KERRE McIVOR
The old adage that any publicity is good publicity really is a load of tosh.
I can think of plenty of occasions when it would be ghastly to see your name in the headlines. Todd Barclay, for instance, could probably have done without this week’s publicity.
He was the young politician with a glittering future whose indiscretions have seen him forced to resign from Parliament. His only legacy now will be as the answer to an obscure question in pub trivia quizzes.
Daniel Bryan Black, Jessica Laure Benaroche, Christopher Taylor and a number of other residents of Queenstown are probably squirming after seeing their names on the front page of the paper, too.
Black, Benaroche and Taylor are all drink drivers and are among the first to be named and shamed as part of the
Mountain Scene’s stand against drink driving in the town.
The publishers of the newspaper have warned that from this week, until the end of the year, anyone convicted of drink driving or failing to provide an evidential sample will find themselves on the front page, their full name, age and level of alcohol revealed for all the world to see.
There’s nothing new in the practice of naming and shaming via newsprint. It’s the modern-day equivalent of being put in the town stocks.
And social media vigilantism is real, with keyboard warriors ready to round on those they deem to have transgressed.
But does shaming work, in this age of moral relativism, as a means of controlling the community and getting them to behave?
Cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict categorised societies into shame cultures or guilt cultures.
A shame society maintains social order by the inculcation of shame and the threat of ostracism.
A guilt society, in contrast, creates control by creating and continually reinforcing the feeling of guilt and the expectation of punishment.
Hello to all the kids raised as Catholics reading this!
But it only works if people feel shame and, in this age of anything goes, do we really care if our peers think poorly of us?
Certainly, there have been positive results in the past, when newspapers ran similar campaigns.
A decade ago, the Daily Post in Rotorua published the names and photographs of people who had failed to appear in court in a monthly feature called Most Wanted.
Thirty people were featured initially — and within a couple of weeks, 26 people who were on outstanding warrants had presented themselves to local police stations.
Nine had been named and shamed — the other 19 knew there were warrants out for them and had handed themselves in before their details could be published. They had no desire to be featured in the paper.
I know that when I was convicted of drink driving 25 years ago and a story about my court appearance subsequently appeared in the Sunday News, I felt the double whammy of guilt and shame — both feelings were powerful enough to prevent me from ever getting behind the wheel of a car with a drink inside me again.
People on talkback told me of a couple of small town big fish who had their drink drive cases transferred to another court, in a bid to keep their crime a secret. So perhaps the threat of public exposure will bring about a shift in attitude in Queenstown.
It will only work though if people are ashamed of their recklessness and arrogance, and if their peers disapprove of their poor judgment in choosing to drink and drive.
The real shame would be if people simply don’t care.
Perhaps the threat of public exposure will bring about a shift in attitude.