Fighting in Flaxmere

Yesterday is a day in the life of Hastings and Flaxmere that I would rather forget. I awoke to news of brawl involving up to 200 people in Flaxmere. Without knowing any details, like most local people and more particularly as a leader, I was horrified.

As I quickly gained advice on what had happened it soon became clear that the scale and seriousness of the incident had been seriously exaggerated. Yes there was a fight, yes there were seven arrests and, yes, a police officer required stitches.

All of this was bad, but not nearly as bad as the way in which I watched the news media from around the country descend on one of our suburbs, like bees to a honey pot. I had more radio and TV interviews in a day than ever before in what I can only describe as a major media beat up.

You see, the media love sensationalising anything because it improves the ratings. They walk over anything to get an angle or view which gets the headlines.

The facts of the matter are these. A fight occurred between 6 boys. Two police officers intervened and one of the officers was punched by a 7th boy. Extra police were called and quickly dispersed the 200-odd people that were watching.

My point is this. Every week there are school fights somewhere in New Zealand. These fights are usually watched by onlookers.

The headlines that were quickly, but incorrectly, formed indicated 200 youths were involved in a brawl. Very quickly this developed into a national view that this had happened.

The media is very powerful, but in this case significantly sensationalised an event and harmed a community. As a consequence Hastings, Flaxmere and the two schools were engulfed in very negative publicity which is all bad. To my mind, the most serious part of all this was the fact that a 14-year-old boy hit a Police officer. Yet that is hardly mentioned in the stories. Maybe because we, as a society, think that sort of thing is ok. It certainly is not.


Those are my thoughts for the week.

I’m Lawrence Yule.