Many of our country’s top journalists arrived in London after the Queen’s death to find not much actually happening. Hayden Donnell looks at the extreme lengths they went to to find new angles to cover.
As news broke of the death of Queen Elizabeth II, everyone responded in their own way. Millions grieved a beloved monarch. Others pointed out she was the figurehead of a genocidal colonial regime. New Zealand’s media executives, however, immediately logged onto Grabaseat to hoover up as many airline tickets as they could find. In the days following Buckingham Palace’s grim announcement, roughly 80% of Aotearoa’s journalists packed onto planes to London. They emerged at Heathrow bleary-eyed and ready to work, only to find little happening aside from most of Britain’s population forming an incredibly large queue leading up to a coffin.
This lack of developments in the story should have been predictable. Dead people are renowned for not doing much and the English are renowned for queueing. But being able to prepare for what was ahead didn’t make our journalists’ task any easier. Faced with the news reporting equivalent of Paul Holmes interviewing the Ingham twins, they had two options:
- Writing “Queen still dead, many waiting in line” for 10 days straight.
- Improvising.
Some went for the former option. 1News reporter Joy Reid went to the front of the queue at Westminster Hall and appeared to copy out the Thesaurus.com entries on ‘quiet’ and ‘sad’.
RNZ, meanwhile, opted to provide minute-by-minute updates on the length of the line.
Newshub went for the latter option. Its reporters fanned out across London and the wider United Kingdom, pouncing on anyone who looked like they’d ever shared a glance with a fringe royal.
AM host Melissa Chan-Green interviewed Terry Wilson, who once tried out to be the Queen’s hairdresser but didn’t get the job because the Queen’s actual hairdresser decided to stay on.
Samantha Hayes got Jacinda Ardern to describe a deeply intimate experience.
But Patrick Gower was a man unleashed. Just as the Ingham twins brought out the best in Holmes, a complete absence of actual content to cover only served to stir Gower’s creative impulses. He said “fuck” on an important news livestream.
He apologised for saying “fuck” on an important news livestream.
He got up close with royal swans and London’s corgis.
He hugged Samantha Hayes.
Back home, Gower’s colleagues were also working overtime to help fill the news void. While some outlets were awash in maudlin, uninspired updates, Newshub danced before the blank news canvas. In what will likely go down as a quantum leap forward for writing, and perhaps English itself, lifestyle editor Lana Andelane referred to King Charles’ red, swollen digits as “girthy grippers” in a story about an Auckland butcher selling “King Charles sausage fingers”.
The report was an inspiration to the team back in Britain. After covering the Queen’s coffin as it left Edinburgh for London, Gower turned his own eyes to the new King’s girthy grippers, wandering off into a field muttering something about wanting to find Charles’ favourite gloves.
His path led him to a town called Muker, where he drank Yorkshire gold tea.
And eventually found the gigantic mitts.
Gower’s crosstown rivals at the state broadcaster TVNZ sent fewer people to London, forcing them to search for local angles on an overseas news story which wasn’t producing any angles where it was actually happening. Seven Sharp seemed to deal with that conundrum by writing the word “Queen” on a whiteboard, doing word association for 12 straight hours, and scouring the country for any content relating to the resulting ideas. It tracked down the owner of a manky old blanket the Queen had sat on in the 1960s, went to a park named after the Queen in Masterton, and interviewed someone who breeds the Queen’s favourite type of dog, corgis.
That latter segment had little to do with the Queen but did provide some interesting details on the conjugal habits of two corgis named Heath and Raven. Though the canine pair have their hands full with three daughters, breeder Paula Mitchener said she’d “do that liaison again and have another litter”. “There you go Heath, something to look forward to,” replied Sacha McNeil.
This clearly proved a hit with viewers. When the time finally came for the Queen to be laid to rest, presenter Jeremy Wells promised them more dog content in the post-funeral future. “On the show tomorrow, the visual spectacle that is dachshund dog racing,” he said, continuing: “Simon and Hilary are up next with coverage of the state funeral of her majesty Queen Elizabeth the second.”
Even after Queen Elizabeth’s casket was lowered into the ground, and the mournful bagpipes faded into the distance, the content kept coming. RNZ’s flagship news show Morning Report aired three unbroken hours of royal news on the day following the funeral. National had just released its report on the past indiscretions of Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell. Morning Report didn’t care. It shrugged off a scandal in the party likely to form New Zealand’s next government to air no fewer than 15 separate packages on the Queen, including a Te Aroha Royal Museum owner’s final farewell to the Queen, a Waiuku church’s farewell to the Queen, the Defence Force’s farewell to the Queen, and a New Plymouth royalist’s reflections on the Queen.
The onslaught was unrelenting. Even the royalists were over it. On Stuff, the audience was clicking on Uffindell instead. I couldn’t take it any more either. In the third hour of Morning Report’s incessant prattling about royal paraphernalia, I shut my eyes and pictured myself wandering a verdant English field, toward a quaint little town, where I could glove up my girthy grippers and drink Yorkshire gold from a lovely teapot. As the yapping of corgis subsided, and the radio crackling became background noise in my brain, I found I could finally rest in peace.
