Philip Matthews reports in The Press (presumably – I can’t find it online but it was in tonight’s Waikato Times) on how social-media reporting of the Christchurch earthquake beat the MSM:
Even the prime minister got news of the quake by text message, from his sister in Sumner.
The day after the quake, John Key appeared on TV1’s Q + A programme and said:
“The first word [of the text] actually rhymed with ‘truck’ but I won’t bother saying it on TV, and then the rest of it carried on from there. When I rang her on the phone, she said it wasn’t like those earthquakes we had when we were kids and the glass rattled off the end of the dining room table. This was a major.”
The interviewer, Paul Holmes, went on: “So the word that rhymed with truck gave you an idea of the seriousness of this earthquake that was happening in Christchurch?”
Key: “Well, she doesn’t normally text me at 4.41 in the morning.”
What a totally natural New Zealandy voice. I can’t imagine any of his predecessors, on either side of the great divide, ever doing that.
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