Brian Rogers Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

Our quest for a slogan for Tauranga took a shocking twist this week when the floundering TVNZ Breakfast show focused on our campaign.

Morning TV, which has gone to wrack and ruin since the departure of Paul Henry, showed again that its selection of reporters from the national pool of journalists is consistently dipping into the shallow end.
The television show helped itself to a screenshot of our slogan story, from our instant daily news website, SunLive. Then, made up a story they thought might match it. Bizarre.
Award-winning, veteran reporter Janet Wilson recently wrote that TV One's journalists were 'all tits and teeth” with no talent (Janet called her blog ‘Adjust your Set'.)
This week's reporting of our slogan campaign confirms that Janet still has an iron-fisted grasp on what makes good reporting. And bad.
Breakfast would appear to have gone to not wrack, but racks, and ruin.
Here at the Sun we call it the Gnashers/Knockers/Nous ratio. It's particularly out of balance in the case of reporters who fail:
1. To acknowledge the owner of the photograph and obtain copyright permission.
2. To get the story anywhere near factual.
3. To even lift the telephone once to make an effort to find out.
4. Report a story about Tauranga, live from the streets of… Auckland.
We can see that the ‘Nous' factor is seriously overshadowed by other attributes.
Without any permission to reproduce the copyright photograph, or even a courtesy call to mention it, the programme then proceeded to guess what the story was about. The Tits and Teeth Team didn't bother to actually read the column to find out, or call us to ask – just mislead the nation with a story they made up – assisted by the equally inept Petra and the befuddled Corin.
Petra went on to suggest the photo wasn't real.
You'd think the first rule of journalism, getting your facts right, would have applied here. A quick phone call to the 'newspaper columnist” (whom they clearly didn't figure out, had a name and actually owned the paper) would have happily divulged all they wanted to know about the ‘Tempt Me Tauranga' campaign of the 90s and the raunchy bodybuilder photos organised by Jo Ferris and taken by me at Fernland Spa.
But no. It seems that TV One's level of investigative journalism doesn't even extend to finding our phone number, printed on the same page as the photograph.
Oh dear.
We tried calling the ‘reporter' this week for a comment, after all, good journalism is about balance and doing the best to get facts right and both sides of the story. However, she wasn't returning calls.
It gets worse. Tits and Teeth presented the made-up story about our photograph, on an Auckland street.
Whatever happened to reporting from the scene? Why, if they're pretending to report (condescendingly) from 'the provinces” did they not manage an outside broadcast from the city in question – Tauranga? Residents here would love to have given them their views on the slogan issue.
Answer: Because TVNZ appear to not give a Fat Rodent's Backside about anything happening south of the Bombays.
Let's not venture south into the Boondocks. One wouldn't want to stray too far from the comfort of one's favourite latte shop, or heaven forbid, the hair salon.
It's typical TV One reporting, constantly weighted towards an Auckland bias, which the rest of the nation is thoroughly sick of. This was covered in an earlier RR column, ‘The Chauvinism of Auckland'.
So here at RR we've allocated a new slogan for Auckland: ‘NOWHERE ELSE MATTERS'.
We've also decided that if it's okay for TV One to help themselves to our photography, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
So we've flogged a screenshot off their website, of T&T team member Alison Pugh.
No good at news, but would probably look okay in a torn ‘Tempt Me Tauranga' T-shirt.

One door opens, another opens
Not quite how the old saying goes, but this week has been quite a drama with doors for a friend of mine.
The trouble started at the petrol station. After filling up, he was waiting for the automatic doors to open to get inside the station to pay. After about half a minute of standing like an idiot, it dawned that the doors weren't automatic at all.
The sign ‘push' next to the handle was a clue here.
After successfully negotiating the doorway, paying for the fuel and exiting the station, the next stop was the medical centre.
After finding a handy park near the entrance, he walked briskly towards the double doors and reached out for the right hand one. Unfortunately he was hit on the head by the left hand one, swinging open automatically.
Luckily he was at the medical centre and could be treated on the spot. Some days it's hard to get it all right.