Media7 Blog 4 - 23 April
Welcome to the Media7 blog, where we'll provide background and links to material featured in the programme, along with other interesting media news.
23 April
This week's Media7 examines the media's handling of the Mangatepopo
canyoning tragedy, which - in large part because of the remarkable
openness of Elim Christian School - is already shaping up as a case
study in the reporting of public and private grief.
Our panel - Close Up's Mark Sainsbury, Herald on Sunday editor Shayne Currie and AUY journalism lecturer Graham Reid - talks about how the story broke, how it developed, and how it changed things.
One topic we didn't get to was the role of the often-maligned social networking site Bebo in the response to the tragedy.
Last Thursday, The Dominion Post published short biographies of each of the six teenage victims that were drawn (along with photos) at least partially from their Bebo profiles.
And schoolmates have set up a Bebo memorial page for their lost friends. It includes tributes and links to news coverage, individual Bebo profiles of the victims and now-poignant YouTube videos by Natasha Bray and Portia McPhail.
Also, we report - to the extent that we can - on the Listener's legal threat against a blogger.
Elsewhere, the new documentary Citizen McCaw tells the extraordinary story of the takeover of a California newspaper by a wealthy woman who turned it into a personal plaything.
And reports suggest that the new owner of the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, isn't shy about making his views known in the paper's newsroom.
