Modern 24 hour news channels

Sparks

Extracted from this thread to avoid going off-topic:

No-one could possibly be expected to have the breadth of knowledge at their fingertips that would be required for a reporter / anchorman to be able to handle every story which was broken to them.

Agreed bonkey, but, well, look :


That's a firefly. They had video of it within minutes of announcing the crash - and they still called it a jet and queried about ejection seats.
They don't need to know it's history or who built it to know that it's not a jet for pete's sake!

Ask yourself this...what would your reaction be if the 9/11 disasters hadn't been reported immediately. What would the reaction of those in New York and Washington have been, knowing that something had happened, but hearing nothing - indeed, being refused information on the grounds that "we don't want to make a mistake, so we're saying nothing".

But that's pretty much what was done - footage was shown and every few seconds someone repeated what had happened. No querying as to "why did this happen", no major speculation that tarnished people without any knowlege, proof or expertise.
And that was how it should have been done: a "here's what we know" attitude, not a "here's what we think" one.
Remember that in stories like Duxford's, the phrase "pilot error" has about the same weight to it as the phrase "paedophile" does in the current case of the 12-year-old girl going to France with a 31-year-old marine - it might be true, but bandying it about without any sense of weight without proof is definitely going to destroy someone's good name and probably their life, without proof. And that's pretty much what Sky News does - it's the 24 hour TV version of the Sun.

At least BBC News 24 has some redeeming value (HardTalk for example).

mike65

First that pics too big!

Second 24 hr rolling news channels are a licence to get things wrong such is the pressure to be first, even if the facts are correct what few that are deemed pertinent are repeated ad nausium while the context is largely ignored often making the "hard facts" as soft as marshmallow.

They have thier uses but for the most part ppl are better of watching something like Newsnight to get an understanding of an issue. That or buy a good paper!

Mike.

DadaKopf

In my experience, news reporters are extremely lazy when writing breaking news stories and editors simply don't expect higher standards from them.

Most reporters collect the absolute minimum of sources neccessary to churn out some vaguely accurate copy. Much of the time, these sources are biased and the only reason they're sourced isn't because they're closest to the event in question but because they're the most visible, voiciferous or established. Limiting the variety of sources inevitably leads to a distortion of the truth, a misrepresentation of reality and a degradation of the journalistic profession.

The excuses given for this kind of behaviour are: lack of time/deadlines, lack of forthcoming sources (how about you put more effort into getting those sources in the first place?), competition, practical contingencies. Some of these are perfectly understandable but it's still no excuse for laziness.

Sky News: "What kind of plane was it?"
Codger: "Uh, a jet"
Sky News: "Ok."

Sky News should have said: "'UH?' 'UH?'ARE YOU SURE, YOU OL' COFFIN DODGER? YOU'RE OLD!!!! - GET SOMEBODY ON THE PHONE WHO KNOWS FOR DEFINATE IT WAS A BLEEDIN JET AND NOT A PROPELLAR PLANE YOU STUPID OLD PERSON, YOU!!!!!"

You get the idea.

Sparks

Biffa:
How the hell is anyone supposed to know that plane has only one pilot and no ejector seat? Be fair for flips sake.

Okay Biffa, quick lesson. No aircraft has two pilots. None. Not one. Not ever. A co-pilot, maybe, but only one is ever in control. Now look at the photo and tell me if the man in back has enough of a view to actually try to fly the plane.

Secondly, no aircraft from WW2 had ejector seats - they weren't thought of and developed until a decade later.

And thirdly, they called the fluppin' thing a jet.

Now if they'd just done the "this is what we know" bit, that wouldn't be so bad - but you run a story like this and use the words "pilot error" and you deserve every criticism and lawsuit you get because you're effectively charging someone with negligent homicide.

Paddy20

Sparks,

Great photo though!. Is Flightline UK a website?..

Sparks

Dunno Paddy, the photo came from http://www.airshows.org.uk/ (they had a news article on the crash)

Paddy20

Thanks Sparks,

A very interesting site. Just checked it out, learn something new every day eh!.:)