Both print and television news media are feeling greatly relieved today in spite of a severe weather event that would usually create unpalatable amounts of work.
A violent storm that tore through Auckland last night and brought winds of up to 160km in some areas threatened to inundate journalists with jobs to do and emails from residents who had witnessed something tipping over.
But much to the relief of national media, they had already done all of us this last month, when a similar storm ripped through the same area.
“We were a little bit worried this morning,” remarked Jacki Cook, a producer for TV One’s Breakfast Programme. “Big storm, usually means you have to drive a lot of places, take a lot of pictures of the same thing, stand in front of moving rivers, trees, more trees.”
“Trees,” she added.
“We were so relieved, of course, when we discovered we already had so much footage from last time.”
Approximately 90% of footage from this morning’s episode of Breakfast was recycled from June, including a “live” segment of Peter Williams standing outside a home that had been damaged by falling trees.
“Obviously that created a slightly awkward moment when we cut back to Peter at the news desk,” said Cook. “But you know, I’d say it went pretty smoothly overall.”
Television wasn’t the only medium benefiting from last month’s coverage, as print media also recycled stories and pictures from the previous storm.
“Last night we ran a story about 26,000 without power north of Auckland. It was actually just a story from a month ago, but no one really noticed,” said New Zealand Herald editor Tim Murphy. “We don’t know the real number without power this time, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? People just like to see numbers. They trust numbers.”
Meanwhile, Stuff.co.nz told news media it was “fully prepared” to cover the storm with stock images, but was “unsure” whether it was as newsworthy as footage of a tiny snake attempting to escape a sieve.
Today’s media holiday comes just two weeks after both TV One and TV3 were forced to acknowledge that all their footage from Syria was actually from the 2003 War in Iraq, and just two months in advance of plans to cover this year’s election with footage and commentary from the last one.