I might accept that argument if the broadcaster had also sacked the producer of the programme for dereliction of duty in failing to detect what Lynch’s critics describe as a blatant example of plagiarism. She sent Lynch out on the job, she previewed the words and pictures, she approved the item for broadcast and she put it to air. The buck stops with her. That’s what being a producer means, Janet.

So I’m more inclined to go along with respected media commentator and University of Canterbury Professor of Social and Political Sciences, Jim Tully, who told the Herald that it was ‘extremely difficult’ to believe Lynch acted alone, and hoped anyone else involved had been dealt with at an appropriate level.

Hope springs eternal. I, for example, hope that TVNZ will give priority to identifying the ‘one inside mole’ in their organisation who breached their non-disclosure agreement with Lynch by gleefully revealing to gossip columnist Rachel Glucina every detail of the humiliating conditions imposed on the reporter by TVNZ management. They won’t of course. ‘Not knowing’ will make it easier for management to absolve themselves of responsibility, both legal and moral, for this employment scandal.

As I concluded in my previous post, ‘Lynch has now not merely been demoted by TVNZ but humiliated by the release of the terms of that demotion.’ In her position, I would be reaching for my lawyer.  

I don’t want to write too much more about this matter, because it is evident to me that jealousy and spite are endemic at Hobson Street and I do not want Lynch  to be blamed or punished for my opinions or interpretation of events. This, however, is my understanding of what happened. I leave it to readers to decide whether Lynch has been fairly dealt with or not.

• Lynch’s producer, who must have viewed the original ABC America item, sends Lynch out with instructions to ‘reversion the story’.
• A great many people are involved in this exercise, including Lynch, her camera crew, the tape editor who assembled the item, the graphics editor who copied the graphics from the ABC America original, the producer of the programme who viewed and approved the entire package, the studio and control room crew who physically put it to air.. . and the furniture moving company who removed the furniture from the house and put it back again. (I assume Lynch had her producer’s approval for that.)
• The item is broadcast and, according to TVNZ, extremely well received by viewers.
• Sideswipe’s Ana Samways notices that Lynch’s version is virtually a clone of the original.
• Responding to this revelation, TVNZ issues the following media release:

Close Up has been running a series of investigative stories called Made in NZ after seeing what a huge success our affiliate network, ABC America, has had with Made in the USA.

We have done four stories so far. The editorial concept for the first three originated in Close Up. The idea for the one we ran last night came from ABC America World News. It was a clever concept that illustrated the point visually therefore perfect for television.

However, it would not have worked to run the American story here. It would have been completely irrelevant to a New Zealand audience, which is why we reversioned it. We found a Kiwi family and conducted the same experiment here, as we are perfectly entitled to do under our affiliation agreement.

Like ABC America, Close Up has had an incredible response from viewers on our Made In series and have several other stories planned.

• In the face of both internal and external protest, TVNZ changes its mind and its story. Close Up host Mark Sainsbury offers a lengthy apology to viewers on behalf of the network  and the programme. ‘Let’s be frank,’ he says, ‘we let you down.’
• Lynch enters into confidential negotiations about her future.
• In breach of Lynch’s agreement with TVNZ, one or more TVNZ employees reveal these confidential terms to Herald on Sunday gossip columnist Rachel Glucina for publication.

Finally, I’d like to direct two questions to the TVNZ management: Were you in fact, as you claimed in your news release, ‘perfectly entitled under our affiliation agreement’ to reversion the ABC America story and conduct ‘the same experiment’ here? And was that opinion conveyed to Kate Lynch when she went off to do the story?

Have a look at this:

There’s very little, well, actually no doubt at all that this Close Up item on how many things in an average New Zealand home are actually Kiwi made, is an almost exact facsimile of an ABC America story on how many items in an average US home are actually made there. The idea is the same, the storyline is the same, the direction is the same, the graphics are the same, the commentary is the same. Not to put too fine a point on it, the Close Up version is a clone of the American story.

Plagiarism? Well, it depends.  

Plagiarism involves using someone else’s copyrighted idea, format, words, pictures etc. It’s a form of stealing.  But because someone has thought of an idea and turned it into a television programme doesn’t necessarily mean that no-one else can make a television programme on a similar or the same theme. A couple of programmes from my own experience illustrate this reasonably well.

