parents

What smug smile? I typed a colon and a right parenthesis. Any smugness
exists only in your mind

Nothing. I imagine that in the past reports were compiled on the
information available and then that information was published once or
twice per day in the newspaper or on the 6:30 news and then, if
necessary, corrected in the next edition. Nowadays internet publishing
is much more instantaneous, but with more unverified details in earlier
reports, published, and perceived as fact by people who are used to
newspapers publishing verified reports.

A good case in point was the minibus crash last week near Coffs Harbour.
Within 3 hours of the accident, the Wikipedia page of US band "All
Shall Perish" was updated with the news of the death of two band
members, cited by a link to the news.com.au article which stated that
two band members had died. 1 hour later, the same wiki page had already
been updated to state that the earlier reports were inaccurate and that
no band members had perished, and the same link to news.com.au article
(which itself had been updated) was cited.

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX

 

Tell me about it! I have a number of newspaper clippings of Cats crash, and
each one has different details.....and all wrong in some way. Alot of the
reporting early on was assumtions.

Cheers,
Dale.

 

Not good enough. If accuracy is sacrificed in the race to be first with the
news, then there's something very wrong.

I mean, come on.... "yeah, half of what we wrote was bullshit - but we got
the news OUT THERE to the world, and that's what counts." I don't think so!
Hello? If it's fiction, it ain't news!

In this particular case, the un-news reported information given to them by
Careflight, who allegedly attended the scene - SO - pretty much telling the
world that Careflight can't tell the difference between a 3 year old girl
and a 7 year old boy isn't exactly going to instil public confidence in
Careflight, either! (sorry, I'm getting Monty Pythonesque images in my head
here!)

Not having a go at you, Nev (well, no more than usual anyway <evil grin>) -
this is a particular hobby-horse of mine (yet another of those pet
peeves....) When the news goes out to the public it should be accurate, or
it's just not news.

<Dramatic conspiracy theory music> I'm really interested in the language
used to report accidents involving motorcycles. More often than not, the
un-news will say something like "a motorcyclist was hurt/killed/etc when his
motorcycle collided with a 4WD/car/truck etc", which implies that the
m'cycle did the colliding. Sometimes that is so, but I'll be not half as
frequently as it is reported that way.

That sort of reporting language, making the m/cyclist the collider, even if
he/she is the collidee, reinforces the public perception that motorcyclists
are reckless lunatics who don't look where they're going and can't bloody
drive (whereas we know we are a higly risk-averse lot, as a general rule -
we KNOW we will come off second best in a collision with a cage - and we
know damned well that the "SMIDSY" uttered so often is not usually uttered
by the motorcyclist!)

If I take that just one step further (can you still hear the conspiracy
theory music? <grin>) to the article about the 3 yo girl / 7 yo boy --- an
article designed to incur outrage --- which "fact" paints the motorcyclist
parent in a worse light? A 3 year-old girl, poor wee vulnerable thing,
unable to make any kind of rational decision for herself, an innocent victim
of an irresponsible idiot father, or a 7 year-old boy, probably a little
tearaway who's been endlessly egging Dad on to take him for a Christmas
spin?

betty

 

Wow. Did you stay up all night writing that?

Nev..
'04 CBR1100XX

 

Something about Xmas throws my sleeping patterns even further out of whack
than usual...

betty

 

In aus.motorcycles on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 05:18:39 +1100

Well.. the kids wasn't hurt. So if the reporter was talking to a
(very busy, and very distracted) ambo, the ambo would probably have
said "they said there was a kid on the tank" and might have seen 2
kids. Or saw the younger and not the older cos 7yos run around a lot
more.

THe reporter didn't check until later. Or the family called later.

You would expect the CF bod to have a far better knowledge of the
injury received, but only better, not perfect.


For example, unless the head was actually bashed in, with a spongy
spot in the skull, a first responder can't know it was fractured, just
that the guy had a head injury. We don't know if the ambo said
"fractured skull" or the reporter or subeditor thought that sounded
better than "head injury" or "Dunno, but he's incoherent and the eyes
are funny, so there's likely some cranial trauma"

Yeah. I remember being quite surprised when I saw the same language
used about a motorcycle crash as about a car crash. I wondered if it
was a new policy but no - just something that slipped past a subeditor
I guess.

Exactly. In the long bout of chinese whispers from the incident to
the page, where did that happen? Where did the info first come from?

