Opinion: I was planning to write about the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office this week. It seemed to offer proof (if any were needed) that how we consume news has changed. It appears that the packaging of a story has become more important than the scandal itself to achieve the cut through needed in today’s world. In the past the mere threat of going to the Truth (yes, that was the name of a newspaper back in the day) was often enough to force powerful interests to back down.
That being said, it is important to recognise that investigative journalism played a fundamental role in the telling of the story. For a start, former sub-postmaster Alan Bates had been told he was the only one who was having trouble with the new software system that the Post Office had introduced across the UK. That was in 2003. An article in Computer Weekly in 2009 confirmed there were others. How many more were there?
As it turned out there were more than 900 prosecutions mounted by the Post Office against people who were unable to balance the books because of a system that they were the only one apparently having a problem with. Bates found 550 of them and they formed a class action which exposed what the Post Office had done. The case was settled in 2019, but most of the money went to the legal teams and funders. A journalist produced a 17-part podcast called The Great Post Office Trial detailing this travesty of justice. That was in 2021.
A statutory inquiry was set up, and it is continuing to hear evidence as I write. When it is completed, I think we will see what a pivotal role journalists played, but there is no question that more could and should have been done, and it was the dramatisation of the story that has had the most dramatic impact.
By the time we got to see Mr Bates vs the Post Office here, three months after it screened in the UK, the British government had already introduced legislation to exonerate and compensate hundreds of sub-postmasters that had been convicted of theft, fraud, and false accounting.
I was looking forward to seeing the follow-up documentary on Sunday night, which was an opportunity to meet the real people behind this story, including the extraordinary Alan Bates.
There are many questions that the statutory inquiry that was set up after the court case will be seeking to answer, starting with who knew what and when.
It was while I was waiting that I watched our own current affairs programme, Sunday. With its demise now imminent, we must ask if we can afford to let it go especially when we think of the kind of in-depth analysis required to unravel a scandal like the Post Office one.
And Sunday true to form was actually about a scandal in the making. However, the adversary in this case is seemingly even more untouchable than the Post Office is in the UK.
This time it’s rugby and traumatic brain injury.
I was long concerned as an MP about the extent of undiagnosed brain injuries that permeate our society and the irreparable damage that is done as concussions are inflicted time and time again, particularly on young men.
I recall dealing with constituency cases such as the guy ACC was trying to get off the scheme, because they didn’t believe that he had been injured to the extent he had claimed. After his crash, he couldn’t recognise the tools he had been working with all his adult life. I remember his wife telling me he was not the same man she married, so I asked her if she had anything that would help me prove that. She dropped off a video of him being interviewed shortly before the crash. I remember watching it with my colleague, and we both cried. He was not the same man he used to be, and we could prove it.
But so many others can’t. I recall another case that had ended in suicide, such was his struggle with who he no longer was, and the man he had become.
And the Sunday story about Billy Guyton described in graphic detail just what that looked and felt like.
I had known nothing about what Billy had been through leading up to his death, but I recognised the pattern straight away. I want to pay tribute to the family for speaking out and seeking to ensure there is accountability for the health and safety of the players. It is vital we take notice of what Billy’s story is telling us.
If we fast forward 20 years from now to an imagined inquiry like the one in the UK today, will we be asking who knew what and when?
NZ Rugby may have only just accepted the association between head knocks and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. But will it still be saying more work needs to be done to prove it causes symptoms such as depression, anxiety and dementia?
Plausible deniability? I don’t think so.
Sunday identified that Billy had received 17 concussions during his rugby career.
A professor who was interviewed described the damage to Billy’s brain, saying that the two hemispheres had separated because of the repeated knocks to the head. I saw this and thought again about the social media post that Billy made when he stepped aside from professional rugby. He knew something was wrong.
And if the truth be told a lot of people do know there’s something wrong. Hundreds of former rugby players are taking on World Rugby.
And for Billy it was about protecting other players. That’s why he left his brain to the Brain Bank.
And now his family are taking up his fight and the question we are left with is who is accountable for making the changes that are so clearly needed, and how do players like Billy get the support they need when they call out for help?
They are the questions that must be answered.
And who will ask those questions if our last current affairs show, Sunday, is shut down?
Does someone have to make a drama about the rugby player who had to die to prove he was right about what was going on inside his head?
And how many others like Billy will there be?
I have found some Sunday investigations to be life changing and I cannot fathom why, as a society, we would be willing to let something that valuable go.