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The Christchurch Civic
Creche Case |
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FRANK HADEN: ``I have spent my
life battling bull... There's a lot of it about _ a whole bull... industry.
But there is still a great deal of good, honest journalism practised too.'' Frank Haden would like to have penned a final column - about the
world's need to face up to its problems - but the veteran journalist has
terminal cancer and can no longer write. He talks to 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 the Earth
rushing headlong towards the total depletion of energy resources, while
people allow official "bull..." 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
Press and other New Zealand newspapers, is under palliative care for terminal
cancer in his Wellington home. "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," he says. Haden began his journalism career
at 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 motor-cycles. 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 the University
of Canterbury and got work as a law clerk at 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 3 a week. He loved the whole atmosphere of
newspapers. During 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 the
English language. As an editor, he made decisions
which were seen at the time as outrageous. The 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 attempted 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 to have often put his
life on the line 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) and 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 bogeymen 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
"bull...". "I have spent my life battling bull... There's a
lot of it about – a whole bull... 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 ran in The Press from
early 1999 until last month, and 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 hobby horses.
One was the insistence that children at school are pupils, not students.
Students are at university, he declares. "That got people quite
exercised." The need for nuclear power
generation is another hobby horse. "I ride it at every
opportunity." However long Haden lives, however
much he mellows, he will never step down from his hobby horse. Frank's famous phrases Frank Haden was famed in
journalism for his colourful turn of phrase. The following is a selection. 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 language: "Well, the
f...ing 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." "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
principle 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 in Wellington). |
