The Laziness of the Desk Top Journalist. – The Anna Raccoon Archives

by Anna Raccoon on January 26, 2010

The self-appointed luminaries of the former ’street of shame’ like to complain that the trouble with bloggers is that we take their ‘free source of news’ and enlarge on it, without thought for the cost of producing this ‘news’ in the first place.

Any bloggers thinking of basing a post on the story on female Air Traffic Controllers which appeared in the Irish version of the Mail on Sunday, might like to be fully cognisant of the true cost of this astounding piece of journalism.

The newspaper industry would like you to believe that gathering news is a specialised business, requiring professional training, high standards, and a building full of lawyers and sub-editors. Those of us who follow the fortunes of the Mail group of papers are well aware that this is not so – I once tore into them for an article that said books were being destroyed in Portugal, when in fact they were being impounded pending a libel hearing. Had they bothered to translate the judges order, they would have been aware of that; the only place in which I could find any reference to books being destroyed was on an English language web site that contained some rather overwrought comments on the supposed censorship behind that order. I can only presume that this was where the desk-top publishers at the Mail had obtained their information.

So much for the superior fact checking facilities and professional editing which ensures that the news which reaches the general public is fair, accurate, and impartial…

To return to today’s sad tale of the efforts the main stream press make to bring you news that they may well be charging you for in future, I would direct you to the web site of an average blogger. Not average in her ability, but average in her desire to blog. She wanted no more than to enlighten the world at large as to what it was like to do her quite unusual job as a female Air Traffic Controller. Her name is Melanie Dawn, and her blog is a gentle place, shared with a few friends and colleagues. She wasn’t trying to set the world on fire, or bring down the government, or reveal state secrets, however, it caught the attention of a roving Mail on Sunday newshound, hungry for the copy that would enable him to clock off and join his colleagues for a pint.

He took her blogpost, with not so much as a by-your-leave, nor an e-mail requesting permission to use her copy, and her photograph, and then proceeded to traduce her thoughts and churn them into newsworthy copy.

He took small segments of historical interest, such as her statement that a decade ago, two women were not allowed to work together, and turned them into a headline ‘Male Chauvinist Pigs’. Her off-hand remark about being initially viewed as ‘eye-candy’ became ‘institutionalised sexism’. A reference to office banter, not further explored, became ‘workplace sexism’ and ‘filthy language’. He gave Melanie opinions that she did not hold, and used words that she had never said, far less to this hapless reporter.

The first Melanie knew of this article was when a friend read it and alerted her to its presence. She was stunned.

I feel sick. Any future employer could fairly read what Luke Byrne has written about me and conclude that I am a disloyal, untrustworthy person. The people I work with today could, and probably have, read it and decided that I am not on their side, and that I think that they are sexist, nasty, bullies. None of this is true.

This blog was supposed to be an account of my life, what I do, and how I got here. Today it has been transformed into a weapon to be used by an unscrupulous, nasty person against some of the people I care most about.

To my work colleagues, I’m so, so, so, sorry. The person in that article is not me. It’s a twisted version of me, built to suit the nasty agenda of a journalist who doesn’t know me, and has never met me. I don’t know what more to say.

Her first reaction was to delete her blog, but then she realised that in doing so, she was wiping out her true opinions, leaving only the words of the ‘fair, accurate and impartial’ journalist to stand testament to the ‘truth’. She has reinstated some of it, and the comments on her eloquent post describing this are growing by the hour. Drop in on her if you have the time, and bookmark the page, it will come in useful one day when we are told that the MSM are erecting firewalls to protect their precious news gathering.

H/t to Wheel Spinning Hamster Dead and gratitude for their excellent graphic.

Melanie’s blog still HERE.

Update: An interesting link HERE from Dick Puddlecote confirming my impression.

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

1 RantinRab January 26, 2010 at 16:55: Nothing surprises me with the dead tree press.
2 Dick Puddlecote January 26, 2010 at 17:47: They only nick stuff from bloggers when they have run out of things to make up. The British press is world renowned for it, as this article describes in detail.
3 Demetrius January 26, 2010 at 18:01: What do you expect from a bunch of interns who are paying for the privilege of working or from graduate trainee’s on a six month contract that few will ever see become a regular job? I only wish when the are nicking stuff from the basic Science web sites that they would check up on what they are doing. Some of the errors are grotesque, even by my standards.
4 binlid January 26, 2010 at 22:44: The Mail stopped being a NEWSpaper a lon time ago, imo.