Misleading headlines
August 29th, 2009 at 10:15 am by David FarrarWhen you see the Weekend Herald proclaim “Nats’ chief helps in fraud probe” you automatically think he may be in some way involved with an alleged fraud, and/or criminal wrong-doing.
In reality it transpires he is an indirect victim having lent $100,000 to a friend who invested with a man who seemingly is being investigated by the SFO.
It would have been nice if the headline reflected this, assuming that what has been reported is al there is to the story. To be honest seems a non-story to me.
In another Herald story, they profile Goodfellow’s baptism of fire. An interesting tidbit:
It is a rare glimpse: his now 92-year-old father, Douglas Goodfellow, has never given a public interview.
The family have managed to keep their low profile despite wealth and philanthropy on a massive scale – a Listener article from 1996 detailed how Douglas Goodfellow gave away $285 million to various unknown charities, the largest gift in New Zealand history at the time.
Goodness, that is a huge amount of charity, and done very quietly it seems.
The family are 16th on the NBR rich list with an estimated wealth of $550 million from interests ranging across fishing, finance and agricultural chemicals. The mild-mannered Mr Goodfellow – often compared to Ned Flanders from The Simpsons because of his moustache – told the Weekend Herald that recent weeks had been “difficult”.
I hadn’t heard the Ned Flanders nickname before, but sadly for Peter can see it catching on 
Asked if the factional politics of the National Party in Auckland are “vicious” given the early pressure on his presidency, Mr Goodfellow prefers the word “robust”.
Ha, that is a euphemism!
He became the family’s first activist with the Young Nationals in the 1970s.
He recalled Tamaki MP and Prime Minister Rob Muldoon collecting him early one morning for an Anzac Day dawn service.
Good God. That could have been very traumatic!
Related posts:
- Sunday News on National
- Public show of support for Goodfellow
- A beat up
- Bhatnagar on misleading headline
August 29th, 2009 at 10:27 am
DPF:
Vote:Headline writing is an art — you’re trying to compress a whole story into perhaps fewer than half-a-dozen words, and within the space limits you’re given.
You can’t tell everything.
I got the same impression as you when I saw the head, but the story quickly make clear that he was a victim.
I don’t think it was deliberately misleading. Sometimes these things happen, and there are many subeditors down the years who have looked at a headline later and seen how they could do it differently.
August 29th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Any chance of someone out there telling us what this guy’s politics are FFS???
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Genuine charity is done in secret. Otherwise there can be a suspicion of another agenda.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Alas, once you become “topical” the most trivial things about you become newsworthy. This happened to Melissa Lee. Once her alleged bloopers became topical the media ran stories on trivial imperfections that would normally have been ignored.
And TripeWryter is right about the headline-writing. As a subeditor myself I know what he says is true.
I expect that Mr Goodfellow will be very good at keeping his head down (a family trait) and the silliness will evaporate over time.
As for the Ned Flanders nickname, is it so bad? Despite Flanders’ silliness on some matters he is a fundamentally good and generous man – and that goodness shines through everything he does. There could be far worse nicknames than Ned Flanders.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I can’t say I share your concerns about the headline, DPF. Reading it, it didn’t strike me as sinister at all. True, the verb “help” does imply he has some link to the alleged fraud. But he does, even though only indirect. If the headline writer wanted to cast suspicion/blame on him, many other better verbs could have used: “implicated”, “caught up”, “involved”. To help is probably one of the most benign words that could have been chosen.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Whenever you hear it reported that “John Doe is helping police with enquiries”, it is generally their code for saying “We are now talking to the suspect”. I read the headline in the same light – and the article soon spelt out he was a victim, but I did think the headline was misleading.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Re Trypewriter at 10.27….
Surely the headline writer isn’t alone in this. My understanding is that completed pages are checked later in the production process, and that other staff check early copies of the newspaper off the press.
Where alleged fraud is reported on, journalists must know they need extra care. If not, it’s time to check the several tertiary production lines than oversupply a small market with journalists.
I get the feeling the newspaper I read has a bias towards the Left, and thus I find it hard to accept that the heading identified by DPF is a genuine slip.
Vote:August 29th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
As I will be posting over at my place are two things.
Vote:First, the family’s embarassment of riches, making John Key look poverty stricken by comparison.
And that is ex is American from a family of lawyers!
I do hope the family assets are well protected.