National Character. What is it? Why?

New Zealand’s evening news led with a story about a Kiwi couple who were rescued from a yacht that had been bashed about in 14 metre waves (down to 1 metre waves today). This story has been the main story for the last two days.

The next most important’ news was the earthquake in Pakistan, India etc (the news actually said South Asia, a term alien to me, I am more familar with the term ‘the Indian subcontinent’).

Prior to the earthquake the number one story was the murder of a German tourist/hitchhiker.

What makes our national character? Does the way the news is reported reflect/influence this?

To me, my countries recent news coverage says “OH LOOK! Hardy, Brave Kiwis and Super Rescuing Kiwis” and “Poor sad foreign people in major crisis (DAMN! No dead Kiwis to report…hmmmmm did we rescue anyone?”).

The reporting of the German tourist is most telling though. A German tourist murdered? In New Zealand? While hitch hiking? How could this be?? This murder has been reported as if it is the First Murder Ever. It obviously isn’t but the death of a foreign hitchhiker seems to make many NZers (or the press anyway) feel that our ‘clean, green, safe’ image is under threat.
This leads to my question, how much of our national character is formed by the media? Are we who we are or are we who the media tells us to be?

Are NZers really innovative and brave but unlucky in sport? Are Aussies happy-go-lucky but would kill to win? Is the Pommy govt bravely sychophantic whilst Poms are staunch and rebellious? Are Yanks as Ra-Ra as ‘my’ media tells me?

Would any other country have a movie premier as a top story on the news? The Fastest Indian buys into the NZ mindset so well, a NZer coming FIRST, a movie made about it AND a world premier in NZ (the only thing to have made it better would be Sam Neil in the lead role).

What do your news headlines say about your national character?

In America, each of us as individuals is who we are. But as a nation, we are increasingly what the media tell us to be. The thing is, both we and the media will deny it.

Americans’ image of themselves right now is generous, mighty, beleaguered, compassionate, bellicose, fun-loving, loyal, independent, angry, venal, free-thinking, simple-minded, competitive, jaded, postmodernist, soulless, pious, masculine, nurturing, rash, and proud of it all.

Most individual Americans, unless they’re at the extreme conformist or nonconformist ends of the bell curve, feel the culture breathing down their necks at times and wonder how “American” they really are.

I think that the media relate stories that will interest us, or that they think will interest us. I believe that the NZ national character influences what the media present, and that in turn reinforces our national character.

My personal opinion (as an expat NZer) is that NZ’s character is largely down to the fact that it is small, and geographically removed from most of the western world. We suffer, just a little bit, from “small man syndrome”. We are a little concerned about being insignificant and unnoticed.

The result is that we grab onto those things which we feel make us stand out. We value our “clean, green, image”, we rejoice when we can put together a rugby team from 4,000,000 people which can consistantly beat the rugby teams from countries with up to 30 times the population (never mind that rugby is not always the number one winter sport in those countries.)

Although we are not flag-waving-patriotic the way the US is, we are still a very patriotic bunch. We embrace those things that we feel other countries don’t provide. Our little country is supposed to be safe, beautiful, and populated by friendly people. When events occur that threaten that, it makes the news. The fact that we notice it making the news is a pretty good indicator that this type of thing (a backpacker murder) is a very rare event.

It is not unusual for minor local news to take precedent over more major foreign news in any country IMO. In fact I think that small countries like New Zealand tend to have much more foreign news content than larger countries simply because there is not so much of note happening locally.

YMMV

I don’t know the answer to this, and nobody else does either.

Are the media “opinion leaders” whose stories shape public opinion, or are they merely reflective of general public opinion, framing their stories to fit the public mindset in order to sell more papers and get higher ratings.

Obviously, it’s a little of both.

Here in the States, we’ve had a fairly popular president for awhile (although I have disliked him from Day 1). So, our press has been pretty soft on him for the most part.

Then Kartina hit, and his popularity took a tumble … and the war in Iraq has been going badly, too.

So, all of a sudden our press has started to show some teeth, and has begun to be critical of the Prez.

Are the media now taking on the role of “opinion leaders” – or are they merely engaging in the time-honoured tradition of kicking a man when he’s down? (And selling more newspapers in the process.)

In the end, your question cannot be answered definitively. But there is no shortage of PhD students enrolled in Media Studies or Mass Communication programs who are writing theses on the topic!

Ever see COPS?

Thats us, I’m afraid.

I was this close to starting a Master’s program in Media Studies at The New School in NYC. I went to the fall orientation meeting and everybody, but everybody, was either a hopelessly abstract communications theorist or a fashionably multi-culti social documentarian. I walked.

While I remain cynical as to the way our mass media here in New Zealand plays upon the base denominator in order to make a buck off the poor sheep who watch and listen to what they dish out, I think you’ve confused “ratings” and what the news editors think the public will be interested in, with “national character”, calm kiwi.

The Pakistan earthquake was big news over the weekend. Masses of time given over to it on the news. But the TV folk know that Kiwi compassion, while we are generous when it comes to disasters like Pakistan, works better for stuff closer to home. In the case of the German tourist, she was a guest here who was murdered. We have a sense of team spirit as part of the national character – and the murderer let the side down. Tourists here should be safe, we tell ourselves, as if this was still the 1950s, and the days of roaming wherever we pleased around this country of ours. It’s always a shock to realise that danger does lurk within our humanity here.

Innovative? Yes. Brave? Yes, but there are degrees of agreement to this, depending on the POV of the audience. Unlucky in sport? Nah. When we lose, we’re savage to our losing teams, always seeking a scapegoat. It’s a nasty side to our national character that, while we hail teamwork, applaud our successes, we are brutal to those who let the side down.

I got sucked in by the “happy-go-lucky, laid-back Aussie” myth, and the wake up call on that still resounds. I think that myth came through more from Aussie media seen here than the Kiwi version.

Maybe not. And now that kind of thing is a bit old, here. When the world noticed Sam Neill,we puffed up with pride. Peter Jackson? Likewise. All the fuss over Whale Rider thrilled the folks back home. But it’s a bit old hat, now. I think it was more a human interest story, rather than a “Look at us, look at us!!” thing.