Media labours all in vain

Last Thursday morning, when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford drove to Auckland Hospital for the birth of their child, one respectable news outlet impatiently prefaced the breaking news saying ‘‘finally’’ it was happening. Even though first births are notoriously late, and Ardern was only four days past her due date, this short delay was starting to be an issue with some media. Outside Auckland Hospital, Newshub political editor Tova O’Brien relayed stats that most first mothers’ labours were between 12 and 18 hours and the PM had just passed the 12-hour mark. O’Brien was preparing for a long night of baby watch-padding and, with training in drawn-out election night results under her belt, she was about to dig in. Inside the hospital, media had been appointed a war room where one of the PM’s factotums had thoughtfully laid on a spread, should the stakeout for baby Gayford have continued. In the olden days, when blokes weren’t admitted to the birthing chamber, fathers were left outside to pace the hospital corridors. These fraught corridors became a trope in Western television and film scenes, where the paternal pacing was broken only by the reassuring sound of the distant slap of a tiny buttock, followed by a healthy infant cry. The evening news rolled on with no announcement. With Gayford safely ensconced in the birthing suite, the male anxiety was left to be expressed by the spectacle of pathetic al fresco bloke reporters sham-shivering outside the hospital in the bogus Auckland cold. Deep into the 6pm news bulletins, when the news broke that the VIP baby had the temerity to slip past their notice and arrive in the world at 4.45pm, TVNZ’s Paul Hobbs affected journalistic irascibility at having being left out of the loop. (Later in a cross to an amused mature female CNN anchor, Hobbs stuttered the small amount of information he had at his freezing fingertips about the baby’s weight, health and gender. The next day Hobbs proudly spoke cringeingly of the significant international reportage of the birth and how something so ‘‘organic’’, done by a working mum, had really put New Zealand on the map.) The prime minister had successfully stolen a march on the media and very neatly, on the shortest day of the year, managed to deliver unto a nation a healthy baby well within the time limits and just before the 6 o’clock news. Such impeccable timing had collapsed the media stakeout scrum, with Ardern and Gayford also doing photographers out of job by issuing their own humble hospital room snap of the happy couple, plus one. The photo of the newborn, most of her face discreetly shielded by one of the PM’s protective paws, showed only one little opened eye. Crouched alongside his girls, Gayford looked exceedingly young, like one of those lads captured loitering in the labour wards in the observational documentary series One Born Every Minute. Executed with precision timing, the First Wha¯nau appeared to have made light work of such a major personal event. In their first statement immediately after the birth, the couple were at pains to keep it real, saying they were sure they were going through all the normal emotions of new parents. The pregnancy and the birth of child by a leader while in office is outside national and international political conventions, but by making it appear NoBig-Deal-for-a-Downunder, the capable couple have won hearts and minds across political divides. So far so smooth, but if baby Neve has inherited her mother’s chompers, the caregivers will have the teething months cut out for them.