National’s billboard botch-up

I spent a couple of hours driving from Auckland to Whangarei last Friday towards the end of a whistle-stop visit home. I’d been paying close attention to the various party billboards over the week and on balance had already given the billboard battle to Labour – despite early missteps.

I know a lot of bloggers got off on the National billboard campaign, contributing new ideas and such, and they also got the thumbs up from AUT lecturer Dave Bibby. But, at the risk of being a lone dissenter, as I was heading north I became more and more convinced their entire approach is misconceived.

Both major parties are using attack ads. There aren’t any punches being pulled on either side. However, one side, Labour, barely even acknowledges the other as a valid alternative while National has devoted half of each of its billboards to advertising its competition.

The National billboards not only sign over half of their space to Labour branding, they also carry a picture of Helen Clark. At first this seemed reasonable – if you are going to attack you have to show who you are attacking. But more and more as the miles (sorry, kilometres) slipped away it began to dawn on me how wrong this was.

In the first few days of a campaign people read the billboards but pretty soon they become background noise. When you are driving, they are always background noise. I had to keep reminding myself whose ads the National billboards were. Who were they advertising again?

The Labour billboards are not universally good. Some are effective and some aren’t. But what they do have in common is not conceding one inch (sorry, centimetre) of space to advertising National. No National colour, no picture of Don Brash. You are never in any doubt whose ads they are with each ending with the simple message: “You are better off with Labour”.

When I arrived in Whangarei the Northern Advocate was talking about Helen Clark’s recent visit. It was just after she appeared to have claimed the initiative by promising zero per cent student loans. Up north she was promising more surprises.

I have to say, too, that I heard the phrase “transformation leadership” being applied to Don Brash while I was over there. That would be fair enough, if he did more than promise tax cuts. There’s nothing very transformational about promising tax cuts when that’s exactly what everybody expects from both him and from National.

It’s more of the same.

For now, the parties are pretty much neck and neck. There’s a lot of policy yet to come and a long way to go in the campaign. But so far National has been predictable. They need to start surprising.

That "T" word

You know you are back in New Zealand when there are bombs going off all around the world and The New Zealand Herald's editorial is about the colour of the paving in Vulcan Lane.

I flew in on Saturday having read The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian on the plane, and picked up the local paper when I landed. There was a big wrap-around section on the London bombings, but the editorial, well, you know ...

The poor leader writer did his or her best to instill the story with the kind of significance it needed in such a week. It was not just about paving stones, but a "wider malaise", said the Herald. Hell, the issue was comparable to recent events in the European Union!

"As in the case of the European referendum, the politicians and their bureaucratic servants (or is that the other way round?) were convinced that they had done their best to bring their constituents onside. The uproar shows how wrong they were and whether Vulcan Lane stays vaguely pink or goes blue, that lesson ought to be learned."

Indeed.

On Monday the paper carried a far more interesting piece, from The Observer, titled "Give the crime its true name" by Nick Cohen. This piece (which is better in the original) like many recent blog posts, picked up the latest BBC-beating meme about how the broadcaster refused to use the word "terrorist" in relation to the London bombers.

The BBC has a policy which, strangely, requires reporters to use words which specifically describe the perpetrators of a crime. So "terrorist" is out and "bomber" is in. Cohen, in a complex argument that I am not doing justice here, describes this as "castrated language".

Accuracy is of course something reporters strive for. It's really quite an important concept in what they do. I was taught, for instance, that you never use constructions such as "Mr XXX believes ..." Why? Because nobody knows what Mr XXX believes except Mr XXX. All a reporter knows is what Mr XXX says. If he doesn't say it, you can't report it.

You can report what he says, what he does, and what others say about him, but you can't report what he believes.

What has that got to do with the "T" word?

Well, you may know someone has set off a bomb, and is therefore a bomber, but to know they are a terrorist, you have to know why they set off the bomb. Considering the bomber's brain is splattered all over a train or a bus this can be hard to ascertain, no matter how obvious it may seem on face value.

When you abandon such tried and true principles you can get some very odd results. Take the headline I read while flying in in The Australian: "Five police bullets end it all for train bomber who tried again".

That "train bomber who tried again" turned out to be a Brazilian electrician. Much more BBC, and more accurate as it turned out, was The Sydney Morning Herald's "Bomb suspect shot dead on London tube".

Were the people who killed over 50 people in the underground terrorists? Certainly. Should reporters eagerly throw the "T" word around? Should they ascribe motives to people rather than accurately report their actions? Should they assume guilt on the basis of statements from those in authority?

Certainly not.

I wandered up Durham Lane today and saw the blue paving stones proposed for Vulcan Lane. For what it's worth, Auckland, they look okay to me.

(Disclosure: Rob O'Neill works for The Sydney Morning Herald)