Flying Bird, I am all for honest reporting. My step father was a newspaper editor in the days when you only printed once you knew the facts, I wish that we had more of that! You said,
I hope that you are able to get the programme screened. A friend of mine that makes documentaries had this reaction from different Ch 4 Commissioning Editors within the past two years:
Pitch "We want to show an area of work that was previously considered man's work and now has an ever increasing number of women." Ch4, "OK, so we will have the conflict of the young [note the word young] woman who wants to do into [stated] profession and how her parents object to it."

My friend replies, "Eerr, no, actually, our research has found that the women are all supported by their parents." At this Ch4 lost interest in the idea.

There are other examples of Television only wanting conflict and young people. The days when Horizon or Man Alive could take 50 minutes to set out a subject and put forward a balanced view are gone. I can only hope that they will return in my life time.

So, good luck with getting commissioned and then not having them chew it to peices so as to 'sex it up' as Mr Gilligan so aptly put it. Seriously - I want you to win!

The faintly deranged ramblings of obsessional hatred towards journos on this thread are frankly embarrassing. The danger of such a position, apart from making pilots seem like nutters, is that a vacuum of genuine knowledge is created. As Flying Bird has said, she is interviewing family members and so forth - inevitably such testimony will be of an emotional and volatile nature. If that is not offset by incisive technical detail then great damage will be done to aviation as a whole. The simple truth is that this accident is unikely to reflect well on the crew and if the pilot community decides en-masse to boycott this documentary then technical knowlege will be obtained from people simply not qualified to provide it. Given that option, I personally hope that qualified and competent individuals will step up to provide the necessary technical expertise.

For what it is worth, I personally think that documentaries such as 'Air Crash Investigation' and 'Black Box' have been absolutely invaluable to the aviation community. These were TV programmes of the highest quality which were well-produced and presented accurate and balanced judgements of extremely complex accidents. It is not all bad in the journalistic world and some of the comments to Flying Bird are extremely inappropriate. I hope that she goes on to produce a top-quality documentary and that will only happen if the right people are around her to give guidance. There will be no shortage of the wrong people getting the wrong end of the stick - it is up to us to provide the balance.

If you'll forgive a bit of personal insight -

The foot-pounding journalist gathering research, interviews etc. probably wants to do an honest and forthright job.

But consider the obstacles in his way:

- unfamiliarity with the basic science and procedures
- jargon
- the well-know unreliability (albeit sincere) of eyewitnesses
- lawyers
- time pressures
- management's need to make a buck

...so it's no wonder that a young jouno's altruism gets stung by the reality hornet.

It's the media's management we've got to influence to permit the right story to come forth.

phenomenal work gents :D