Top stories on ONE News and 3 News tonight

ONE News:

1. Haiti earthquake (Live phone call to Jamaica)
2. John Key on Hillary Clinton visit
3. Exclusive interview with VISA spokesman on convenience fees (Live cross)
4. Accused police shooter fights name suppression
5. Nelson sunniest place in NZ, Whakatane complains

3 News:

1. Haiti earthquake
2. Fatal police chase (Breaking news, live cross)
3. John Key on Hillary Clinton visit
4. Prince William visit / Hillary Clinton visit / BDO
5. Warning against buying diesel vehicles

Commentary:

There was a stark contrast in the two bulletins’ coverage of the big story of the day: Haiti’s earthquake.  It occurred today just before 11am NZT.  Within a few hours, I could see a few little video clips online of the damage from the quake and interviews with people on the streets. When it came to tonight’s bulletin – over seven hours after the earthquake, ONE News only had rotating photos to show us, with phone interviews.  Absolutely no video of the aftermath or damage in Haiti.  3 News’ whole item was video, except for a couple of quick photos at the end.  There was an internet video interview during an aftershock as well as phone interviews.  When disasters strike, video is still the most powerful medium and seeing all those people walking the streets and hearing the chaos of noises brought home the reality of the earthquake.  Seeing people staring at the badly damaged palace will stick with me.  I was so disappointed that ONE News couldn’t bring any video footage.

Both bulletins covered John Key’s press conference before Hillary Clinton’s visit.

The exclusive interview with Sean Preston from VISA on ONE News didn’t tell me anything really eye-opening (it was more interesting to see how nervous he was, sweat beading on his forehead), just that VISA didn’t think retailers should charge a convenience fee when they had been absorbing the charges for years.

The diesel story seemed to be sourced from a press release from the Dog and Lemon guide, but I can’t find it online.

Haydn Jones’ Nelson/Whakatane story on ONE News was rather silly and seemed more suited for an item on Breakfast.  He held up flash cards of photos during the live cross (why there needed to be a live cross I don’t know).

3 News’ story about Prince Williams/Hillary Clinton/BDO all happening this weekend was full of a bit of fluff too (e.g. showing a Remuera jeweller’s rings in case the Prince wanted to buy an engagement ring).

Verdict: 3 News

The Haiti earthquake is one of the biggest stories of the year to date and 3 News had the far superior coverage.

What did you think of tonight’s news bulletins?

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Co-founder of Throng. Favourite TV shows recently: Homeland and The Newsroom.
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  • John Michaels

    You’ve got TV1/TV3 round the wrong way dude.

  • bobscoffee

    I think you have 3 News and ONE News around the other way. ONE News’ 5th story was completely stupid and certainly not deserving of its place. For a start it was once again presented by Haydn Jones and his stupid cards. It wasn’t even deserving of a live cross either.

    They’re also still going on about the convenience fees? They must be extremely desperate for a story

  • Rachel

    Fixed, thanks!

  • http://www.twitter.com/tinopai Ryan

    ONE word for ONE news: FAIL.

     

    (:

  • bobscoffee

    I just don’t really get ONE News. They quite often are the slowest at providing pictures of events, and when 3 News can even have a live cross to someone, in some cases ONE News can only manage a phone interview. Is ONE News just slow or incapable of getting access to footage as quickly as 3News?

  • regan

    3 News did say they were going to bring footage from the police chase but ended up saying it would be on Nightline at the end of the bulletin

  • regan

    It astounds me that TVNZ failed so epically with the Haitian earthquake story.

  • Dave

    Yeh they’re stretching things with the convenience fees.  Day 1 was good and a genuine example of a change in policy, but many of the fees they’ve talked about since then were actually in place before last year’s decision/settlement by the credit card companies.  And yes, I agree with bobscoffee about Haydn and his strange love of flash cards for a live cross.  I remember a bad one a year or two back where he walked down a hallway dropping photos as he went (can’t remember anything about the actual story tho!)

  • regan

    He reminds me of Ali Ikrum – who TV3 keep for the late night news

  • O

    My question is this: Why is One still rating so highly given that the general vertict thus far is that 3 is a superior product?

    From what I know, 3′s budget is miniscule compared to Ones. How can they be pulling out better stories time and time again?

    Would be very interesting to compare the TVNZ/TV3 websites for breaking news / news coverage.

  • regan

    Perhaps it’s just the time of the year. Perhaps all TVNZ’s journalists are still on holiday.  It’s been a fairly poor start to the year for their newsroom, that’s for sure.

  • bobscoffee

    TVNZ’s news site is still quite slow as well. They don’t have as many news articles as other news sites such as 3news, NZ Herald and Stuff. They’re also very obsessed with Twilight.

  • monreve

    does hydn jones thinks he’s nob dylan with his annoying card dropping thing and his lisp … he should have sub titles on his pieces .

  • newshound

    Just to add a little information to the uninformed comments on this site. In any foreign disaster far from New Zealand news networks are at the mercy of their foreign affiliates.

    Typically TV3 subscribe to Reuters, TVNZ to APTN, so on this occasion Reuters probably had resources/cameras in Haiti and APTN did not. Hence why TV3 had video and TVNZ did not.

    It has nothing to do with the resources in New Zealand. On occassions this works the other way when TVNZ has content from APTN that Reuters does not.

    Hope this helps the second guessing and speculation.

  • Margot

    I used to work in the media overseas.. and maybe the ONE News/3 News thing for the earthquake was about which agency they get their pictures supplied by. They might have different contracts with different companies.. and sometimes some agencies have more to supply, depending on the story and their resources in particular countries.

  • Margot

    It seems newshound and I were thinking the same thing at the same time! :)

  • regan

    I totally get that there are issues around sourcing international content from various providers but are you telling me that our state broadcaster couldn’t source one piece of footage from any of their foreign affiliates?  After seven hours, there was nothing available?

    If that’s the actual excuse then that begs an even bigger question.  Why does TVNZ only have second rate affiliate connections?

  • Rachel

    Obviously the footage was all going to be supplied by other agencies.  TVNZ was let down, and so ONE News viewers were let down.  At the end of the day, their coverage was what it was – nothing compared to 3 News.

  • Jason
    The reason 3 News had much better coverage on the Haiti earthquake than One News, is because TV3 subscribes to both Reuters and APTN news agencies.  One News subscribes to APTN only.
     
    Reuters comprehensively beat APTN on video out of Haiti so 3 News had a clear advantage.
     
    3 News is much better resourced in this area.  Maybe One News is skimping on foreign coverage to save money?
  • bobscoffee

    Newshound I wouldn’t call these uninformed comments, I would call them legitimate complaints.

  • Rachel

    So my question now is: given that ONE News played CNN video tonight, does that mean CNN did not have any video footage of Haiti before 6pm yesterday?

  • Rachel

    A side note: this is a fascinating insight into Sky News coverage of Haiti’s earthquake and this is an incredible before/after photo from Google Earth.

  • regan

    Having seen Thursday nights coverage on One News with footage from CNN the question I now have is did CNN also not have footage for 7 hours?

  • regan

    And that’s what you get for taking 10 minutes to hit save!

  • bobscoffee

    That was an interesting blog post Rachel. If that’s how Sky did it, surely it must’ve been possible for ONE News or 3 News to have done something simliar? How difficult is it to search through Twitter and Facebook? I sometimes wonder if they just look up Google News for their news.