2012 WRAP-UP: JUNE

JUNE 2012

Insufferable newsmedia coverage of the Scott Guy murdertrial, insufferable newsmedia coverage of Kim Dot Com of Mega Upload fame. Insufferable newsmedia … full stop. Journalism in New Zealand is only slightly better than the average high-school PTA newsletter in BF nowhere Saskatchewan. Or maybe the yearbook editorials. Actually, that’s giving it too much credit, and not giving Saskatchewan its due. I blame the collusive practices of the major newsmedia groups, especially FAIRFAX, for relying on a limited puppy-mill loop of interns pumped out year after year by the “journalism” programme at AUT, with Massey filling in some of the lesser gaps with their minions. I know this because I investigated.

Kim Dot Com's larger-than-life "freedom fighter" avatar from Twitter.

 I find it hard to be at all upset about Kim Dot Com. That dude provided me with Mega Upload when I really needed it. His service set me on the road to emotional recovery at a really crappy time of my life when GMAIL and SKYPE just wouldn’t cut it, and I just HAD to get a half-hour long video message to a certain important someone. So what if dude is a misanthropic pirate scam artist? [No commas were used in the making of that sentence … on purpose.]

Flash forward to December 2012, and Kim Dot Com is the guest celebrity lighting the Christmas tree at Auckland’s Franklin Road festive lights celebration. I clapped. That’s right. I clapped like a duped seal. Even though his speech had the air of “wow, you really are a bunch of provincial morons and this is the most ridiculous display of Christmas I’ve ever seen in my life”. Or wait, was that me projecting what was going through my own head?

I also clapped when Ewen MacDonald was acquitted of the murder of Scott Guy at the beginning of July. Because if he had been found guilty on the basis of the prosecution’s case (built on a solid platform of total bullshit, public moral furor stirred up by the second-rate newsmedia, about 1000 witnesses whose testimony amounted to “yeah, the guy was a bit weird”, and a gigantic crockpot of village-style monkey-brain stew), I would have promptly moved back to Stephen Harper’s Canada. And that’s saying A LOT.

Thank God for small mercies that in New Zealand, when all is said and done, if justice doesn’t prevail over legalistic bungling, police incompetence, and a perversely unethical, collusive journalism corps, at least there’s no capital punishment. Because, when a crime is committed in New Zealand, basically if you’re the only one left standing, logic (the New Zealand Police, and the court of public opinion) dictates you must have done did it … somehow and anyhow, and it shall be proved. Not in the sense of hypotheses judicially “tested” via actually knowing the law and having evidence, but in the sense of a gut feeling being “stitched up”. Basically the Scott Guy murder trial was New Zealand’s “white Bronco” moment, but with no evidence that couldn't be called blatantly and patently circumstantial. Too bad about that diving boot, eh?

Ewen MacDonald:
Just another shining example of
 the duelling banjos saga that is family life on the farm in New Zealand.

Anyway, the acquittal of Ewen MacDonald left a fantastic opportunity for Woman’s Day to do a spread – that’s right, a spread – with Scott Guy’s widow, who of course is named Kylee, complete with lascivious, toothy smiles, fake eyelashes, and reclining on chaises in the “latest fashions”. I wondered, at the time, what the hell they would have done if she were just a run-of-the-mill, short-haired, sexually non-descript, no-nonsense, fat, frumpy, farmer’s wife of the most ubiquitous sort in New Zealand. The spread was a pretty obvious vehicle for spreading the message that MacDonald will not escape punishment for what he done did even if duly acquitted. It was also a deft re-working of what was obviously intended to be a victory-lap feature upon MacDonald’s certain conviction. Just like the article ran by Wellington’s Dominion Post on the day of the acquittal, which featured pseudo-child psychology analyses of MacDonald’s childhood fingerpaintings and pre-teen school poetry, all adding up to … you guessed it … GUILTY! Woman’s Day bookended the Scott Guy trial coverage by trotting out the estranged wife of the accused in a spread in the next issue. Soft lighting, glossy lipstick, manicured nails, etc.. Neither your typical NZ farmer’s wife. I think there may have been tooth-bleaching involved, and possibly a fake tan. Let me state for the record that being female and beautiful is definitely not a crime. But I think there's something rather dodgy about being turned into a glamour-puss murder trial mascot by the media as a consequence of your marital choices and involvement in a deeply flawed journo-legal process. 

But do not despair. I can assure you that the affair between Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, Kate Middleton-Windsor’s morning sickness, and the shocker divorce of TomKat were more comprehensively covered in New Zealand newsmedia than either Kim Dot Com or the Hot Wives of the Scott Guy Murder Trial. For which circumstances I have it on authority that Handel specifically wrote his “Hallelujah”. Because let’s face it. All the real news happens overseas!