Order of the Bath

We happened to switch on the TV at about 10pm on Friday to get some news and, on News 24, be landed in the middle of the story about the Cumbria train derailment.

Some observations I made at the time:

• A major incident it certainly was, but it didn’t look serious enough to black out ALL other news both from home and overseas.
• It was addictive—I felt that you had to hang on a little longer in case something important came to light.
• It made the official spokesmen look stupid. They didn’t know what was going one, we knew more from mobile phone calls and pictures from people on the train.
• They kept saying that, apart from a few people unable to move, there were only minor injuries.
• The train seemed remarkably empty—only 120 people on a nine carriage Friday night express from London to Glasgow?

Now a few days later, some of my opinions have changed.

• They were wrong—it was more serious that they knew. It goes to show that the people actually there don’t necessarily know what is happening.
• The official spokesmen were not stupid, they knew that only had part of the information and were sensibly not committing themselves before they knew for certain.
• The BBC executive reporting from the train should have known better. Her position gave her reports authority and weight which was not justified by the circumstances.
• It calls into question how reliable any “on the spot” journalism is.

This entry was posted on 27 Feb 2007 at 12:28 by Rick and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.