My usual carping about BBC News
Aug 23rd, 2007 by handolio
Alright, it’s not just about the BBC, but are all the sub-editors on holiday?
Apparently, eight out of ten people feel safe. What about now? Do you feel safe now?
And now?
Still, at least you haven’t got global warming to worry about, as a Scottish bus builder hopes to invent a bus with zero emissions. Apart from those pesky ones while it’s covering “a certain distance”, self-generating that there energy.
Not that it matters, as The Times reckons we’ll soon be able to send Aerogel back in time “to deal with environmental catastrophes such as the Sea Empress spillage in 1996″.
This is why we need sub-editors. It’s easy to write something that you – already knowing the point that you’re trying to get across – understand, but that involves a leap of logic that your reader won’t follow. Worse, you might think it makes sense when it simply doesn’t. It’s amazing how many times you can re-read something that’s utter bollocks and not see the slightest problem with it.
Any editor worth their salt should catch the latter, but if they know the subject well they could easily miss the former. It’s at this point that you need a sub to mop up your Word vomit*, write a better headline than you, then send both you and the editor a sarcastic reprimand.
Anyway, it’s probably not just the subs that are on holiday at the BBC, as it seems to be letting the trainees write the local news. Any decent journalist might have bothered to check the sums before rewriting the Surrey Police press release behind this story.
Is a drink drive campaign a success if it turns a 11.11% rate for positive breath tests into…a 11.11% rate for positive breath tests? Call me cynical, but the figures suggest that exactly as many people are getting pissed and driving, it’s just that this year the police haven’t been arsed to do as many breath tests.
Still feeling safe?
*copyright Janey Goulding
