Journo bashing
Hope I'm not too late to get involved in this or add my tuppence worth, but I think the idea of having some
members who are willing to talk the press is a great idea. And yes I work for a newspaper. Personally speaking,
I think the idea of having experts in their fields to talk to is incredibly useful and would welcome links
between journos and professionals on here.
In an ideal world a paper's transport correspondent would have contacts who could answer all their questions,
and would be available on the end of a phone as and when they needed to talk to them. Unfortunately that doesn't
always happen. Transport corrs usually cover a huge area - trains, planes, boats, cars, unions involved with
these areas, professional bodies, regulatory bodies, the government to name but a few. It's a lot of work and
it will not always be easy to get answers from official press officers who may be trained to withhold information
(when there's a disaster of some sort) rather than release it as and when they get it.
Now, I've only recently found this website, but I've found it very useful. Mostly in terms of understanding terms
and things because I haven't really had much contact with anyone else on it. In trying to answer cough's
question: in my own experience I haven't had the luxury of time to send copy to airlines to get them to go
through it for mistakes. I've been working nights and the two recent crashes I've covered (simply because I'm
working - I'm not the transport corr and have no background in transport) have been a matter of hours before our final deadlines. They've also happened in the evenings and that's also not a good time to get most people at work.
When you do get someone they seem more concerned at limiting liability than telling you what happened.
Professionally speaking I, like most journalists I would think, don't like to get things wrong but it does happen
given the time constraints we work under. The paper I work for has a policy of trying to correct any mistakes
as soon as possible if we're notified of them. I believe the paper is happy to do this, because we know we don't
always get it right. We also think it means people will trust us more if we're seen to be willing to correct our
errors. A case of we got it wrong, we'll hold our hands up and say, sorry we'll try not to do it again.
As for why we try to find out what has happened I think it is because people want to know. If there's been a
crash or a near miss, that is news and people want to know about it. I'm not advocating that we speculate as
to why these things happen, but if by talking to professionals who can give educated opinions on something
then we'll try to use that in context. Waiting for an official investigation and report (while still reporting it
when it comes out) does not tell people the news, and if a plane has crashed then people need to be told. I agree
that we shouldn't (and would like to think we don't) jump to any conclusions about a crash, but if there's
relevant information then we should include it.
This post is a bit longer than I intended so I'll stop now, but what I will say is that if anyone has any questions
they think I can answer I'll gladly do my best to reply. Most of us see our jobs as letting people know what has
happened, and reporting accurately on the events. I know sometimes that doesn't always happen and that
sometimes papers will run stories that are sensationalist - if you read those sorts of papers then you can
probably expect it. My advice would be don't read them. But do remember, we're less likely to make mistakes
if we have people who know what they're talking about who can tell us, and help us get it right.