[Gllug] Surprised...

[Rev Simon Rumble]

This one time, at band camp, Sean Burlington wrote:

> its not just IT that get reported badly - have you ever noticed how news 
> articles about things you know about are highly innacurate ?
> 
> This seems to be a fairly general phenomena - you only pay attention to 
> news on subjects you don't know much about ...

In fact, many newspapers make this an overt policy.

A woman in Sydney was a qualified medical doctor and decided she
wanted to change careers and become a journalist.  She went through
the Sydney Morning Herald's (pompous, self-righeous tabloid in
broadsheet format) cadetship programme (crap pay, menial work) and
worked her way up to become a journalist.  When the paper's medical
correspondent position came up, she was rejected due to her expertise
because, obviously, that would make her "biased".

Many newspapers also send foreign correspondents based on nepotism,
graft and patronage, instead of expertise.  It's a junket to get
posted overseas.  They often don't speak the language, live in the
"foreigner" part of town and do little real news gathering beyond
attending ambassadors' parties and press conferences.  You can always
spot their copy in the newspaper: it reads just like the Reuters
report you read a day previous.

Wot me, cynical?

-- 
Rev Simon Rumble <simon at rumble.net>
www.rumble.net

  "After watching my newly-retired dad spend two weeks
  learning how to make a new folder, it became obvious
  that "intuitive" mostly means "what the writer or
  speaker of intuitive likes".
- Bruce Ediger, bediger at teal.csn.org, on X the 
  intuitiveness of a Mac interface
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