In the Critic office there is a whiteboard which months ago was permanently marked by a reporter on some journalism-related rage. “Fuck the ODT,” they scrawled. Below it someone else came along and wrote, “If you do that your crotch will get dusty”.
My favourite thing about the ODT is when they report on student-related news stories, because you can always rely on the good people at the Independent Voice of the South to treat students with the fairness and balance that they extend to the rest of the population.
Like when the ODT reported on some people attending a St Patrick’s Day party in a park (apparently some of them were doing alcohol! Shock and horror!). The header on Facebook read “Hundreds of students have caused chaos around Dunedin today”. The truth, surprisingly, was that hundreds of students had not in fact caused chaos. The chaos-causers actually numbered in the single digits, throwing the ODT’s estimates off by at least 3000%.
What actually happened was that 300 or so people were drinking at the park at the top of Butts Rd, enjoying the surprisingly sunny conditions we were treated to on St Paddy’s day. Late in the afternoon, some idiots started a fight and “a couple” of people were injured. The police showed up and everyone dispersed without an issue. In a separate incident, five people stood on a car and broke the windscreen. For those keeping count, that is far less than “hundreds” of people.
Former Critic Editor Sam McChesney commented on the story, getting over 100 reactions. “Hi ODT, that headline is blatantly misleading and doesn't reflect the contents of the article. If hundreds of people have a party and a few of those get into fights, that is not ‘hundreds causing chaos’. Sort it out.”
The ODT then changed the Facebook header to “About three hundred young people gathered in a grassy area off Lovelock Ave, Dunedin, this afternoon”. Kudos to them. It turned out they had no evidence whatsoever to suggest all 300 of the attendees were students.
The main headline “St Paddy’s Day chaos in Dunedin” remained. Aside from the two incidents already mentioned, the ODT’s other examples of chaos included “a sizeable group of people standing on a house roof,” and that apparently “a young man was seen with blood on his face”. But then again, in the ODT’s mind, having more than one gingernut in your tea probably still counts as ‘chaos’.
It’s almost as if the ODT wrote the headline the night before and then spent all St Paddy’s Day listening to a police scanner trying to put together enough tidbits to justify their pre-determined story. It’s almost as if they know their audience of self-righteous baby boomers will eat up any story disparaging the awful students of today. It’s almost as if they’re intentionally pushing for anything to make us look bad.