Fresh from controversy over its coverage of psychics in the Aisling Symes case, TVNZ is deciding whether to buy another series of Sensing Murder – the commercially successful show that has been caught in a company receivership. …

TVNZ says it will not make a decision on another series until it has shown the one that it has “in the can” sometime next year.

I really hope they do not. The program feeds on human misery and tragedy, and promotes fakes who make money out of tragedy and gullibility. It has no redeeming quality.

It is thus deeply disappointing to see the Dominion Post giving a huge promotion to this hokum, with a front page splash on Friday claiming the police “have resorted to interviewing two television psychics in a desperate search for a new lead” into the suspected murder of Kaye Stewart, not seen since she went walking in Rimutaka Forest Park in 2005.

Reading this breathless, shoddy story (which took up two thirds of page one), it is apparent that it was Sensing Murder that approached the police offering information about Mrs Stewart, and then told the Dominion Post that the police had “interviewed” its “psychics” Kelvin Cruickshank and Deb Webber.

The story is nothing more than a front page, free advertisement for this shonky show, which is to feature an episode about Mrs Stewart on Tuesday night. One thing is certain, the show has not helped the police inquiry in any way …

The headline was very misleading. It made you think the Police has called in the psychics because they thought they could help.

I flayed Sensing Murder back in January, with a post about Christchurch man Tony Andrews offering $20,000 of his own money to any of the shows “psychics” if they could demonstrate in a simple test that they actually had psychic abilities. Naturally, neither the show nor its four “mediums” – who also include Sue Nicholson and Scott Russell Hill – have shown any interest in taking the test, because, I argued, they know they are perpetrating a cruel sham. “They have the psychic powers of tadpoles, and they know it,” I wrote then.

I’ll believe in such powers when they pass a controlled test such as the one above. But believing these charlatans have some sort of power because of Sensing Murder, is like believing David Copperfield really can cast magical spells because of his TV shiw.