This thread hasn't taken off
"It's a shame this thread hasn't really taken off." Says Ex-Cargo Clown (Sorry, there's no 'quote' option on my screen).
He/she is right, it hasn't. But in the end, I'm not sure that making the kind of list suggested at the outset would be very useful. I've had my say (earlier) about why journalists reporting on flying topics are likely to fall into one or other of two quite different camps - those who know about flying and write about it for people who know about it, and the generalists who don't, and are writing for people who don't.
Nothing I've read here suggests that anything very different would be revealed by this exercise. And the key question everybody should ask themselves before starting research - what are you going to do with the information? Send snotograms to the bad ones? See how much they willl care. Expose them to the public? See how much they will care. Reward the good ones? There is at least some virtue in that, but it isn't obvious how it would be done.
I'm as rabid as the next man/woman when it comes to an instinct to confront really bad journos and beat them senseless with one of their own limbs which I have previously torn off, but in the real world I guess we must just learn to tolerate that which cannot be changed. PPruners as a community are especially sensitive to mishandled, misrepresented stories about flying, but I have first hand knowledge of exactly the same effect in other fields - sailing, science, crime, social services departments, almost no end to it.
Let's just trust in the basic common sense of (most of) our fellow citizens, take a couple of deep breaths, and enjoy the knowledge that people like Red 4 have done a great deal more good in the world than can be undone by bad reporting.
Last edited by Yellow Son; 22nd Aug 2011 at 12:31.