I felt desperately sorry for the Abercrombie family yesterday. They were victims of yet another one of this country's shabby clickbait obsessions.
To read the headline you would have thought Mrs Abercrombie moaned about being in MIQ, and as a result was granted a very rare exemption to finish isolation at her home.
But that’s not the clickbait part. The clickbait part is that - the story started as a well-known sporting star, and their home was worth three million dollars. And their three-million-dollar home was in North Shore's most exclusive areas.
So, was the story about an exemption? Or about property? What it was really about, tragically yet again, was clicks.
Happy to be corrected, but my reading of events was that Stuff started it, the Herald ran with it, and Newshub picked it up.
The heart of the story is that the Abercrombie family deal with kids with autism. They were stuck in a place, a MIQ facility that couldn’t, nor should it, be expected to deal with such circumstances. There was a safety issue at play.
It was a medical exemption, it made sense it was granted.
By the time it reached TV last night, Tom had spoken. He spoke eloquently of what happened, why it happened, and why it had nothing to do with privilege, wealth, fame, or the size of your house. It was medical, his kids need help, and the government saw fit to assist.
Beginning, middle, and end.
At some point, and I am hoping, that this story just might be it. Certain parts of the media, namely the digital media who spend their days so obsessed with headlines, attention seeking nonsense, and hyperbole might just realise that they are doing themselves a massive disservice.
This cheap, superficial, and in this case, nasty attempt to draw readership comes at the expense of a family's predicament that, need I even begin to suggest, we would not wish on anyone.
Their house, its size, its value, or its location is of no consequence. The fact they got an exemption should be praised, not relegated to yet another tawdry headline grab for attention
It's petty, cheap, and salacious rubbish.
Is being obtuse really worth readership? Is insulting, attacking, and insinuating inflammatory detail really worth a headline? Is this as good as we can be?
If the answer to any of those questions is yes, I give up, we're buggered.
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