 'research' a lot of their Stuff.

A Daily Fail indeed.

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corksta

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#585247 22-Feb-2012 16:48

Part of my job involves dealing with media and journalists, and in 2008 I attended a course where some journalists came in and spoke to us about talking to the media - they were journalists who train the journalists.

The topic came up about the perceived level of journalism skills, and basically we were told that it came down to improvements in technology and the presence of social media. With Twitter and online news, it's about who can get the news published the fastest, with the level of accuracy not really worried about until later on. The thought is that if 'we can get it out there first people will come to us then we can check accuracy/details later'.

These places are businesses whose main concern is to make a profit, hence why attention grabbing headlines are used and plenty of emotive language - it really isn't about reporting the unbiased facts anymore to inform the public, it's about readership, ratings, and what the company decides is newsworthy.

martyyn

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#585268 22-Feb-2012 17:23

I hardly think a comparison of the NZ Herald and The Daily Mail is a fair one. One reports itself to se a serious newspaper the other is just a red-top rag.

As for the standard of journalism you only have to check the evening news to see what goes these days. If your female, young and blonde you have the job. It never ceases to amaze me how few of these 'reporters' are capable of stringing a few words together on their broadcast. Some cant even read the notes they have an their notebooks.

Ive given up with the stuff and herald websites and generally just dont bother with NZ news anymore.

stevenz

2802 posts

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#585270 22-Feb-2012 17:25

If it's biased, then it's no longer journalism, it's a corporate-sponsored blog.

And by "biased" I mean in a blatant sense, I'm well aware most media has a mandated bias of some sort.

@KnightNZ

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crackrdbycracku

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#585275 22-Feb-2012 17:29

I think it has always been about making money.

Basically, and I have nothing to back this up but my own observations, the newspaper industry (and to an extent the rest of 'traditional media') got spooked by blogs, social media et al.

They tried to compete with blogs on their own ground, cheap and fast. Rather than saying "You get what you pay for" charging and keeping quality standards high so you don't mind paying. The FREE culture of the early net probably has a lot to do with this.

Now it's a race to the bottom, with the Murdoch family trying to fight a rear guard action with pay walls. We are used reading the news for 'free' and we moan about the crap quality.

There is only one industry I can think of that did really well out of 'digital distribution'. They did it by getting people to hand over credit card numbers from the start with the promise of high quality content. This industry also pioneered both secure online payment and online video.

Any guesses which industry I'm talking about?

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

crackrdbycracku

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#585280 22-Feb-2012 17:33

martyyn: I hardly think a comparison of the NZ Herald and The Daily Mail is a fair one. One reports itself to se a serious newspaper the other is just a red-top rag.

The Herald copies and pastes from the Daily Mail. I kid you not. I work in a job where what I do requires me to basically be looking at the news constantly. I have seen the Herald copy and paste and article from the Daily Mail, word for word, within an update cycle.

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Talkiet

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#585285 22-Feb-2012 17:37

I despair at the state of all news media today compared to just a few years ago... The problem is they feel the need to keep up with the speed of social media as they perceive it's the only way to stay relevant.

I still remember multiple reports of the Qantas A380 that crashed, killing all on board on multiple radio stations and online...

The only news media I can believe now is where they have a live video feed of what was happening... I for example was home and watching TV when the 9.0 quake hit Japan... Hard to argue with images like that, live...

But if I hear breaking news on the radio, or any website - I'm afraid there's no longer a reason to give it any credibility for at least a couple of hours.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

scottr

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#585486 23-Feb-2012 07:39

Agree, the quality of news reporting in nz has taken a dive, it's becoming very tabloidesque.

Also what's with this quoting of twitter and blogs. I want to read the news, not random people's opinions that have been cherry picked to suit the reporter's projected angle of the article. I actually stop reading an article when I come across text that states 'xxx on twitter says' or 'blogger yyyy says'. Credibility goes straight out the window.

dclegg

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#585525 23-Feb-2012 09:05

scottr:

Also what's with this quoting of twitter and blogs. I want to read the news, not random people's opinions that have been cherry picked to suit the reporter's projected angle of the article.

This. 100 times this.

I knew things were pretty bad when one of my flippant Twitter comments was used in a news article on a media website, in a story about Adam Thomson having his World Cup jerseys stolen. Who the hell knows me from Adam?

And the worst example of this are the news "articles" that comprise solely of quoted Tweets, linked together tenuously by the journalist.

Lizard1977

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#585529 23-Feb-2012 09:19

This sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Look seems to capture the sentiment about news quality...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQnd5ilKx2Y

Disrespective

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#585548 23-Feb-2012 09:48

Something that has bugged me for years is the terrible state of writing these people have.

Closing quotes are often missing, double words are very often present, incredibly poor grammar; always.

I don't claim to be a god at it myself but it sure makes it hard for me to read anything which is supposed to be heavy hitting and serious when the journalist can't type and nobody edits the article.

There is a solid job in there for a 7th form (or whatever it is these days) student with top grades.

It can't be that hard. Can it?

freitasm

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#585577 23-Feb-2012 10:20

dclegg:
scottr:

Also what's with this quoting of twitter and blogs. I want to read the news, not random people's opinions that have been cherry picked to suit the reporter's projected angle of the article.

This. 100 times this.

I knew things were pretty bad when one of my flippant Twitter comments was used in a news article on a media website, in a story about Adam Thomson having his World Cup jerseys stolen. Who the hell knows me from Adam?

And the worst example of this are the news "articles" that comprise solely of quoted Tweets, linked together tenuously by the journalist.

This. QFT.

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