In 1977, with my colleague Peter Morritt, I devised the consumer protection programme Fair Go. There were at the time several consumer-protection programmes around the world, essentially based on the idea of using the television medium to educate consumers on their rights and to expose dishonest companies and traders. But none had exactly the same format as Fair Go and it’s doubtful that any of them could have sued us for breach of copyright. There have also been several new consumer protection programmes since Fair Go began, both internationally and with Target here in New Zealand. The idea of a television programme on consumer issues is just too wide to copyright.

Some years ago Judy and I also developed a programme called Missing, which helped people to find missing friends and relatives. Once again, there were numerous programmes around the world which did exactly that, but none had the identical format to Missing. Julie Christie later produced a programme called Missing Pieces, which is currently on air. Same idea again, but a different format and approach. We won’t be consulting our lawyers.

But can you simply copy every detail of someone else’s programme? I would have thought not. Unless, you had their explicit agreement to do so. This is what Television New Zealand has suggested in its recent press release. It describes ABC America as ‘our affiliate network’ and says that it ‘reversioned’ the network’s original Made in the USA story: ‘We found a Kiwi family and conducted the same experiment here, as we are perfectly entitled to do under our affiliation agreement’.

I would describe this press release as ‘carefully worded’. ‘Affiliate’ and ‘affiliated’ are less than precise terms. They may refer to a sub-branch of a company or organisation or merely to a company or organisation with which one has a connection. Neither meaning would seem to involve the right to clone the affiliate’s product.

And when TVNZ says that it ‘found a Kiwi family and conducted the same experiment here, as we are perfectly entitled to do under our affiliation agreement’, that may indeed be the case. But does ‘conducting the same experiment’ include making an almost exact copy of the original – same idea, same storyline, same direction, same graphics, same commentary? And all of that without attribution? I would have thought not.

Of course I’m not an expert on plagiarism or copyright, but I kind of think that you could only get away with that if you had the express agreement of your ‘affiliate’. And I don’t see a reference to that anywhere in TVNZ’s press release.

Hopefully the matter will be cleared up in the next few days.

(Thanks to Ana Samways, who unearthed this story, and to the Sunday Herald for its assistance. And just in case you’re wondering, I have the Herald’s permission to link to their ABC America/Close Up compilation.)

Once upon a time aspiring radio and TV stars were sent off for voice coaching before they were allowed to pollute our airways. At the very least they had to have pleasant voices and excellent diction.

No longer. Our TV screens are now populated in prime time by young women whose voices could etch glass at 40 paces and men who happily mangle the language to the point of incomprehensibility.

My current personal favourite is the new dialect of Sainsbury, to be heard on Close Up most evenings at 7pm. I’ve heard the odd Sainsburyism from news reporters on both One and Three and once, to my astonishment, from Mike McRoberts.  It’s clearly the coming fashion and we should all adopt it as soon as possible.

Visitors filling in time between World Cup matches may require help with translation before they can fully appreciate Close Up. They may be so impressed with what they hear that they want to start speaking Sainsbury themselves.  Here’s a little pronunciation guide for the uninitiated and the eager:

Harold – as in ‘Harold is that dodgy Toyota you’re selling?’

Harris – as in ‘Harris it that you can’t kick the damn ball between the posts?’

Hurrah – as in ‘Hurrah you, now that you’ve had liposuction?’

Harrever – as in ‘Harrever will you get that money out of the country, Mr Hotchins?’

Harroffen – as in ‘Harroffen will Hone hongi Willie before the election?’

Harrintristing – as in ‘Harrintristing! And where did you dispose of the body?’

Feel free to expand this guide – your contributions of any new Sainsburyisms are welcomed.

Next week: How to copy Key – an exercise in syllable reduction.

A large bouquet to Campbell Live last night for letting the people of Christchurch speak for themselves. This montage of frustration  told a very different story from one we’re hearing from officialdom about the EQC and the accuracy and speed of assessments. A classic was the 34 second assessment caught on CCTV.

This made excellent television – a far cry from the stumbling, bumbling  interview by Mark Sainsbury on the Tupperwaka  in which he

Asked such searing questions as:

Are you ashamed of your culture? (To Shane Jones)

Is this a jack-up? (To Ngarimu Blair of Ngati Whatua)

Are you saying that Pita Sharples is bribing the Maori people of Auckland? (To Shane Jones again. And no, Mark, that was the Act Party)

This mock-tough interviewing just comes across as rude and boorish. Patsy questions which are patently ridiculous. This was a subject that deserved some serious debate. It’s not going to get it on Close Up, that’s for sure.

