HOW CRAP ARE THE BRITISH PRESS?????

[cleared2land 27left]

Reports today about the airporx on 09R, all the major channels BBC, ITV and SKY have reported a whole load of facts that are not true and this is infuriating as it casts a dark shadow not only on the people who were involved but the proffesion as a whole.

Sort it out UK press!

[InspectorGadget]

Well said.......makes by blood boil.

Best wishes to the two concerned.

IG

[cleared2land 27left]

Yes best wishes to those involved

[Secret Squirrel]

Oscar Wilde wrote,

"By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, (journalism) keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community".

I bought The Sun today and I don't think anyone in the journalistic world has a goddamn clue. On the same page they have Paul Crosbie reporting on the incident in a more or less acceptable fashion citing comparisons to the privatisation of the rail network and the lessons not learned with regards to privatisation. THEN there's this **** George Pascoe-Watson, a political editor laying out the benefits of privatisation. Their argument being that the money from the sale will be spent on modernisation. What a load of old b*ll*cks. I know what the money will be spent on. It'll be spent on asylum seekers and benefit fraudsters just like our road and fuel tax!

They quote people like Iain Findlay and David Learmont (Flight International safety editor) or mis-quote, I don't know which. If they said what they were quoted as saying then they haven't helped matters much. I suspect that they have been selectively quoted which is a common journalistic strategy.

I also would like to pass on my best wishes to those concerned and if you ask me, I think you all do a sterling job...in the UK especially!



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Very funny, Scotty. Now beam up my clothes!

[NudgingSteel]

As to what they'll spend £500 million on after they sell NATS....they've already said they'll spend it on roads. i.e. flip all to do with air transport.
Which makes me wonder, as I top up my GTi yet again, where all the road tax and petrol duty is going to.
End of cross rant.

[NudgingSteel]

PS I fully agree about the press. With very few exceptions, they can't stand to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

[Numpo-Nigit]

Not only do the press get the facts wrong about the incident at Heathrow, they don't seem to have even heard about the rather-more-worrying event at another airport not-a-million-miles-away on the same day. No more
clues if they're reading - they'll have to be investigative journalists !!!

[InspectorGadget]

Bugger that investigative journalism....... give US a clue or 2!!!!!!

Rgds,

IG (ATCO working close to THAT EGLL incident!!)

[NudgingSteel]

Well, if the press ever do find out, you can bet it'll be another cr@p story. I've just read the Daily Record's account of the BA/BMA incident at LL, and frankly I wanted to weep.
The amount of "thrusting", "powering", etc, you'd think Mills & Boon were now covering aviation. Sadly, our routine procedures, even in emergency situations, are just too dull for some people.

[Zarg]

The simple answer......NO WORSE THAN THE AUSSIE PRESS!! Especially if it involves QANTAS who can't take a trick here at the moment!

Do you know Geoff Coates, 27Left?

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Be CAREFUL out there!

[Self Loading Freight]

Well, what can I say? I'm a journalist, and it's all true. Mostly. You just have to do quality control on the stuff you read -- the proprietors of newspapers persuaded themselves long ago that spending money on having enough high quality journalists to keep the reporting accurate and relevant doesn't do anything for circulation.

Spending it on bingo does. Splashing 'exclusives' does.
Gossip and rumour presented as fact does.
Spending it on staff, they think, doesn't.

Look at the new Metro papers, which are put together with a tiny staff mostly from wire reports. When that ATP had to land with half its gear up, the caption on the Metro photograph (taken as it came in, props VERY visible) was "The stricken jet dices with death" or similar. You just know that NOBODY in the editorial or production process even looked at that caption from the moment some underpaid, overworked subeditor typed it in.

Not all papers are the same, and not all journalists are the same. When the Indy started, there was a new sense of doing it properly -- and for a while, it worked. Then the company tried to launch the Indy on Sunday, and ran out of cash -- result, the rest of Fleet Street sighed with relief and went back to its bad old ways. It'll be a while before the experiment is repeated: the Brits just don't like spending money on quality product.

I could go on, but I won't. The company I work for does computer magazines, and started about ten years ago with a policy of doing rock-solid editorial backed with loads of research. We had as many people on one magazine as our competitors did on five. The rest of the industry laughed and said we'd be gone in six months. We weren't. We did very well. Mind you, we had a three-year path to profitability and some VERY scary times at the beginning, but most other new titles have six months at best to make dosh. Now we're being pulled apart by new owners, and I'm off to the wonderful world of online... and, surprise, the rest of the British industry shows no signs of even noticing that the model of getting things right and earning the trust of your readers is workable.

It's a bloomin' shame, it is. But people keep buying the papers, *then* complaining that they're rubbish. As if Murdoch et al could care less, once they've got your money.

R

[squeaker]

I'm sure half the problems that nervous pax have stem from them reading stuff in the papers and believing it.
However, I can see that headlines like "Thousands of safe flights today!" are less exciting than "Holiday jet death plunge drama!!".