Standard of reporting

[toprob]

I'm on an email alert list run by the Police. It's totally routine for an email like this to come out ...

QUOTE

New Zealand Police Alert 8:00am 25 Dec 2008 Auckland City

Location of incident: auckland

Incident type: stolen car motorway south

Traffic incident Southern Motorway.
Police are speaking to the driver of a stolen Ford Telstar vehicle on the southern motorway.
At about 9.55a.m. Police stopped the vehicle in the southbound near Tip Top corner. The stolen vehicle has mounted the centre guard rail and as a result is now leaking petrol. The Fire department is in attendance, however southbound traffic has been reduced to one lane. Police expect the motorway to have reduced flow for approximately one hour.

Issued By: Senior Sergeant Anthony Edwards[/quote]
and then read this in the herald or hear it on Newstalk ZB ...

QUOTE

Police are speaking to the driver of a stolen Ford Telstar vehicle on the southern motorway. Police stopped the vehicle at about 9.55 this morning southbound near Tip Top corner. Senior Sergeant Anthony Edwards said the stolen vehicle mounted the centre guard rail and as a result is now leaking petrol. The Fire department is in attendance, however southbound traffic has been reduced to one lane. Police expect the motorway to have reduced flow for approximately one hour.[/quote]

What's prompted this post is an alert that just came out, which begins ...

QUOTE

New Zealand Police Alert 1:00pm 9 Jan 2009 Waitemata

Location of incident: Glen Eden

Incident type: Woman Injured in Crossbow Incident

A Glen Eden woman is in a serious but stable condition in Green Lane Hospital after being hit by an arrow fired from a loaded crossbow.
Police say the 42 year old victim has a severe head injury after the male occupant of a neighbouring property has been in possession of the weapon.
Detective Senior Sergeant Stan Brown says ...[/quote]

Well for heavens sake. It's called a bolt, not an arrow, and she could hardly have been hit by a bolt fired from an unloaded crossbow.

I guarantee that when you read it in the Herald or hear it on the radio it'll still be called an arrow, and it'll still have been fired from a loaded crossbow (duh!), and you'll see a quote suggesting that the paper has spoken to Snr Sgt Brown ... And it won't be the reporters fault (although their editor has a lot to answer for) - that's how it came from the Police.

Just thought I'd mention this ...

Gary

Chairman

Sim-holic

 

Topic author

Joined: Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:07 pm

Posts: 912

Top

[Vegetableman]

Heh heh.
From: NZ Herald

An Auckland woman is in a serious but stable condition in Green Lane Hospital after being hit near her eye by a 40cm long arrow fired from a loaded crossbow

[toprob]

Nice to see at least they're punctual

For reference, here is the complete email that came from the Police, with a link at the bottom if anyone else wants to subscribe to the emails.

QUOTE

New Zealand Police Alert 1:00pm 9 Jan 2009 Waitemata

Location of incident: Glen Eden

Incident type: Woman Injured in Crossbow Incident

A Glen Eden woman is in a serious but stable condition in Green Lane Hospital after being hit by an arrow fired from a loaded crossbow.
Police say the 42 year old victim has a severe head injury after the male occupant of a neighbouring property has been in possession of the weapon.
Detective Senior Sergeant Stan Brown says police were called to a property in Ambler Avenue Glen Eden at about 3.30pm on Thursday 8 January 2009.
'On arrival we found the victim lying injured with a 40cm long target arrow partially embedded in the front of her skull, just above the right eye.'
'Prior to the incident the neighbour has been in the right of way on his property with the loaded weapon and a quantity of arrows. [Straight shaft and head, no barb] At the same time the victim has been on the veranda of her small neighbouring home unit, watering her pot plant.'
'The crossbow has discharged and the arrow has travelled about 30 metres into her property. It has struck the victim inflicting her with the serious injury.'
'Both the neighbour and the victim's 16 year old son heard the injured woman call out and they immediately went to her assistance. She was transported to Auckland Hospital by ambulance and later transferred to the specialist eye unit at Green Lane. Her condition is described as serious but stable. Emergency eye surgery has been carried out.'
'Ongoing enquiries by police are in progress. Charges are being considered,' Detective Senior Sergeant Stan Brown said.
Kevin [Kev] Loughlin

Issued By: Inspector Barry Smalley


You have received this email because you signed up for Alerts from the New Zealand Police web site.

