The Good Word, Bad Numbers and The Fake-Fact That Won't Die

15:40 Mar 3, 2012 80

The New Zealand Herald, like a good dose of the clap, is the gift that never stops giving no matter how much you want it to.

The final series of local book program The Good Word started last night on TVNZ 7 (and can be seen on demand here), and The Good Word Jr. begins today (Saturday, March 3). So, cheers for it getting a nice valedictory write up in the Weekend Herald today - though it would be nice if Rebecca Barry Hill got a well-earned by-line in the on-line version.

But I can't help but share Russell's partially caps-locked exasperation at Barry Hill cut-and-pasting the TVNZ 7-related fake-fact that just won't die:

But stymied by our small population, the channel was considered too costly to run at $15 million a year; the expense was not considered justifiable for its 207,000 weekly viewers.

How often - and thoroughly - does this number have to be fisked, discredited and shown to be utter bilge before The Herald just stops using it?

The story ends with this heart-breaking appeal for crowd-sourced wisdom and free copy:

What do you think of the impending lack of television coverage of the arts and books in New Zealand? Should TVNZ and TV3 take up the responsibility? Let us know via linda.herrick@nzherald.co.nz and we'll print your views in the arts pages next week.

Since you asked, Linda, I think media coverage of the arts should remember that everyone is entitled to their own opinion - and it's been hard to miss that the NZH has never been editorial supportive on TVNZ 7 --, but nobody is entitled to their own facts. The Herald's arts editor needs to take up the responsibility of not spreading misleading and inaccurate figures about cultural institutions because the paper's editorial writers and media columnist don't seem to care.

(The Good Word, TVNZ7, Fridays at 9.05pm; replays Saturdays at 9.05am and 1.05pm; Tuesdays, 9.30pm; Wednesdays, 9.30am and 1.30pm.

The Good Word Jr, TVNZ7, Saturdays at 7.05pm; replays Sundays, 4.05pm, Wednesdays at 6.30pm; Thursdays at 12.30pm.)

UPDATE: From Russell in comments:

Just to note that Linda Herrick called while I was out and is keen to make a correction. So that’s good.

Bloody oath is it, and credit where due etc. Could that please become a feature not a bug of the Herald's editorial OS? Please.

80 responses to this post

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Russell Brown, 16:58 Mar 3, 2012

Part of me feels bad about raising the issue, because it’s just a detail in a sympathetic story.
And Rebecca Barry Hill could be forgiven on the basis that, as I noted in the big fisking, her own editor, Shayne Currie, still hasn’t acknowledged the error, despite it being demonstrated in detail.
But there’s a principle here. The bogus lowball number had already become a de facto truth because it appeared repeatedly in the Herald.
Its further repetition there after it has been demonstrated to be baseless and inaccurate – and after the editor has been told so by TVNZ and by Media7, and has presumably read the Hard News post explaining it all – is just silly.
I’ve got no interest in any sort of feud or pissing contest with the paper, but, really, c’mon.

Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report
Rob Stowell, 17:19 Mar 3, 2012

I'd bet TVNZ 7's numbers are rising, too. Until we got a freeview TV (fairly recently) we didn't watch it much; now it's the default channel (we did have a freeview box, for a while- it never found favour!)
As we move towards analogue shut-down, there will be large-scale movement to freeview of those who don't want to pay Sky for their tv and who haven't bought a new set in the last couple of years (probably poorer and older demographics). I reckon many would turn into loyal TVNZ 7 viewers- (good programmes! no ads! News in a decent timeslot!) if they were to get the chance. Many would probably have loved TVNZ 6 too...

Whakaraupo • Since Nov 2006 • 2120 posts Report
Russell Brown, in reply to Rob Stowell, 17:25 Mar 3, 2012

I’d bet TVNZ 7’s numbers are rising, too.
Yes, quite consistently. Because, as you note, more and more people own TVs that receive the channel straight out of the box.
I actually suspect that there was a boost from people buying new TVs to enjoy the RWC last year.

Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 22850 posts Report
Craig Ranapia, in reply to Russell Brown, 17:26 Mar 3, 2012

Part of me feels bad about raising the issue, because it’s just a detail in a sympathetic story.
Yeah, but… broadcasting isn’t the only part of the cultural beat where it really does matter that the numbers aren’t still sticky from being pulled out of someone’s arse. As I said to Drinnan elsewhere, The Herald is perfectly entitled to take a hostile editorial line against public arts/culture funding but it’s not entitled to bolster that argument with junk stats.
Media Ethics 101: Get your facts right, and if you don't acknowledge, retract and correct. FFS, Keith deleted a whole post last week because it was premised on a fundamental fact fail. Shyne Currie, OTOH and as you've pointed out, is just being intransigent. To paraphrase Mr. M. Loaf, zero out of three is pretty fraking bad.
I might recast the post to make it more explicit that my beef isn’t with Rebecca Barry Hill or the story she wrote. But if it’s going to close with an appeal for readers to express their views on the “impending lack of television coverage of the arts and books in New Zealand” then it’s fair comment to suggest the largest newspaper in New Zealand could bear to lift its own game.

North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report
Chris Waugh, in reply to Russell Brown, 17:32 Mar 3, 2012

I’ve got no interest in any sort of feud or pissing contest with the paper, but, really, c’mon.
But some facts are worth feuding over.
I recently came across a video on one of the big Chinese video sites from some British news programme (I'm sure no copyrights were harmed in the process of uploading it) reporting on the water spouts over Auckland. I don't know which channel, because as soon as I heard the reporter say, "New Zealand's capital Auckland" I closed it. But that was just a silly filler story. TVNZ7 seems to me to be much more about the possibility of public service broadcasting in New Zealand - and I use the word 'possibility' for good reason. This is worth fighting over, because public service radio and telly is free from commercial pressure and therefore a great platform for all that high quality content that the commercial channels don't want, and I don't see how we can have a healthily functioning democracy without an informed, educated populace. Commercial radio and telly is just circuses. Nothing wrong with a bit of light entertainment, but it doesn't help inform or educate the public. This fake fact the Herald is pushing is all about undermining the case for public service broadcasting.
And I am really worried about the authoritarian streak I see in the current NZ government...

Wellington • Since Jan 2007 • 2401 posts Report
Islander, 18:12 Mar 3, 2012

This an irrelevancy but sort of germane- one Michelle Duff, employed by Fairfax media, describes our latest Oscar winner as leaping “with legs akimbo and arms flung out.”
Choice! Wonderful example of journalistic ignorance of what words really mean-

Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report
Islander, in reply to Chris Waugh, 18:16 Mar 3, 2012

nd I am really worried about the authoritarian streak I see in the current NZ government…
-showing up in hazard orange now, isnt it? And growing broader by the week-

Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report
chris, in reply to Islander, 18:52 Mar 3, 2012

with legs akimbo
Were it human(e)ly possible I'd love to see that photo.Nice one!

Mawkland • Since Jan 2010 • 1302 posts Report
Craig Ranapia, in reply to Islander, 19:25 Mar 3, 2012

Legz Akimbo? Brett’s triumphant return to socially relevant live theatre…

North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report
Sacha, 19:45 Mar 3, 2012

Akimbo is an interesting word. Usage may be evolving:
Until recent times (the 1980s or thereabouts), the term was almost exclusively arms akimbo, with little involvement of the legs; it seems that it was first creatively used to describe sitting cross-legged. More recently, the term has been adapted still further, giving a second sense of limbs being splayed out rather than merely bent.

Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report
chris, in reply to Sacha, 20:00 Mar 3, 2012

Usage of evolving may be evolving too...