Cartoon by Webb

Let’s assume just for the moment that Darren Hughes is telling the truth when he says he did nothing wrong when he took an eighteen-year-old back to his lodgings in the early hours of March 2.

Let’s set the bar even higher and assume that Hughes is not just relying on the letter of the law when he says he did nothing wrong, but  that  nothing of a sexual nature, nothing ‘improper’ in any way  took place. They had a cup of coffee and continued talking politics until the 18-year-old left.
And finally, let’s not worry about the probability or lack of probability of these assumptions or where this leaves the 18-year-old and his complaint to the police.
We’re simply considering a hypothesis: Darren Hughes is completely innocent.
This hypothesis was debated  on last night’s Close Upby three very experienced and very knowledgeable commentators: former Labour Party president, Mike Williams, former Labour MP, John Tamihere and Dr Bryce Edwards, blogger and lecturer in Politics at Otago University.

Asked whether Hughes political  aspirations were dog-tucker even if no prosecution were taken against him – effectively a declaration that he had broken no law – all three agreed that that was indeed the case. One expressed the reservation that if the police dealt with the matter quickly, there was a chance that Hughes might survive – a reasonably unlikely scenario, given the cops’ historic tardiness in dealing with this sort of matter. 
A similar view was taken in his column this morning  by Herald political correspondent John Armstrong, for whom I have considerable respect:.
 ‘Regardless of what did or did not happen at King’s house, Hughes’ judgement (or lack of it) is what matters in the unforgiving court of politics.’
So the position then is that, in politics, a totally innocent person’s career can be destroyed for no better reason than that an unsustainable but damaging complaint   is  made against them and that this constitutes an embarrassment to their party.
I don’t doubt that all four commentators would argue that they were merely being ’realistic’, but their ready acceptance of what seems to me an entirely unfair and unacceptable  state of affairs appalled me: how sad, can’t be helped, never mind, c’est la vie. To take the view that it’s OK in politics for the totally innocent  to have their careers destroyed because that’s how it’s always been, strikes me as morally defeatist.
The ‘showed lack of judgement’ response to this opinion goes hand in hand with the ‘perception is all in politics’ mantra, which is merely another way of saying that truth is less important than appearance, prejudice and suspicion.
I’m not saying that this isn’t the true situation; I’m saying that we ought not to accept its inevitability or the impossibility of working towards a more equitable and fair political reality.
In such a reality ‘lack of judgement’ would be weighed against the MP’s past performance, the seriousness of the lapse, whether it was in or out of character, the level of electoral damage it might incur, the MP’s future prospects in or out of parliament and, when all of that was taken into account, what degree of loyalty the party owed that person. The punishment, in other words, should fit the crime.
This seems to me a rather more rational approach than the ‘one strike and you’re out’ mentality which my four very expert political commentators seemed to think inevitable because ‘that’s politics’.
So let’s just say that the police find that the 18-year-old’s complaint was without substance and there are no grounds to prosecute Darren Hughes. The accumulated wisdom of the New Zealand political commentariat, and not just the four who came to my attention, is that, nine months away from a general election, Phil Goff cannot afford to keep Darren Hughes in the party because, I suppose, ‘mud sticks’.
Maybe I have an unrealistic view of the average Kiwi, but if this scenario did eventuate, I rather think that welcoming Hughes back into the fold, and at the very most demoting him for his ‘lack of judgement’,  would do Labour no end of good. The party has too little young blood to spill.
In the meantime there is an onus on the police to deal with this matter quickly, in days, not weeks or months. As the old saying goes, ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ – whoever wins.

[The news is now out that Phil Goff has accepted Darren Hughes' resignation. That is either an act of extreme self-sacrifice on Hughes' part or an indication that the findings of the police investigation, even if they fall short of  justifying a prosecution, may make his position untenable. In either case, this is a personal  tragedy for Hughes, a political tragedy for the Labour Party and, in my submission, a matter of deep regret for anyone who has watched this talented and hugely personable MP's career.]

