On Fri, 19 Aug 2005 00:54:37 GMT, "-=jd=-"
wrote:
I'm thinking the media has been duped, not by malice, but by sloppy
journalism in the race to be first with the breaking news.

I reckon you've hit the nail on the head, there.

So what gives? Did a reporter grab some commuter schmuck at the scene and
swallow the initial reports (about the padded jacket; attempting to elude;
refusing to comply with officer orders) without verifying it? Then that one
account made the network rounds until it mushroomed into a near conspiracy?

This wouldn't be the first time the BBC and other British media have
jumped the gun. The Beeb were recently found guilty of making false
accusations against the UK government's reasons for entering the
second Iraq war, which may have contributed to the suicide of a
government defense consultant. In particular the BBC was criticised
for allowing a major story to air UNCHECKED.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_inquiry

I do find it a rather laughable situation, after all the BBC are just
another government-run broadcaster, no matter how much people would
like to play this down by calling their funding a "licence fee" rather
than a tax (there's a 10-quid a month "licence fee" for having a
television in your house; sounds like a tax to me). Essentially what
happened was that one division of the government took another division
of the government to court for libel (but they called it a "judicial
enquiry"), which is plainly daft and an indicator of just how
overburdened with bureaucracy the UK has become.

Whilst the UK news media are more serious in their political coverage
than their US cousins, there is nevertheless the same hunger to be
"first with the news", and the Sky/Fox corporation battle it out with
the BBC to be the first to break any news item. The BBC is also
particularly fond of digging, digging and digging some more to find
dirt on politicians and politics; this has been backfiring frequently
in recent years as the desperation to beat Sky/Fox to a news story
often means that stories go out unchecked.

If an Sky or BBC reporter got an eyewitness spinning them a complete
yarn about a major story, they WOULD broadcast it, because they're too
busy racing to beat their competitors to the scoop rather than
stopping to coroborate the evidence.

So I reckon you've got it absolutely correct on about a reporter
swallowing an initial eyewitness report without verifying it, and it
spiralling out of control.

--
Andrew Oakley andrew/atsymbol/aoakley/stop/com
Gloucestershire, UK