Len Brown's Letter To Manukau

Make me famous

“South Auckland” received another full frontal media assault this week - this time through the international media outlet, TIME magazine. TV1 news took their lead from TIME and produced an investigation piece over two nights. If you saw the coverage you will have noticed that they presented nothing that we don’t already know. It does however raise a serious concern about the purpose of this coverage.

When you ask the question who benefits from this sort of journalism there is no doubt that apart from selling magazines and boosting the TV ratings, the other key players who benefit are the gang leaders who are featured in print and on the screen. We are making them famous and making their gangs famous by giving them such extreme media coverage.

You may remember the media glorification of the Stormtroopers around twenty years ago. This is the same phenomenon and it is not OK for our community and it is not OK for our young people as it simply raises the mana of gangs in a way that their members are promoted as cool multi-media stars. We need the opposite message, namely that the gangsta image is not cool; it’s bad for our kids, their futures, their families and our communities.

I do not subscribe to the view portrayed on screen and in print that you do the crime and then you do the time on national TV and the international print media!

Time to balance freedom of expression with community good

There has to be a judgment by national level media at least, to actively promote community good in its reporting difficult social issues. This is a priority and a standard that applies to the reporting of community events.

The facts are that there has been and continues to be significant government resources and massive community commitment devoted to reducing gang influence, crime and the drugs culture. Cheap snapshots and smart sound bites are not good enough any more. We need the media to be a part of the answer rather than an unwelcome part of the problem.
Our real stars

It is not compulsory for our kids to wear bandanas and parrot gangsta rap to star in the media. Our towns are the wellspring of some of the country’s greatest young sporting, musical and academic talent. The challenges we have relate to 1% of our youth.

I challenge the media to put our great young talent on show, our future All Blacks, opera stars, scientists and entrepreneurs. They need to join our communities in holding up a mirror to the many positive role models that currently exist.

Media - make a choice, help us to make a community culture change, be a part of setting our kids up for a great life! I urge them and us all to make our real stars famous and leave those American mimics to the fate that we are all working towards, their rapid decline in interest and eventual demise.

Len Brown,

Mayoral Candidate, Manukau City,2007.

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