Who is the thickest journalist of all?
A fishing village and popular holiday spot has hit back at nearly 300 one-star reviews online that complain of “extortionate” prices at the “cobbled hellscape”.
Clovelly in North Devon is famous for its cobbled streets, donkeys, steep hills that lead to a quay, and its view of the English channel.
You won’t be seeing the English channel from the north Devon coast no matter how hard you try. Idiots.
’ Who is the thickest journalist of all?’
Ooh, strong field!
Well, yes…
Not so much thick as just too lazy to do even the most basic research. I couldn’t have told you where Clovelly was off the top of my head but if I was writing a newspaper article about the place I would at least have taken the time to find out.
Given that the writers noted that Clovelly is in North Devon, that should have been a bit of a clue, no?
Yes I missed that bit. But pulling up a map with the location of Clovelly on my phone literally took 30 seconds if he had been in doubt.
One memory that I have of Devon is of getting to play a pipe organ at a National Trust property there.
Given the current standard of edukayshun, I doubt if the writer knows where Devon is, yet alone which way the points of a compass are laid out…
Ah, but what if he has a degree in “journalism”?
Modern journalism is mainly re-writing press releases and AP wire stores (plus deciding which stories to repress for going against the narrative)
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
– Michael Crichton (1942-2008).
In my case, Railways. Their reporting of Ladbroke Grove was woeful. Consequently I assume their ignorance is universal.
My epiphany came in about 1980. In those days, lower division football games would be shown on TV, often midweek. I watched the highlights of one match where it was mentioned that John Smith* had just arrived back from playing in the fledgling USA Soccer league so they were lucky that he was playing. The match report in next day’s “news”paper** said that John Smith* didn’t play because he hadn’t arrived back from the USA in time.
* Name changed to protect the guilty and because I can’t remember it.
** The Sun, but I’ve come to realise that they’re all untrustworthy, just some more than others.
In my case, practically anything even remotely related to IT.
And numbers, numbers, numbers: don’t get me started on the journos who can’t distinguish between a value and its rate of change.
Favourite anecdote: Headline (in the Telegraph no less): “Scottish food prices double in a year”. Well that would be remarkable, and would probably lead to a revolution. So you read the article and what it actually says is that the food price inflation rate went from 1.2% to 2.4%. Egad.
Yes, pretty stupid. Not really worth a defence but possibly he or she meant to write’Bristol Channel’ and had brain fade?
Well, at least the idiot wrote English Channel, not just The Channel. I expect they’ll be sent to the re-education booth for this regrettable lapse.