Hard Talk's Stephen Sackur

The “miracle-worker” version is rooted in the idea that readers, listeners and viewers are idiots who can be easily taken in by the practised sleight of hand of the PR/media trained interviewee.  But it simply isn’t so. And especially not on television.

This is what the great doyen of British interviewers, Sir Robin Day, had to say about the televised political interview:

“When a TV interviewer questions a politician, this is one of the rare occasions, perhaps the only occasion outside Parliament, when a politician’s performance cannot be completely manipulated or packaged or artificially hyped. Some TV answers can, of course, be prepared by scriptwriters and committed to memory, but not all. The answers cannot be on autocue as for an address to camera.

 “The image-maker can advise on how to sit, or what hairstyle to have, or on voice quality. But once the interview has started, the politician is on his or her own… Provided there is time for probing  cross-examination, the politician cannot be wholly shielded against the unexpected. The politician’s own brain is seen to operate. His or her real personality tends to burst out. Truth is liable to raise its lovely head.

 “In a newspaper interview, the politician may flannel or fudge, but in a TV interview the flannelling and fudging can be seen and judged by the viewing public, just as the jury in a court can form their opinion of the candour and the credibility of a witness.”

Our advice to clients has not changed in a quarter of a century. It is: Be straightforward; Tell the truth; Admit your mistakes. Why? Because that’s the only thing that works.

The question then arises: If all you need to do is tell the truth, why do people need media training? This is the answer Judy and I give in the Foreword to our book  How to Survive and Win with the Media:

The best piece of advice you could give someone about to be interviewed by the press, radio or television, would probably be: relax and be yourself.

Unfortunately, the advice would be wasted on 99% of those to whom it was given. Very few people can relax or be themselves when faced with a reporter’s notebook, a microphone or TV camera. If it were otherwise, there would be no need for media training courses or books like this. They are necessary because the interview is an unnatural and specialised form of communication, quite different from normal conversation, however formal. It has its own traditions, its own conceits, its own rules of conduct and sometimes of war.

One of the critical differences between the interview and a normal conversation is the brevity of the exchange. The interviewee is required to state his or her position in a matter of minutes – or seconds in the case of television – regardless of the complexity of the issue. Very few people have the verbal skill, the confidence or the presence of mind to present a reasoned and persuasive argument in one or two minutes, let alone in an alien environment, confronted by a hostile professional interviewer and in the unseen presence of perhaps hundreds of thousands of other people.

Not surprisingly, most people find being interviewed an extremely nerve-wracking experience. Their nervousness in turn produces both physical and psychological akinesis, like the possum caught in the headlights of the oncoming car. They freeze, become wooden, defensive, monosyllabic, monotonous, lost for words, incapable of coherent thought. So much for relaxing and being yourself!

Most interviews, then,  are conducted on a very uneven playing field. The purpose of this book is to level the ground somewhat, by providing you, the reader, with an insight into the rules of the game and some invaluable coaching tips, designed to give you a more than even chance of surviving and hopefully winning the game.

Over the last 25 years we have been media advisors to several thousand prominent New Zealanders, including the chief executives of many of  our largest companies, the country’s most senior public servants and a couple of Prime Ministers. In every case our advice to the client has been the same: if you can’t tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, you must not agree to be interviewed. That is the advice which we give to you, the reader of this book. This is not a manual for those who wish to dissemble or deceive; it contains no recipes for evasion, no clever tricks for pulling the wool over the interviewer’s eyes, no intellectual sleight of hand. The truth is the best weapon in the interviewee’s armoury.

And there you have it. And you don’t need a Kim Hill, Mike Hosking or even a Stephen Sackur to get at the truth for you. The television close-up will provide all the information you need. All you have to do is open your eyes and ears and  think.

stuff.co.nz

Close Up – Undoubtedly a major coup, though I suspect that Hotchin, or an agent on his behalf, approached the programme. However, the  production team blotted its copy book badly by totally abandoning editorial balance and showing clips damaging to Hotchin -  largely newspaper headlines – while Hotchin was speaking. An appalling lapse in editorial judgement.

Hotchin – Plausible and persuasive. I thought he was very good. His appearance has been and will be dismissed as a PR exercise and there may well be an element of truth in that. But the risks inherent in taking part in a live and predictably aggressive television interview were considerable. And, in the end, all the PR in the world will not assist the lying or dishonest television interviewee. The audience will see through him.     

