Why people hate reporters

Lawyers and used car salesmen.

As the adage goes, they are the only people ranked alongside or below reporters at the bottom of the public's list of most-respected occupations.

And that's fine. I get it. All those who enter the media world - especially newspapers - accept they will earn far more enemies than friends, and that most of the feedback they get will be of the complaining variety.

We do this job because we love it and because we believe there is some worth to it and because, like everybody else, we have families to support.

Some of us believe we are gods, that our opinions matter more than anybody else's. But most of us - please let this be true - do not.

Because our skins need to be thick, we generally get to the stage where we learn to block out a large percentage of the public's disapproval. Not, you understand, because we do not rate the public's opinion; but because to take every barb on board would send us running from the profession.

For sports reporters, the major pitfall of the job is the ease with which one can become immune to the charm, the beauty and the drama of the game one is covering.

It only took me four years of covering professional rugby to lose my connection with the All Blacks, for example. I still watch, but I feel no investment. I neither rejoice when they win well, nor despair when they lose.

On subjects like the haka, the scheduling of extra tests in Hong Kong and the re-appointment of Graham Henry, I lean far closer to cynicism than support.

And because I have interviewed Richie McCaw and Dan Carter and Keven Mealamu and the like, and written about them and their colleagues frequently, they are simply rugby players, not heroes, to me.

This sort of distance from great sports figures is necessary for a sports reporter, but you could argue it is slightly sad.

So that's the situation. We sit at our keyboard, praise/criticise where we feel it is warranted, and have faith that (a) our opinion is valid and (b) we have a decent handle on what the public believes.

And then Mark Reason and Nathan Begley come along.

Reason, if you have not picked up, is Fairfax Media's sporting attack dog, unleashed on the Stuff website once a week with one aim: piss off as many people as possible.

The former Times and Telegraph reporter appears to have moved to New Zealand from England. He is the son of the late John Reason, the great rugby writer who famously hated the All Blacks with a passion. He was Stephen Jones Mark I.

Reason junior made his first big splash with a bizarre takedown of the New Zealand Breakers during the ANBL finals, when his obvious loathing for basketball was matched only by his startling ignorance of the game.

He's also developed a knack for slagging the Hurricanes - to be fair, that has been rather easy this season.

And that's fine. Bag the Hurricanes at will. But a line in his latest column was so nasty, so personal, that my normal instinct to defend a fellow reporter's right to say what he likes was sorely tested.

Reason spoke of the Canes being like a "bunch of stroppy teenagers". Ha ha. There was the "chubby one who likes a feed". OK, that's obviously Piri Weepu, who certainly packed on the beef during an injury layoff.

Then, quoth Reason, there was the "slick one who tweets a lot and gets his girl pregnant the whole time".

Cory Jane, the subject of that line, who is indeed a prolific tweeter and who does indeed have a partner and several children, was quick to respond, tweeting that he was "trying to be the bigger man here & say nothing but attacking me personally..."

He could have said a lot more. Reason's line about Jane was fucking horrible. If that's the "new journalism", then I'm pleased I'm a bit old school.

Pleasingly, most of the comments on the column were aghast at Reason's choice of words. But the Fairfax gods won't give a shit, of course, because at least people are reading.

Is it any wonder, when crap like that is published by a major company, that reporters are regarded so poorly?

And then you read a story like this about Nathan Begley, a Special Olympian who worships the All Blacks.

He had his All Black jersey stolen by some wanker, and the All Blacks themselves rode to the rescue with two replacements.

Is it any wonder, after reading that story and Mark Reason's nasty throwaway line about Cory Jane, that people think: All Blacks good, reporters bad?