Who is the buyer and the seller?

3 News tonight mentioned the Crafar farm sale twice tonight, during their piece on the latest political poll. The words used were:

“the courts stopped the Government selling the Crafar farms to the Chinese for now”

“its decision to sell the Crafar farms to the Chinese”

First of all, why are we describing the company buying the farms as “the Chinese”.

If say Walmart was purchasing something in NZ, would the news bulletins describe it as selling to “the Americans”. The whole phrase “the Chinese” reeks to me of portraying them as one amorphous group. Shouldn’t the sale be described as to “the China based company Shanghai Pengxin”.

But not only do they get the buyer wrong, they get the seller wrong also.

The Government is selling nothing. The receivers of the Crafar farms are selling them, so the creditors will get some of their money back. Twice on TV3 it was portrayed as a Government sale.

So the overall impression is the NZ Government selling state owned land to the Chinese Government.

An accurate wording would be “the Government’s decision to approve the receivers sale of the Crafar farms to the China based Shanghai Pengxin company”. I won’t hold my breath hoping that media use an accurate description though!