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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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Veteran journalist Frank Haden has had plenty of hobbyhorses to ride
in his pursuit of common sense. By Mike Crean. -------------------- Frank Haden would love to write
one last column. It would be about the need for the world to face up to its
problems honestly. It would be about Earth rushing
headlong toward total depletion of energy resources, while people allow
official "bullshit" to deflect them from the obvious answer of
nuclear power. But the veteran journalist will
not write the column. Haden, whose writing is well known to readers of The
Dominion Post and other New Zealand newspapers, is in hospice care, at his
Wellington home, with terminal cancer. "Everything has gone. My
computer has gone to my daughter. I can't write," he says. "I would love to be able to
write that column. I am distressed because I can't write it." Known
widely as a hard-headed journalist of the "old school", Haden
worked on, and edited, newspapers for half a century. He was proud to bring
the realities of world affairs to ordinary New Zealanders. Now he gazes at
his collection of dictionaries, all prized possessions, and he sighs. "My whole world came crashing
in on me when I discovered the spread of cancer." Haden began his career on The
Press. Born in 1929 and raised in Christchurch, he attended St Bede's
College. But, as the eldest of six children, his school years were shattered
by the sudden death of his father. His father had come to New Zealand
and set up an agency for selling motorcycles. The business collapsed in the
Depression and his father had to rely on what work he could get as an
accounts clerk. His father's death, and the inadequate benefit his mother
received, left Haden to support the family with labouring jobs in freezing
works and a brickyard, while continuing at school. He studied law at Canterbury
University and got work as a law clerk at (PndStlg)12 a week. However, he quickly came to loathe
the dust and smell of law files. One day he walked into The Press office and
asked the editor for a job. He was hired at (PndStlg)3 a week. He loved the whole atmosphere of
newspapers. Over the next 50 years he would
report on events in New Zealand and around the world, work his way up to
editor of the Sunday Times and assistant editor of The Dominion, mentor young
reporters, fulminate on many subjects as a columnist and become a commentator
on the use and abuse of English in The Dominion Post. As an editor, he made decisions
which were seen at the time as outrageous. Publication of nude photographs
reflected a sincere commitment to showing things as they really were, he
insisted. He had no truck with sheer prurience. His espousal of old-fashioned,
common- sense values and his rejection of politically correct and namby-pamby
trends endeared him to many -- and set him against many. He never hesitated to take a
stand, whether it be to support Lesley Martin over the voluntary euthanasia
of her mother, or to condemn the conviction of Peter Ellis on child abuse
charges. Haden can get fired up, never more
so than when hearing people criticise journalism and the media for presenting
"bad news". He believes passionately in the
media's mission to reveal to the public what is going on. He sees the ability
of an informed populace to respond to reality as essential for the survival
of democracy. HE IS proud of having put his life
on the line, often, in pursuit of good stories that would tell New Zealanders
about aspects of affairs which officials tried to keep hidden. He suffered
bouts of illness and subjected himself to physical danger to see sides of
Vietnam, Bosnia, East Berlin (before the wall came down), South Africa
(before apartheid was dismantled) which most people never knew about. Symbols of his pride rest in a
drawer -- a chunk of concrete he hacked from the Berlin Wall, a bit of rusty
barbed wire he clipped from the so-called Iron Curtain, in Hungary. Haden believes Western
propagandists fuelled mass paranoia by painting the Russians as bogymen
during the Cold War. He found the reality quite
different. He debunked claims that handing
political power to South Africa's Blacks would cause a bloodbath, after
extensive touring in that country. "I have debunked quite a lot
of things," Haden says. He is a sceptic. He has defied
rules, orders and conventions to get into places others would not go to. Once
there, he has found things not as bad as portrayed in official
communications. "Just looking honest, and
what the Americans call 'a regular guy', has got me out of a lot of
scraps," he says. If one thing infuriates him, it is
"bullshit". "I have spent my life
battling bullshit. There's a lot of it about -- a whole bullshit industry.
But there is still a great deal of good, honest journalism practised,
too," he says. Next to his wife and four
daughters, Haden's greatest love is words. "I worship words," he
says. His column on language, in which
he tackles derivations, meanings and usage of words, has been widely read. It
has brought him both renown and notoriety, as he has imbued it with his
"black-and-white" quality. The column, which ran in The
Dominon Post till last month, sparked a huge volume of correspondence. Haden has enjoyed the vehemence of
people's responses, even those with "a bee in their bonnet",
because he knows they, too, take the language seriously. He has ridden a few hobbyhorses.
One was the insistence that children in school are pupils, not students.
Students are at university, he declares. "That got people quite
exercised." The need for nuclear power
generation is another hobbyhorse -- "I ride it at every
opportunity". However long Haden lives, however
much he mellows, he will never step down from his hobbyhorses. -------------------- The world
according to Haden -------------------- On education: I'd never have made
a teacher. I'd have strangled the bastards. On women: All women named Renee
are dominatrices. I've been a bum man from way back. On race: Austrians are just flaky
Germans. All Hungarians are doctors. I dislike intensely having to soil my
hands with distinctions between one race and another because I am one of the
few people I know who is genuinely not racist. On foreign affairs: Those
Taiwanese should abolish those typhoons they have over there. It's just
ridiculous . . . that's the third one in three weeks, it's just gross
carelessness. On language: Well, the f . . . .
dictionary is wrong. If I had to use spellcheck I'd commit suicide. The word
diseased looks diseased -- it's all spotty and horrible. On journalism: I'm paid to do just
one thing -- know what the public wants to read. Put the Aids story on page
one -- anything to do with cocks is news. No reporter has ever quoted anybody
accurately yet. Ever. On management: The reason
nothing's been done is because they're all too busy attending total quality
management courses and when the time comes to actually do some managing they
all f . . . up. On small town New Zealand: That's
where most lunatics come from -- small towns like Waipukurau. On life: I'm the most assiduous
flogger of dead horses there is. I have always worked on the prinicple that
if you flog it hard enough for long enough, it will eventually come back to
life, or at least thrash about a bit. * Source: The Uncensored Thoughts
of Chairman Frank (an unofficial booklet of Haden's choice quotes while a
journalist at The Dominion). -------------------- |
