An Unfortunate Accident

Yesterday I heard the killing of Jhia Te Tua described as an unfortunate accident. Setting apart for the moment the fact that very few accidents are, to my knowledge, any less than unfortunate, let’s look at the phrase and how it was used and abused.

The killing of baby Jhia may have been unfortunate (though that is an obscene belittling if this tragedy) but accident it definitely was not. Whilst nobody, killers included, could possibly say there was intent to kill the two-year-old it is entirely wrong to say it was accidental. The drive-by shooting of that house in Wanganui was a deliberate and planned action—probably indefensible. Therefore the result of that action cannot by definition be termed an accident, but it was described as such.

To be frank, I didn’t think about that too much. But there was the other big and tragic event of the week—the killing of two girls in Christchurch by the actions of an enraged party goer. What I found here was a degree of similarity between the two events, yet a curiously different way in which they were perceived and described.

In the Christchurch tragedy, the intent was to create mayhem, there was deliberation and, deliberately or not, people died. In that, it is no different from the Wanganui killing. But I am yet to hear the killing of those two Christchurch girls described as an accident. What is the difference? I would hate to think it is race-based and that the apologists for all things Maori are again on the march. But I don’t think it is that. I think it is instead someone just getting caught up in the emotion of the moment and making a silly and platitudinous statement. Anybody who is questioned by the media is in danger of doing it. I have done it and will do so again.

That’s one point.

But then I wondered if in fact anybody had said it at all! All too often the media in this country, lacking imagination or energy, will simply make up a quote or a headline based impurely on what they THINK may be the case. Let me give you an example. Whether it occurred or not in the Wanganui case I don’t know. But I could point to a thousand examples of it definitely happening in similar cases. Imagine the opening of the television bulletin thus: “Wanganui is in shock tonight at the killing of Baby Jhia.” Is Wanganui? Really? Did a reporter actually go out and find some resident who said “I am in shock?” Unlikely. Even if they did find someone, does that person represent all of Wanganui?

I know that seems an insensitive argument, and I am wrestling here to state where I am coming from. So, I’ll use another example too often heard: “Maori are angry…” Excuse me? These days Maori is an all-embracing term. Chances are the “Maori” who are angry are actually a diminutive group of disaffected activists lacking recent attention. Yet (all) Maori are angry.

Do you get the point? It is too easy for lazy and unimaginative media to come up with these statements without any real foundation for them. Moreover, they seem to trot them out with abandon. Normally, it shouldn’t matter and maybe I am being too pedantic. But to report the shooting of a two-year-old as an unfortunate accident, whether actually said or not, is nothing short of a shameful disgrace.

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