Drinking moonshine?

The NZ Herald published this story " Music vids promote alcohol abuse - study" earlier this afternoon, with a photo of Homebrew to illustrate the story on their front page, and one of Savage on the story.

Homebrew took issue with this, saying on Twitter "heyo @nzherald our videos have never been played on television. Because there's a LEGISLATION..."

Their manager and DJ, DJ Substance, added " @nzherald: Name one TV station that has played 'Under The Shade'?!? WHICH IS WHAT YOUR WHOLE ARTICLE IS ABOUT." The NZ Herald quickly removed the Homebrew photo, replacing it with Savage on their front page.

The story says that "....Research from the University of Otago, Wellington, has today been released, comparing music videos in the past seven years.

The researchers compared 564 music videos which aired on Juice, C4, and TV2 in 2005 with 861 videos from Juice in 2010.

It found that while the overall proportion of music videos which showed alcohol content increased only from 15.7 per cent to 19.5 - which is not statistically significant - the alcohol content in R&B music videos was increasing at a statistically significant rate [from 12 to 30%]....

...Music videos with international artists were also more likely to include alcohol than those with New Zealand artists, she said...."

But Homebrew didn't have a music video in 2010 - they were fundraising for one, after being turned down by NZ On Air, Their first video was launched in May 2011. So they weren't part of the survey data.

And, as the story says, the increase was in R&B videos. Savage aint R&B, and, given that the inclusion of alcohol happened more often in videos by foreign acts not local, choosing a local rapper is an odd decision. 

Unless the survey specifically lists a video by Savage as one of the offending videos influencing kids into bad behaviour on the vomit-stained streets of late night central Auckland.

And only researching music videos from one channel, Juice, is a reflection of  that station's programming, not necessarily the state of music videos in general.

Savage responded on Twitter, saying"Wow had to be the moonshine pic!! lol" His record label, Dawn Raid,added (via Twitter) "Hey @nzherald Can you please remove our artist SAVAGE from your bullsh#t story ?, we never supplied that image, please remove."

ADDED other news reports on this story (see Dominion Post) say "In rhythm and blues music videos, the jump was close to 18 per cent. Hip-hop and rhythm and blues music videos contained the highest percentage of alcohol references at 30 per cent."

It appears the NZ Herald/APNZ report ma have left out the words hiphop in regards to that 30% figure.

UPDATED 415pm Tues - NZ Herald have replaced the photo of Savage with a shot of beer glasses and a jug. Good to see.