You don’t need us to tell you

Yesterday, MediaWorks announced it was merging its newsrooms to enhance efficiency. Fairfax has long favoured the network approach. And NZME is doing similar things by bringing its various strands closer together. So how will that affect the news? Conan O’Brien knows.

Last year he threw some fuel on conspiratorial fires with a clip that seemingly illustrated that a single scriptwriter is behind all the news written across the networks in the United States. And although it is more likely an indicator of the abject lack of creativity in news writing rather than proof of some insidious conspiracy, it will leave you with an instant sense of mistrust if you happen to hear the phrase ‘you don’t need us to tell you’ while watching the headlines at 6pm.