Probably from the careflight centre as the reporters would hang out
there or ring there regularly saying "what's happened lately?". The
centre would look at reports, the report given by someone whose job is
to get someone else on a helo after the crash, not to work out what
happened. So the ambo probably got told by a bystander, who knows who
that was, or how drunk or reliable? Maybe the word was "his kid" and
the ambo saw a young child but not an older one, no way to know.

What is quite likely is that the first story was never fully checked.
It's a 10 line filler, bit of shock/horror to fill out a very thin
holiday paper, not enough bodies in the building to check fully.
Later on someone rings up and said "oy!" or they grab the junior when
they get back from interviewing parking cops about Boxing Day sales
looking for a silly story and give them a list of fact checking jobs.

Or maybe the cops investigated (as they usually do when a helo is
involved) and the correct info came through the police desk's regular
update from the cops. And someone checked to see if the story had
already been run, it had but with wrong info, so they changed it.

It's a little story. IT's not important. That it was wrong doesn't
matter to anyone important. You, me, the family involved, we aren't
important.... The advertisers are important, and they want shock
horror because that sells papers.

Zebee

 

Agree with everything except your last para, Zebee. It's the whole "thin end
of the wedge" thing... if we start accepting inaccuracies in 'little'
stories, just because they aren't about the celebrity, war or major disaster
du jour, where will we draw the line? (yes yes, I know it's probably
unrealistic to expect that the stuff foisted on the public as "news" should
be all-accurate, all the time - damn these perfectionist tendencies!)

betty

 

In aus.motorcycles on Wed, 26 Dec 2007 23:22:50 +1100

They need to write a certain number of lines. Enough that the
subeditor has room to play with to cut to fit the space needing
filling.

There are plenty of studies about the reliability of eyewitness
reports. Hell, I did one at school, when two students enacted a scene
in the quad and a bit later others were asked what happened. The
result was not a lot of accuracy....

There's things like people will see someone doing action Y and assume
they must have done action X before it, even though not seeing action
X either because they couldn't have (time, visibility) or they saw
action Z! But it must have been action X so that's what they said
they saw.

The reporter wasn't there... so the reporter finds someone who was.
And just reports what that someone said. Later on police reports that
have a bit more behind them (only a bit.... I bet the report of me
stacking the Yam said "gravel"[1] except that's very doubtful, should say
"dunno why") might change things some, so a later report might be a
bit more accurate.

Crashes are small news. Bit of shock horror to sell a paper. YOu could
*hope* that bigger news is treated with more care but it isn't. If it
can be turned to shock, or turned to reinforce what "everybody knows"
then that's best. Things that don't take the correct moral stance
(such as the endless scientific data refuting the "obesity crisis"
and the moral take on it compared to the moral panic about it and the
simplistic "answers" [2]) or that make people uncomfortable (See how
long it took the papers to decide that there is a climate problem and
how now nothing agin that can get a look in) stop papers selling.

Problem is that we get most of our info from the mass media. It
permeates everything. And it is unreliable. The net can have better
information, but finding reliable data there can be tricky and takes a
lot of work. You won't ever find unbiased data anywhere... But if
the bias is noted then at least you can compensate.

You know you can't believe what you read about road crashes. Can't
believe what you read in the same paper about anything else...

Zebee

[1] It was the cop who suggested that after asking me what speed I was
doing. I pointed at the gravel free bit and said "I was there....
you can see the mark on the road where the peg hit. No gravel there
so no idea what's going on!" But he had to put something, so he'd
have put that. I didn't get a neg driving so I expect he didn't put
speed.

[2] The whole obesity thing pisses me off. No, it isn't a sudden
epidemic, height/weight haven't changed in the average in lots of years.
The definitions of "obese" and "diabetic" have though. As have
heights, so absolute weight has. Taller people are heavier. And the
whole "must eat too much and exercise too little" is just bull. And
has been shown to be bull time and time again. Since the 1960s. It
is way way way more complex than that, and still not understood. But
eating is a sin. The new masturbation. Read 19thC newspapers and
popular medical books/articles and you'll see the same language and
the same ideas about masturbation. You do realise the "you'll go
blind" was in the papers from the same kinds of doctors and reporters
as now say "you'll get diabetic and die of a heart attack"?

 

bikerbetty wrote:

I have bad news for you, betty, we aren't starting to accept, it has
always been so.

The stories about celebs, wars and major disasters aren't any more
likely to be true and accurate than any other story.

WMD's? Children thrown overboard? Shane Warne's mobile phone?

Back in the mists of antiquity, I worked as a journo for a couple of
years.

