Five New Zealand news items you shouldn't read

AN almost endearing feature of life in New Zealand is that the small quirky news item, once preserved for the very end of local-news magazine programmes in the UK but now replaced with a yoof-crime feature, is alive and well. And, as far as I can tell, taking up at least 75% of the time that should be spent reporting international affairs.

So while half the world is robed in surgical gowns and face masks battling unseen battalions of swine flu, and the other half is worried that North Korea's about to lob plutonium bombs at California, Kiwis are happy to read that the naked man found running through the Mount Victoria bus tunnel at three in the morning won't be prosecuted because he had no clothes on and was a bit simple... really?

The whimisical coverage whisks me back to 1970s England, huddled round the box just before a power cut, when charming TV like Nationwide revealed such gems as the gym-obsessed 90-year-old smoker proclaiming he had puffed forty a day since the midwife handed him a Rothman's at birth, the skateboarding duck, and Richard Stilgoe's amusing songs about washing up liquid.

NZ news coverage today has a lot in common with Nationwide. So by way of illustration, here are five national news items you shouldn't see because there are other more important things going on:

• The man who taped himself to a billboard.
• A Frenchman given a lift to a game of rugby. (Heaven forbid!)
• A cat that "nearly" got on a ship.
• The blocked toilet that delayed a medical procedure.

And then there's my personal favourite from a few weeks ago when the front page of a weekend broadsheet was dedicated to a story about a fish eating an insect.

Does this mean we shouldn't make time for the trivial and humourous. No not at all. I would be the first to congratulate Nationwide and join them in a slap-up duck dinner with after-meal ciggies. (In the spirit of the seventies you understand).

But when the international section of the weekend papers amounts to a mere three pages and that is interrupted by an above-the-fold Noel Leaming advert for staplers, I begin to wonder if I'm missing something... like half a brain, perhaps.

Comments

[Juli Ryan]

I admit it. I like the lack of international news coverage. I may be half-brained, but I'm not as anxious and worried as I used to be.

[Domestic Executive]

We gave up on newspapers and get the Listener, international Guardian and Spectator instead. We bought the weekend papers for a change and because the Dim Post had a redesign but it still no longer than 20 minutes to read. Thank the Lord for the Internet.

[Sarah]

I rarely buy the newspaper, preferring the Internet - but do pick it up for free at Te Papa and Wellington Zoo (which I frequent weekly on account of being a stay-at-home-Mum). I agree with Juli, in that I also don't feel as anxious. It's actually nice to read a paper in five minutes and have a few 'humour' articles than all serious, doom and gloom. However, I do miss the Sunday papers and leafing through them over a cuppa (not that I have much time for that these days!).