Mawkland • Since Jan 2010 • 1302 posts Report
Hilary Stace, 20:29 Mar 3, 2012

Just watched the Good Word Jr. Not bad, and included a nice piece on Auckland Public Library from a teenage perspective. The following program was a beginners' guide to Aristotle, with lovely Greek scenery. I do like TV7.

Wgtn • Since Jun 2008 • 3229 posts Report
Ana Simkiss, in reply to Islander, 21:06 Mar 3, 2012

Another lovely one in the Canvas mag today was the substitution of "extrudes" for (I presume) "exudes". That word, I do not think it means what you think it means...

Freemans Bay • Since Nov 2006 • 141 posts Report
Sacha, in reply to chris, 21:22 Mar 3, 2012

and who knows what's going on with the usage of usage?

Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report
Steve Barnes, 21:42 Mar 3, 2012

The bogus lowball number had already become a de facto truth because it appeared repeatedly in the Herald.
A bit like the $90,000 a year Wharfies eh?
And I am really worried about the authoritarian streak I see in the current NZ government...
And that, coming from someone that lives in China, should be a wake up call to all those that thought voting for rich people would make them better off.
I keep hearing that the industrial actions we are currently experiencing are the first for more than a decade, funny that, who was running the country back then?
Does nobody remember the "Employment Contracts Act"?
Same shit, same cunts.
ETA. I just dropped an email on Linda Herrick, the link in the blog don't work, just heads you to the Herald but it's not hard to cut and paste eh.
We need to start getting angry about 7.

Peria • Since Dec 2006 • 5521 posts Report
chris, in reply to Steve Barnes, 22:07 Mar 3, 2012

And that, coming from someone that lives in China, should be a wake up call to all those that thought voting for rich people would make them better off.
I share Chris Waugh's concern. I have a pet theory which I can't adequately defend, that despite it's failings, a system where the ousting of the lifetime membership governing party can only occur at gunpoint does seem to put more impetus on politicians to diffuse large scale domestic issues than the democratic system whereby politicians have peace of mind knowing they'll vanish into the void at term's end with fat wallets and sprayed and wiped consciences....At least in the internet age it seems as such. With no end to the term in sight, there's more incentive to do a better job.

Mawkland • Since Jan 2010 • 1302 posts Report
chris, 22:27 Mar 3, 2012

Three years isn't long enough to truly inhabit a key political position let alone deal with or rectify your own mistakes. The New Zealand population takes this into account and is very forgiving. Aware of this, the veritable politician, cottoned on to the fact that the smoke of internet commentary has entirely replaced any fire the NZ constituent previously frothed, sleeps easy....

Mawkland • Since Jan 2010 • 1302 posts Report
Islander, in reply to Sacha, 23:11 Mar 3, 2012

Until recent times (the 1980s or thereabouts), the term was almost exclusively arms akimbo, with little involvement of the legs; it seems that it was first creatively used to describe sitting cross-legged. More recently, the term has been adapted still further, giving a second sense of limbs being splayed out rather than merely bent.
Reference please Sacha-
when well-established english words are sommersaulted into a non-sense meaning of what they are universally understood to mean , you have to wonder what is going on…

Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report
Kumara Republic, in reply to Steve Barnes, 23:16 Mar 3, 2012

ETA. I just dropped an email on Linda Herrick, the link in the blog don’t work, just heads you to the Herald but it’s not hard to cut and paste eh.
We need to start getting angry about 7.
If there was another tipping point to rally around, it’s the threat to pervert Fair Go’s reason being.
We’re definitely getting angry, now it’s time to get even. Here’s the direct link to the Press Council complaints form.
And if the NZ media has cold feet over the TPPA in its current anti-Internet form, we might even be able to win over Silicon Valley et al, out of a common cause to oppose Internet censorship.

The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report
Sacha, in reply to Islander, 23:22 Mar 3, 2012

See the link.

Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report
Islander, in reply to Sacha, 23:28 Mar 3, 2012

Thanks Sasha. So -semi- illiterates destroying a word-meaning rather than being 'creative'? Pop-cult.
Some of the etomology given in that Wikipedia article is extremely suss-

Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report
Chris Waugh, in reply to chris, 23:28 Mar 3, 2012

It's interesting that over the time I've been in China China has moved to an understanding that each President/Prime Minister team will serve two consecutive 5-year terms then retire (to continue to pull strings from retirement, of course). This is vastly superior to the old system whereby the death of the paramount leader (even if his only official position was president of the All-China Bridge Club) led to a long power struggle. I'm struggling to get my memory in order, but it seems to me that the imminent transition is the first to go the full cycle (Deng died in '97, didn't he? which would've given the Jiang-Zhu team only five years?)
[Sorry. Disrupted by a short walk that I thought would help me gather my thoughts, but that was marked by a strange encounter with a semi-colleague (same university, different department) - why would anybody talk about taking their trousers off on campus, even to deny doing it in a joking fashion?!]
oh yes...
...So I remember a few years back reading a story about an imprisoned dissident and his under-house-arrest wife and infant daughter that included the phrase 'world's youngest political prisoner' and realising, holy shit, I've cycled through that area, this 'world's youngest political prisoner' lives not 20km up the road from me!
Before I came to China I heard one or two people saying that the ideal government would be a benevolent dictatorship, and thinking, well, where are you gonna get a truly benevolent dictatorship? Then last time I was in NZ I heard somebody close to me express a similar view and, for the sake of preserving a harmonious society I decided it best to bite my tongue, but my instinct was to point out to this person that they had never lived in a country where one could be jailed (or worse) for expressing the 'wrong' ideas or objecting, even in a perfectly reasonable fashion, to government policy.
China's experience shows the capriciousness of autocratic/authoritarian rule (and that stretches back way before Mao Zedong was but a twinkle in his father's eye) and the value of a system that allows for stable transfers of power to the next generation. China's leadership also does a much better line in long-term, strategic thinking than their counterparts in any 'Western' country. China's experience also shows, in a negative sense, the value of maintaining a healthy and vibrant democracy. When government can ride roughshod.... well, problems occur.
China seems to be slowly moving towards a more people-centred, dare I say it, democratic approach to governance (it obviously still has a hell of a long way to go). New Zealand (and the whole 'Western' world) seems to me to be moving in the other direction. This disturbs me.

Wellington • Since Jan 2007 • 2401 posts Report
Peter Martin, 00:15 Mar 4, 2012

when well-established english words are sommersaulted into a non-sense meaning of what they are universally understood to mean , you have to wonder what is going on…
The normal wax and wane that is the idiom. It's neither good nor bad. Permanent or transitory. It is just what ya use now. :)

Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 187 posts Report
chris, in reply to Chris Waugh, 00:54 Mar 4, 2012

You have a true talent for eloquently expressing the permutations of this intensifying political divide in a balanced readable fashion Chris, it's always a pleasure to read, and especially when it gets responses like Steve's above. you present great perspective.
why would anybody talk about taking their trousers off on campus, even to deny doing it in a joking fashion?!
oddly that sounds very familiar...

Mawkland • Since Jan 2010 • 1302 posts Report
Lilith __, 11:17 Mar 4, 2012

Russell: perhaps worth giving the correct figure in the body of this post? In bold? Just so it’s imprinted on our memories and also in Google’s search results.
Islander: Kermit can probably do legs akimbo. :-)
Chris W: thanks for your thoughtful analysis – fascinating, as always. Short-term political thinking leads to all kinds of evils. It’s one reason I support the Greens: they look decades ahead, not months.
Chris:
the veritable politician, cottoned on to the fact that the smoke of internet commentary has entirely replaced any fire the NZ constituent previously frothed, sleeps easy….
do you really think the internet stifles political protest? I would have thought the reverse was true (and the Save TVNZ7 campaign being a good example). Or have I misunderstood you?

Dunedin • Since Jul 2010 • 3895 posts Report