Baftabill, thank you for
your post where you try to give us an insight into how the media works. While agreeing with the sentiment that it's unrealistic to expect technically accurate reporting from a generalist medium I will argue however, that the coverage presented by the BBC is of a character unbefitting a public service broadcaster.
For the record, I have no journalism qualifications and very little media experience. On the aviation side, I am licenced at commercial pilot level (CPL) but I work in an unrelated field, hence I remain basically an enthusiast.
Mods: please feel free to delete this if you feel it is too off-thread.
Seconded.
Here you have to balance speed with accuracy
Editor's choice, and there is ample room there for getting a good balance of both, something in which the BBC has failed miserably on the two occasions where I was a direct witness of the events being reported. Even though I am not a fan of CNN, in those two occasions their coverage was impeccable--very accurate and more timely than the BBC's. Furthermore, I can think of a few other instances where the work of some of the truly knowledgeable professionals amongst you was hacked to bits and made a mockery of by some of your own editors and interviewers. Point is, aside of how mass journalism works, the BBC does in general an awful job for its money.
The errors are usually in the detail and language
...and tone. Often, pieces are written as to imply certain things or push certain points of view, purely for sensationalist purposes. That is also ultimately an editor's deliberate choice, not an inexorable fact of life.
The Today people would have been thrilled to get Pen Hadow because they had someone people might have heard of rather than an 'unknown'.
Now, before you condemn this, you must consider that YOU are ALL more interested in celebrities than unknown people.
Correct, however that confuses information with entertainment. True, it's the BBC's mission to provide both, but not at the same time! Again, any editor would realise that claims such as allegedly made by the person in question are sensationalist in nature--one can only assume that if he then decides to use them, let alone give them prominence, he is prioritising the entertainment aspect to the detriment of the piece's informative value.
In this respect, the BBC is acting like any other commercial venture--the problem is, unlike their "competitors", the BBC is a public service corporation primarily funded (domestically at least) by public money, meaning it has no need to go chasing ratings, and indeed it is questionable that it should even consider doing so.
I'm guessing that many here would feel that the BBC should have checked Pen Hadow's claims, found them to be false and then consigned his interview to the bin.
This is where I think you misunderstand what the Press think they are for.
In this instance, the BBC went after this person to get his 'views'--they were not just passive reporters, rather they took an active role in creating the news.
Hadow made 'claims'. By the next day these 'claims' may have been shown to have no substance, but at 4.00 am when the Today team were putting the programme together they were part of an emerging picture. In the world of rolling news these 'claims' are there to be countered.
Breaking news is a game the BBC voluntarily chose to enter--they had no need to do so and it is debatable what value if any this provides to their listeners.
The BBC has this story BBC NEWS | UK | Forced landing for Ryanair flight on it's website which is a tidying up of the story as it unfolded. It doesn't lead with Hadow's 'claims', but it does continue to report his views that Ryanair communicated badly.
...along with a number of other assertions, which they have by now ample evidence of them being false. I also note that O'Leary's response, while much better informed, is just as unauthoritative as the original claims, insofar as they concern a highly technical aspect of the operation of an aeroplane.
They also got Tom Symonds (who I think is seen here on Pprune trying to get facts, something I think you should encourage) to do this piece BBC NEWS | UK | What to do when planes lose pressure
May I enquire, where did he obtain his information? Not on a public, anonymous website with a big red warning at the bottom of every page, I should hope! And what checking was done on the veracity and accuracy of his unsourced statements?