Sainsbury – Handled the interview well. Asked the questions that viewers, and some at least of those who lost money in Hanover, would have wanted asked. Somewhat repetitive and it really would be good if Mark could put his questions in a less excitable way. But overall a good performance.

Campbell Live – Ended its show last night with an undignified piece of sour grapes in which John bewailed the fact that Hotchin was appearing on his competitor’s programme and re-ran old Campbell Live clips which served merely to explain why Hotchin had gone to Close Up.  John is the superior broadcaster of the two, but would he have done this particular interview better? I doubt it.

The Viewers – Will many have changed their view of Hotchin after watching the interview? Probably not.

Sarah Ivey/NZ Herald

I spend a fair amout of time on this site taking the New Zealand television networks to task for their generally abysmal prime-time coverage of public affairs. So it’s appropriate to be equally generous in praise when they get it right.

Following David Tamihere’s release from prison, Monday’s Close Up featured a background report by Hannah Ockelford on the murder of the Swedish tourists, the subsequent arrest,  trial and conviction of Tamihere, his unsuccessful appeal to the Privy Council to overturn his conviction and his 20-year imprisonment during which he continued to assert his innocence.

This was not a long item, perhaps five or six minutes, but it was a model of television storytelling. I have long been an admirer or Hannah Ockelford, who is an excellent interviewer, brings a quiet maturity to her reporting and, as a bonus, both looks and sounds good. Her report included archival footage of the police hunt for Tamihere, who was then on the run, a summary of the evidence both for and against him, and interviews with Tamihere’s wife Kristine, his son Jon and journalist Pat Booth. All three impressed.

Pat Booth is without question the most admired  investigative journalist in New Zealand.  He is a crusader for justice. And, as it happens, he understands the art of persuasive communication, no better illustrated than in his interview with Ockelford. At a technical level, he sits forward, holds intense eye-contact with his interviewer, speaks quietly – this is an intimate format – and listens intently to the questions. I doubt that he thinks about any of this. It’s instinctual. He presents his case entirely without hyperbole or histrionics. He is utterly reasonable. And, most important of all, he willingly concedes any weakness in his argument. When accused by the interviewer of having just as blinkered a view of the case as the police, he simply replies, ‘Oh yes, yes, I agree. We are all victims of our environment and what we know.’   The effect is not to undermine but to enhance his credibility. This is an object lesson in the art of the interview.

At the end of the five or six minutes, I feel that I have been given a clear, concise, low-key and even-handed summary of the issues surrounding the arrest, trial,  conviction and imprisonment of David Tamihere. I have been informed. And I have been left to make up my own mind on where the truth actually lies. That is what I mean by ‘getting it right’.

Take another look

And look for the line of the week – Pat Booth talking about hard-line detective John Hughes, who headed the investigation: ‘He was known in the underworld as The Gardener, because he planted so well.’

scoop.co.nz

Mike Hosking was standing in for Mark Sainsbury on last night’s Close Up. I haven’t always been a fan of Mr Hosking’s interviewing style, but each time he appears on Close Up my respect for him grows.

A useful litmus test for judging a television host or interviewer is how comfortable they make you feel watching them. If their presentation or questioning make you feel as though you’re watching an amateur high-wire walker making his debut between two New York skyscrapers in a high wind, you can be reasonably certain that the interviewer really isn’t very good and his career may  fall to earth sooner rather than later.

If, on the other hand, your sense of being in safe hands allows you to concentrate fully on the subject of the debate or interview, rather than on how the host is doing, you can be reasonably certain that you’re watching a skilled professional. This is the feeling I get with Mike Hosking – nothing is going to go wrong. 

Hosking was at his professional best last night. Not because he was grilling some hapless wrongdoer, but because of his consummate skill in handling something far more difficult, an interview with the parents of a murdered son. The potential for embarrassment in this sort of interview is considerable. A fine line has to be trod between expressing sympathy for the parents’ unthinkable loss and the journalistic imperative to seek information on behalf of the viewer. The parents must not merely be questioned, they must be emotionally supported as well, a task made all the more difficult when interviewer and interviewees are not in the same studio. Yet the interview must never become mawkish, must never exploit the parents’ grief, their tears.

