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’?
