There are times when I despair of my
former ‘profession’. In the pursuit of readers and advertisers, some journalists
are constantly under pressure to come up with stories and news items designed
to attract and hopefully increase public interest. Misleading headlines further
draw the public in to read their stories and increase the ‘clicks’ on their
websites. This often seems to be driven more by the need to generate income
than educate and inform. The accountants have taken over from the editors.
Greed is the driver not public service. An extreme view perhaps?
Of course not all news outlets are like that but it is the
less scrupulous who give the profession a bad name which raises concerns,
especially about our national broadcaster, let alone the national news dailies.
Yet again they have repeated the disinformation about ‘spectators’ being the
victims of the 2014 tragedy. It was pointed out to them at the time that two of
the victims had media credentials issued by the sport’s governing body and had
been duly ‘signed-on’ as Media at the event. One of whom was actually an ex-rally
driver in the 1970s, and former rally sponsor in the 1980s, so should have been
only too well aware of the risks. Compounding their misjudgement was the fact
they chose to take two guests with them on that fateful day and who were
unknown to the rally organisers. Guests who were not professional or amateur
media, and who simply shouldn’t have been allowed to place themselves in
danger.
Despite bringing this to the BBC’s attention the broadcaster
continued to use the term ‘spectators’ and other journalists simply followed
suit in a shoddy disregard of the facts. Despite objections and complaints
raised at the time the BBC persisted with the use of the term before eventually
using the term ‘people’ in later broadcasts rather than using the more factually
accurate description.
Off the record I was told that there was some disquiet
within the press and media ranks about bringing their profession into
disrepute. Whether that was true or not I don’t know, or whether it was just poor
journalism, a blatant disregard of the facts or whether it was just sloppy journalistic
shorthand. The truth reduced to a very misleading phrase.
A cynic might wonder if this was because it happened in a
‘niche’ sport and no ‘big’ names were involved and standards were allowed to
slip, or even more cynically, the story could be made much bigger and attract
more attention.
Almost overlooked in all of this was the fact that there was
another victim, the young man driving the rally car. He would have to live with
the consequences of the crash. Given the circumstances, the dreadful and tragic
outcome was not his fault.
Whilst the motor sports media were mostly respectful
following the recent tragedy on last weekend’s rally, the ‘popular’ press and
some elements of the national broadcasting media used it to revisit events in 2014
which they mis-reported then and did so again this time.
What worries me is if the facts a don’t fit the narrative
they wish to tell, will some points be overlooked or omitted?
So the next time you see the BBC introducing their ‘fact
checkers’ ask yourselves one question, who’s checking the ‘fact checkers’?
