‘Je Suis Charlie’ and the New Zealand Media

On 7 January 2015 I learned a profound truth about New Zealand media.

My family and I had flown from Dublin to Paris on our way to Sweden where I had an appointment to interview a subject for my PhD. Stopping in Paris made sense to us because Paris has a Disneyland and our young man loves his Disneylands.

We took the metro from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the city and on the journey I realized that my phone had completely lit up. All of the new messages came from New Zealand and they all had the same theme: leave Paris now, you’re in danger, the city is on lockdown, there has been a terrorist attack and you are in danger, you should leave immediately because ‘danger, Will Robinson, danger.’

While I was grateful for the messages I had no idea what they meant as everyone in my life, as far as the eye could see, seemed to simply be going about their Parisian daily business without any visible hint of anxiety.

I logged onto the NZ Herald and Stuff sites and found extensive reports of a terrorist shooting at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo comic magazine here in Paris. Twenty or so staff had been killed or injured in what appeared to be a serious attack by Islamic radicals. The tone of the articles bordered on the hysterical and I began to become extremely concerned for the safety of my family.

Somewhat pacified by the calm nature of our surroundings, we went into the city centre like good tourists and, despite my anxieties about safety, we found a café on the Champs Élysées for a much needed coffee. I asked the proprietor if he was concerned about the terrorist attack because everyone we’d met seemed so unaffected by it. I told him about the messages I had received and the reports in the Herald and other New Zealand media outlets and he laughed. He said no one was concerned, the police and the military had everything under control, and that we should have a another croissant, another glass of wine, and that ‘they’ll find them this afternoon and shoot them then’.

And this is largely what happened.

Paris went about it’s business, tourists, including ourselves, went to the Eiffel tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre and we eventually found our way to our accommodation in Montmartre, a mere five kilometers from the site of the shootings. No one was talking about the attack, it was as though nobody cared. It was ‘all under control’ and life should continue uninterrupted. Even at our digs any attempt to find out more about the shootings was lost in the need to pay the bill and get the towels. Monsieur just wanted to get back to his tv and his sitcom so we got the Gallic bum’s rush.

Of course, back in New Zealand the media had gone nuts about ‘Je Suis Charlie’ which, in retrospect, taught me a valuable lesson: never trust New Zealand media to calmly and accurately report any issue that can just as effectively be catastrophised because the starting point is always totally over the top. Whether it’s a Charlie Hebdo shooting on the other side of the world or the only person in Pungarehu with a perceived gripe about vaccine mandates they’ll turn it into World War III hyperbole. It’s effective because it keeps us anxious and on the edge of our emotional seats as we await the next instalment of whatever soap opera they’re currently manufacturing but it’s ultimately a nasty, duplicitous, dangerous and dishonest cheat.

The proprietor of my new favourite café was right and a couple of days later dozens of police and military vehicles lined up on the Champs Élysées before driving off and finishing the job. Parisians then gave the finger to terrorism by holding a massive gathering attended by well over a million people on the following Sunday just to prove that they weren’t going to be shut down by something as pathetic as a tinpot terrorist attack. Not only did the City of Light organize the massive event but all the public transport for that day was free which meant no congestion in the city as people made their way to the party and home again. The event manager in me was mightily impressed.

Meanwhile, back in New Zealand, our media raved hysterically about the danger to New Zealanders of living in France during which time a million joyful Parisians partied hard.

Now we have COVID-19 and our media is doing the exact same thing and it’s déjà vu all over again.

Everywhere else in the world New Zealand is viewed as a shining light of logic, sanity, leadership and success while here in New Zealand our media does its best to rip everything down and turn every positive milestone into a nasty schoolyard scrap between ‘Cindy’ and middle-aged, coiffured Jill of Morrinsville – yes, her with the pastel frock and the handbag dog – who spouts on about the PM being a crass narcissist who does what she does solely for the fame and the magazine front pages and doesn’t love the farmers as she should.

The profound lesson I learned from the Charlie Hebdo shootings was a deep distrust of our media whenever it comes to rational and unemotional reporting. It mostly doesn’t exist. It’s anomaly journalism of the laziest sort, this exclusive platforming of the politically disaffected – read Ian Taylor – so, when consuming it as I inevitably do, I take the advice of my friend, the proprietor of the café on the Champs Élysées, I have another croissant, I pour myself another glass of our cheerful house red while I watch Al Jazeera and the History channel to somewhat balance my ragged emotional books.

Meanwhile, our media continues to exercise its inadequacy complex by turning every little thing into a drama of Chernobyl proportions as each of the many faux personalities fights to become the next – and most notorious – household media name. It’s sad, but as long as the bus is being driven by the Sopers, the O’Briens, the Mutch-McKays and the Hoskings, I don’t see anything changing any time soon.