Well, I had to do something while I was waiting for the mini-computer to
be invented. ;-)

Back then, being a journalist was a fairly simple task. There were all
these blank bits in between the adverts, and we had to fill them up with
words.

If the words made any kind of sense, or perhaps were entertaining in
some way, that was good, but not essential 'cos there was a lot a blank
bits to fill. :-|

But, in those days, there was a finite amount of blank space to fill.
Now, through the wonders of modern technology, the blank space is
infinite. :-(

May I commend to you the reading of Terry Pratchett's novel "The Truth",
as a remarkably accurate account of news gathering.

regards,
CrazyCam

 

Why do I have the feeling it will destroy all my youthful illusions???? ;-)

betty

 

In aus.motorcycles on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 07:42:24 +1100

Oh I'm not saying that's right, just saying that's what happens. I
don't think it is right, but it is commercially correct.

"we" have bugger all say. The paper's job is to sell advertising, and
that is what's important to them. Small errors are unfortunate but
not important to a paper.

The did correct it, they've done the job they believe they need to do.
To be fair they can't be completely accurate all the time, being human
and all.

Zebee

 

Zebee Johnstone wrote:

And, also to be fair, "completely accurate" is a kind of movable feast
dependent of the world view or prejudices of the reader/listener.

regards,
CrazyCam

 

Sigh. Whilst I was at the MotoGP my two grandsons convinced my wife that
letting them out of the gate to ride along the verge was an excellent idea
and it would shut them up for a while. Quad and children (13 and 9) finished
upside down in a ditch. No serious injuries and hopefully a lesson learnt
(also by Grandma I hope).

Theo

 

Surely the celeb stories are gospel truth?

I believed the Warnie phone stories, they were lies too?

Theo

 

In aus.motorcycles on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:17:23 +0900

Lesson they learn is "hey, we know what to avoid now!"

People never get upset when kids fall off horses, but do when they
fall off motorbikes, why is that?

I did silly things on my pushy as a kid like riding down stairs and
off home made jumps long before the BMX craze. Helmetless and in
shorts and t shirt and bare feet.

Thing is.. some kids *did* get hurt doing that. But lots didn't. But
many people now seem to think that getting hurt's inevitable.

I fell off horses a lot when young. Mostly because I was jumping them
or galloping over rough ground, or riding young horses that spooked.
Or just because I didn't pay attention. Started riding a 4 years old,
fell off for the first time shortly thereafter

But a riding instructor will tell you to get right back on that horse
and pay attention. A parent or policeman will presumably say "oh
dear! it is too dangerous!"

Which is why you should send your kid to a hardnosed riding instructor
and not teach them yourself

Zebee
- whose first instructor had been taught by a cavalry sargeant and it
showed!

 

Betty, having a lot of experence with the media, it is my view that they are
not interested in truth at all, just a sensational spin on selective facts.
Journilists see themselves as being above us all and having the right to
filter and edit at will. Generally it is best to avoid them at all times.

Boxer

 

They had already learned "Don't ask when granddad is around". Granddad
doesn't care that they ride on the block, outside the gate on the roadway he
does.

Because it is always the horse's fault?

I was riding a two-wheeler when I was four (before trainer-wheels were
invented) and brakes were an optional extra for rich kids when I was a
teenager. As bicycle helmets had also not yet been invented, all my mates
and I died.

Been there, done that.

My parents never said that. It was assumed that all the boys would get
motorcycles when they got old enough.

My daughter got her m/c licence and she and her younger brother did the
bungee jumping and jumping out of funcional aircraft thing. All three scuba
dive.

Theo

 

Dad got hurt because he wasn't wearing a helmet? What were motorcyclists
doing before 1960? All those riders without helmets, and all those cars
without seat-belts, it's a wonder that generation survived to spawn us.

Theo

 

In aus.motorcycles on Thu, 27 Dec 2007 09:29:03 +0900

sorry to break it to you Theo, but lots of them did get killed.

If you ride wearing a helmet, you will survive some crashes uninjured or less
injured than if you were not.

You will survive some smaller number of crashes (much smaller, how
much isn't clear at all) not wearing a helmet that would injure you if
you were wearing one.


There are a number of crashes where wearing one won't help. There are
a number where wearing one will make no difference.

The guy who got hurt might have been less injured if he'd been wearing
a helmet. We don't know that, although I suspect it is likely given
that the speeds were not going to be high.

Zebee

 

Pratchett's good. Mildly insane .. but good.

Oook ! Said the librarian.