Hosking treads this fine line perfectly. At every moment in the interview he is making decisions: which parent  to go to next, when to move from issues of fact to issues of feeling, whether to personally  identify with the parents’ loss (I can imagine it must be terrible… ), when to draw back, when enough is enough. He will not be making these decisions consciously. They will be the product of experience and instinct and they will not be apparent to the viewer.

If this seems like a somewhat clinical analysis of an interview that will have brought most viewers to tears, it serves to highlight the fact that great interviewing has less to do with questions than it has to do with the interviewer’s ability, often in a very short period of time, to form a relationship with his subjects that allows them and us to feel comfortable, in safe hands. And that, believe it or not, is as true of the cross-examination style of interview as it is in exploring personal tragedy.

And Jo  and Bryan Guy, whose son Scott was murdered seemingly without reason, must not go unmentioned. What a lovely couple they are. How fortunate any man would be to have such people as parents. Of them Hosking concluded, ‘Well, I don’t know where you’re getting the strength from, but I appreciate your time tonight very much.’ And they thanked him.  And he said, ‘Very brave, aren’t they, ‘Jo and Bryan Guy’. And that was right.

And, on a lighter note, have a look at Hosking interviewing  weight loss supremo, bus driver Bevan Winter, and his dietician Lea Stening. They’re not in the studio either and it’s another interviewing challenge because Bevan is more or less monosyllabic and Lea is wonderfully high-verbal. So what do you do? Well, you direct most of your questions to the high-verbal Lea of course.

Overall this was a delightful programme. As Hosking himself observed, ‘Tell you what, what a night of inspiration it’s been, eh? That’s current affairs for you.’

And I’m sorry to end on a contentious note, but shouldn’t this fellow – confident, intelligent, dryly humorous, articulate  -  really be hosting Close Up every night?

I have received the following email from Mike Valintine, Editor of Close Up:

Hi Brian …your little bird is completely wrong. There was no attempt to delay or prevent the Serepisos story from going to air. It is correct Daniel did the interview with the businessman a month before the item went to air but that is easily explained. Firstly Mr Henshilwood and his wife went on holiday immediately after the interview and we were awaiting documentation from them to support their claims. This was in storage and it took more than a week after their return to access the files. We also wanted them back to approach Mr Serepisos in person. Secondly at that time their story was part of a wide ranging investigation into Mr Serepisos’s debts. My expectation was that Daniel’s story would be aired as part of a more comprehensive insight. When it became clear that the wider investigation would take longer than anticipated Daniels story was put to air.
 
There was certainly no pressure placed upon me and I instructed staff working on it to treat it like any other story- without fear or favour.

Regards
Mike V.
 

Having accepted Mr Valintine’s explanation, I subsequently submitted a series of questions to him. His replies to those questions appear in bold. 

*Is it usual to film an item involving serious accusations against a public figure before having documentation to support those accusations?

It is unusual but in this case the couple seemed completely credible. We had sent out a crew with the reporter so it seemed logical to get the interview in the can before they headed away on holiday. We had every confidence they could supply the required documentation and of course they were able to. It just took a lot longer than we expected.

*Was a one-month delay acceptable in putting to air the doubts which Close Up must have harboured about the suitability of Mr Serepisos to host The Apprentice, given that the programme had 6 more episodes to run?

We were dealing with a $3,000 debt here and chasing what we believed was a much bigger story. The delay I believe was an acceptable if a calculated risk. As I understand it the show is pre-recorded so we were hardly going to stop production. In my view it was always highly likely that once we approached Serepisos he would quickly settle the outstanding debt

*Did you, as Editor of Close Up, have any concerns about the effect your story might have on The Apprentice?

My only real concern was to do this story without fear or favour.-  to be fair. Of course I gave some thought to the potential fallout for the programme but I go through the same process for any controversial story

*If so, did  you seek any advice on the matter?

I did not seek advice on the matter- I am an old hand paid to make the decision.

*Can we expect to see the meeting between Mr Serepisos and the Henshilwoods to which you refer on Close Up any time soon?

No, you cannot expect a meeting but Serepisos’s people have indicated he will be doing an interview with us in the near future.

*Is the “more comprehensive insight” into Mr Serepisos’ affairs, to which you refer, likely to appear on Close Up or elsewhere on TVNZ in the near future?