Saturday, October 15, 2016

bad headlines

hello


soon, i fear, i might well have to give up on the idea of decent journalism once again being either a given or indeed a thing. alarm bells seem to continuously ring when i glance at the news, look you see, as clearly articles are getting "out there" which are written in an ill-informed way and apparently not edited or checked at all.

i don't think any of this stems from a particularly high standard that i may hold. it's more the case that, once, being a journalist was quite an achievement; a career reserved for the very best of best writers. care for quality of writing seems to have just fallen away.



it is with dismay i advise that the above, as you can probably make out, comes off of the BBC. whereas once the BBC was considered the pinnacle of broadcasting excellence, now they seem to be very much of a "this will do" mind.

my quarrel with the above? well, look at that first headline. whilst i confess i am not at all sure who Mark Gatiss is, i would suspect that several others - the Estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in particular - might take issue with the notion of him being declared the "creator" of Sherlock, as in Sherlock Holmes.

should that one be me being somewhat pedantic, alas the second is not. it is also a very serious and disturbing news article, and certainly not one which i would wish to make light of. which would make it all the more baffling why such poor journalism came into reporting.



the implication of the above headline is that Ched Evans was placed on trial and judged to be not guilty for an assault which occurred during another trial. i would suspect that what Metro (and yes i know they are not really a proper newspaper) was trying to report was that his retrial ended in a not guilty verdict being returned.

i do understand that the priority for newspapers in this day and age is to be "media outlets" which generate "revenue streams" rather than to report the actual news, but i find it hard to believe that the standards of writing and editing really don't matter that much any more.

or perhaps i should just stop reading the news. anyhow, rant over. for now.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



No comments: