Breakingnews.ie - is all this info on alleged rape necessary

smcelhinney

Im not exactly sure what the journalistic merit of having so much info in a report on a rape case such as this is (paragraphs 7-12).

Is this a templated piece of journalism, is this level of detail necessary? What exactly is the point of having all that info there. It reads more like an erotic novel.

And yes, I know it is my choice as to whether or not I read it, but if I wanted the PG version, I'd be quite disappointed.

Any comments?

DMC

Fuppin hell, a bit too much indepth reportage, for sure. At first it was no worse than a standard piece from a provincal weekly, but heck!

I suppose if it is said in court, its open domain, but I've never seen that much detail in a report....

r3nu4l

To be honest, it may be accurate reporting but you get the sense that the writer enjoyed writing it up! Very strange!

flogen

That's a heck of a lot of detail alright.

Of course, if it's read out in court, it's in the public domain, but it's unusual to see this kind of detail - that said I have seen BN.ie giving a lot of detail on a case in the past - but that time it was after sentencing rather than during the case itself.

There is an argument for giving the public the full details, but the amount of detail is unnecissary - I don't mean that in a "think of the children" kind of way, but in journalistic terms you could have summed up the details and gotten the message across in far fewer words than were used.

BarneyMagee

We've been getting the unedited copy into our newsroom and it's all fairly strong stuff.

From what I can see all the media are getting it from the same freelancer. (Who is doing fine. A reporter should turn in everything they have and let the editors decide what to use.)

I was reading around and noticing how everybody was toning it down.

I was surprised to see BN uploaded it practically as is.

Any paper or radio station would provoke serious controversy by publishing or broadcasting stuff that strong. But like everything on the internet you get an extra layer of anonymity or distance from your readers.

flogen

I don't know if it's that it's strong - sometimes that's needed to make the reality of a case apparent to the reader - but it's just un-necessary. Fair enough if it's a freelancer doing their job, and the editor's the one to blame... in that case is it just laziness, an attempt to provoke a reaction or an honest belief that this is a good report?

simu

Far too much information. :eek:

blue4ever

It’s probably the court report, which is filed to most media. This site has decided not sub it (for whatever reason). I wonder how it was subsequently ‘reported’ in the various media. Make an interesting (start to) a dissertation.

Milktrolley

Way too much detail. That had to be the exact copy that was handed to them, you'd imagine that had it been rewritten for publishing, all that would have been summed up in a few sentences at most.

Judt

Problem is that in other areas we complain that they don't report enough - IE how every road traffic accident sounds the same. There's a limit between too much info and not enough info, about reporting on a crime and pounding the point home about how horrendous it actually is. This article perhaps goes too far, but the rest don't go far enough. We'll find the middle ground, but it takes this kind of experimentation I think

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Link goes to a six-papagraph article - guess the edited it. Complete with McDonald's ad in the middle of it which brings is back to the sex in MaccyD's thread...

Frankiestylee

Damn... yup, looks like it was edited. What's there now is quite decent. It's not too wordy as to cause complaints yet it keeps enough info to make the story a bit interesting

J.S. Pill

flogen wrote:

I don't know if it's that it's strong - sometimes that's needed to make the reality of a case apparent to the reader - but it's just un-necessary.

I wonder what would happen if they adopted this principle in war reporting???