By MICHAEL LAWS Sunday Star Times
Last updated 05:00 04/07/2010

THERE CAN be little doubt that the midyear point of 2010 represents the nadir of the New Zealand media.
It was the week our media not just lost, but abandoned, any claim to be the conscience, gatekeeper or moral arbiter of the nation. And the descent was led by those two agencies that claim to be the nation’s best, TVNZ news and current affairs and the New Zealand Herald. Their gratuitous attack on former All Black Robin Brooke for a non-criminal offence allegedly committed more than 12 years ago marked a new low for journalists. It made us feel grubby and dirty just viewing or reading their work.
For those who missed it, and how could you given it led Close Up for three nights, and the paper for two days, a bad case of “slapper’s remorse” has overcome an anonymous woman.
She felt the need to claim Brooke had been beastly to her more than a decade ago. She claims she was a teenage groupie who had bedded Brooke before and sought to do so again. She procured drugs and ended up naked, three in a bed, with Brooke and her flatmate.

At no stage has she claimed rape. Not 12 years ago, and not while hiding in the shadows of a TVNZ interview room, her face in darkness and her voice altered to make her sound like a 12-year-old.
If Brooke had a reputation, that media duo did their best to destroy it. They have portrayed Brooke as a serial sleaze with a penchant for teens – except in this case willing teens who want to score All Blacks and drugs.

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