Sheep slaughter ‘over the top’ —TV editor

Press, 1 November 1985, Page 3

Sheep slaughter ‘over the top’ —TV editor

Some television coverage of the Mayfield sheep slaughter on Wednesday evening’s “Eye-witness News” was “over the top,” according to the programme’s executive editor, Mr Paul France. “Some of the shots showed it in rather more detail than what was needed,” he said. The item, which was about three minutes long, showed blood vessels in a sheep’s neck being cut and the spinal cord being severed. Dumping of the lartly beheaded sheep nto a trench was also shown. “Basically as far as we are concerned we erred by not warning viewers about the content of the item,” said Mr France. A warning should have been given in the first instance and some of the more graphic film should have been cut, he said. However, it was difficult to decide what to cut out in such an item.

“Whatever we had done we would have upset some people,” said Mr France. It was a staged demonstration and Television New Zealand had been invited along to show people how it went, he said. A TVNZ spokesman, said 11 complaints about the proijramme had been received in Wellington, and he estimated that substantially more would have been received in Auckland. Callers jammed the switchboard at 3ZB during a talkback about the television coverage yesterday morning. The show’s host, Mr George Balani, said the feel-

ing of callers was volatile and that many felt the coverage was in very poor taste. Some people felt that farmers had damaged their cause by having the slaughter shown on television, he said. About 3000 ewes were slaughtered arid dumped in a trench by farmers protesting about the low prices > they receive for sheepmeat. Mr Alan Grant, chairman of the group that organised the protest slaughter, said that he had been in Wellington yesterday and had not heard of much adverse reaction.

“My wife had one or two telephone calls today; some were for it and some, against,” Mr Grant said. A lot of farmers had wanted things to be a lot more graphic. “I appealed to television that I did not wish the gore and the shocking parts of the event to be emphasised.” Mr Grant said that he had expected television coverage, to be worse than it was because the film unit seemed to take “miles of film of gore and blood” and had at one stage held a microphone close to a sheep’s throat to get the noise it made as it died. “For a farmer this sort of thing (the killing) is normal but a lot of town people would find it worse,” Mr Grant said. The “Eye-witness News” showing should have been more like that on the 6.30 p.m. news which showed no blood, he said.

“I think that even without the blood it was shocking enough for the town person.”