To edit your subscription or remove yourself from the subscription list, click here:

http://www.police.govt.nz/news/updates/subscribe.html

This is an initial incident report only. As more information is gathered by Police at the scene some details may change.

No liability is assumed by New Zealand Police for any losses suffered directly or indirectly by any person relying on the information contained in this email.[/quote]

[Vegetableman]

So either the Herald do the reports for the police or they have absolutely no imagination whatsoever.
I like this:

'Ongoing enquiries by police are in progress. Charges are being considered,' Detective Senior Sergeant Stan Brown said. (Police report)

Becomes:

Police enquiries are continuing and charges may be laid, Mr Brown said. (NZ Herald)

[toprob]

Someone hereseems to have given the report a bit of thought...

[Vegetableman]

© 2009 NZCity, NewsTalkZB

A better effort you have to say.
I have far too much time on my hands.

[ZK-MAT]

Just playing Devil's Advocate here...

To be fair, if I read a 'bolt' had been fired from a crossbow I would have thought "aye??". An arrow I can understand, as I suspect most non-crossbow toting newspaper readers

As far as un-loaded vs loaded - it makes a difference if someone is carrying an unloaded or a loaded weapon, so to be perfectly clear as to the status of the weapon the condition of it is stated - you don't want to assume anything these days, the offender could go to court and the defence make an issue that in the summary of events Police did not correctly identify the status of the weapon.

[Bandit]

I was for many years involved with Search and Rescue. It wasn't uncommon for us to come out of the hills after an operation and a few days later to see a report about it in the local newspaper.

Trouble was quite often I'd wonder if it was the same one as the information was so mis reported.

A local club I'm on the committee for gets asked/interviewed fairly regularly by our local rag - The Manawatu Standard (more likely sub-Standard).

It got so bad with them mis reporting what we had said that we refused to assist them unless we saw a preview of the completed article so we could correct it if required. It saved them having to print retractions later on.

[greaneyr]

For me, the all-time classic media-misreporting was when the Southern Air Cessna 404 crashed into Foveaux strait in the late 1990s. The media initially said that it had crashed on a flight between Dunedin and Invercargill. The worst part was that in later weeks, they said that 'questions were being asked of why it took rescuers so long to arrive at the scene'.

That's a typical media statement that needs no justification. "Questions were being asked"... By who? Not only that, It annoyed me that they believed it was acceptable for themselves to misreport the location of an accident and even the sector the aircraft was flying, and yet it was not acceptable for rescuers to struggle with it. Perhaps it took rescuers so long to locate the accident site because they watched TV3 news?

[victor_alpha_charlie]

QUOTE (greaneyr @ Jan 11 2009, 10:52 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

the Southern Air Cessna 404 crashed into Foveaux strait in the late 1990s.

Would it annoy you if I corrected you and said it was a Cessna 402C?

[Bazza]

Big Headline in today's "STUFF"....

KIRI CATCHES BAY OF PLENTY'S FIRST BLUE MARLIN....


Article goes on to say she caught it in Russell. Even though there's no airfield there all Flightsimmers know Russell is in the Bay of Islands.
It's not even the first caught as stated....they have been catching them for nearly a century, both in The Bays of Plenty and Islands.

Somehow it's even worse when they screw up the banner headlines....

[victor_alpha_charlie]

QUOTE (Bazza @ Jan 11 2009, 12:15 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Big Headline in today's "STUFF"....

KIRI CATCHES BAY OF PLENTY'S FIRST BLUE MARLIN....


Article goes on to say she caught it in Russell. Even though there's no airfield there all Flightsimmers know Russell is in the Bay of Islands.
It's not even the first caught as stated....they have been catching them for nearly a century, both in The Bays of Plenty and Islands.

Somehow it's even worse when they screw up the banner headlines....

QUOTE

Dame Kiri's catch is the first blue marlin recorded by the Bay of Islands Swordfish Club for 2009.[/quote]

Sounds like it's just an error in the title that's being taken way out of proportion.