Researchers; they're worth their weight in........feathers!

[Bullbasket]

We've probably all seen the usual results of lazy/uninformed research; programs about RAF raids in WW2, and the film shows USAAF aircraft. Or something about the war on the Eastern Front, but what they're showing are DAK panzers. Yesterday I caught 10 minutes of a daytime program on the Beeb, and it was talking about travel in the past, by land, sea , and air. So for land, they showed some film of coaches and a steam train. OK. For sea there was film of some liner. Fine. But what did they use to illustrate travel by air? A Bristol Brabazon! Bloomin' 'eck! As far as I'm aware, that monstrosity only took to the air once, and certainly never carried any fare paying passengers. Obviously it filled the criteria of "Oh look. It's a plane. That'll do".

 

John.

[fatfingers]

Lost count the number of times i've seen 'archive' footage of the Titanic thats actually either the Olympic or Lusitania/Mauritania/Aquatania. Think its a case of 'oh that one has four funnels so we'll stick it in as no one will know the difference' 🤨

 

Regards,

 

Steve

[Dave Swindell]

3 hours ago, Bullbasket said:

As far as I'm aware, that monstrosity only took to the air once, and certainly never carried any fare paying passengers.

Right on the second count, but it flew quite a bit, 164 flights totalling 382 hours' flying time over a 4 year period, several air shows including Farnborough and Paris and the rest flight testing. 

[Admiral Puff]

Not quite the same, but the ABC (our national broadcaster) has a habit, when mentioning police-related incidents on the idiot box, of showing a fully uniformed police officer accompanied by a voice-over that talks about "Detective Inspector (or Sergeant, or Constable, or Superintendent) Scruggs". Someone really ought to tell them the difference. I'd have though that the wallopers themselves, if no-one else, would like them to get it right!

[stevehnz]

Thought for a moment you'd been watching Sky History channel John, the description was so apt. It is bloody annoying isn't it, mine hate watching documentaries with me, they reckon I bitch & moan too much.

Steve.

[Bullbasket]

14 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Right on the second count, but it flew quite a bit, 164 flights totalling 382 hours' flying time over a 4 year period, several air shows including Farnborough and Paris and the rest flight testing. 

Ah, I stand corrected. In my defense, it doesn't have a turret and a big stick in front that goes BANG! It is (or was) a wingy thing after all.

 

John. 

[Black Knight]

Did youse catch the news story in which a TV news-desk reporter in Argentina was reporting the death of William Shakespeare, the first Englishman to get the Covid vaccine jab?*   She went on to talk about all the famous plays he wrote and that it was a loss to the literary world that he died.

 

* https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-57234741

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/28/william-shakespeare-death-mistake-argentinian-tv

[Heather Kay]

It’s not just a recent phenomenon. A trawl through the British Pathé YouTube channel for stuff from 1939 on frequently throws up stock footage inserted into reports. My particular favourite was a report "from France" during the Phoney War. A vic of three Hurricanes took off and flew away. Then they came back and landed. All the while, the narrator trumpeted about "our brave Spitfire pilots"?

 

Never mind there weren’t any Spitfires in France… 

[davecov]

I cringe whenever the Daily Mail tea boy refers to a propeller-driven aircraft as a "jet".

 

Dave

[Black Knight]

In the 1970s though to late 1980s and again more recently every where in Northern Ireland is  'xxxx, Belfast', Eg a recent one, a report on the BBC on-line read 'Enniskillen Castle, Enniskillen, Belfast'. Like there is only 90 miles between the two places.

[bentwaters81tfw]

Deleted - swearing removed

[Tzulscha]

So many bad "documentaries" out there.

I started watching one called "The 13 Hours that Saved Britain" about the BoB.

 

ALL the footage was from the 1969 Battle of Britain movie.

Good movie but...

[AWFK10]

In Wednesday's BBC One 1 p.m. news, the reporter covering the HMS Defender incident referred to the ship as "HMS Destroyer". If he'd only done it once it could easily have been just a slip of the tongue but he did it three times. In fact, he did it every time he thought he was quoting the ship's name, so obviously he'd not grasped that a destroyer is a type of warship of which HMS Defender is an example.

[Mr T]

On 6/24/2021 at 11:18 AM, Heather Kay said:

It’s not just a recent phenomenon. A trawl through the British Pathé YouTube channel for stuff from 1939 on frequently throws up stock footage inserted into reports. My particular favourite was a report "from France" during the Phoney War. A vic of three Hurricanes took off and flew away. Then they came back and landed. All the while, the narrator trumpeted about "our brave Spitfire pilots"?

 

Never mind there weren’t any Spitfires in France… 

I get your drift, but not strictly true. Some PR aircraft were based in Northern France and of course Churchills' Flamingo was escorted to Paris by 92? Sqn. Some of the old Pathe stuff is priceless though, especially the accents of the narrators. 

It may come as a surprise to many people what limited resources some of the media have at their disposal. My sister in law is a news editor with BBC News. She has to sort out the story that has been decided to cover by the health team (ie the health reporter and the other editor that covers the time Roz isn't working) and then get the material together and sort/do the interviews etc. There is no big team of researchers, a lot of the big stories away from the immediate news stories are put together when there are bits of time. They might spend a lot of money on EastEnders, but news has been cut to the bone. Apparently it is not much different with ITN, who have been hit by the knock on in the slump in  advertising revenue that has hit the TV and newspapers. 

[Ratch]

8 hours ago, AWFK10 said:

In Wednesday's BBC One 1 p.m. news, the reporter covering the HMS Defender incident referred to the ship as "HMS Destroyer". If he'd only done it once it could easily have been just a slip of the tongue but he did it three times. In fact, he did it every time he thought he was quoting the ship's name, so obviously he'd not grasped that a destroyer is a type of warship of which HMS Defender is an example.

It made me double-take too. I started to question whether there was an HMS Destroyer I'd previously not heard of 

[Dave Swindell]

10 hours ago, AWFK10 said:

In Wednesday's BBC One 1 p.m. news, the reporter covering the HMS Defender incident referred to the ship as "HMS Destroyer". If he'd only done it once it could easily have been just a slip of the tongue but he did it three times. In fact, he did it every time he thought he was quoting the ship's name, so obviously he'd not grasped that a destroyer is a type of warship of which HMS Defender is an example.

Aww, come on, he was pretty close! Not like he was calling it HMS Battleship is it? 

[noelh]

My question is why there isn't a HMS Destroyer? No country would mess with a ship of that name. 

 

Without going into politics was I the only one amused by the whole affair. It's no accident that HMS Defender was fully loaded with  not just missiles but journos of various calibres. Definitely this was a tweaking of the Bear's whiskers. 🐻

 

 

Edited June 25, 2021 by noelh

[bentwaters81tfw]

I suspect Ivan was trying to provoke a response, so they could see how good our kit is. The skipper certainly seemed prepared to let fly if needed.

[AWFK10]

1 hour ago, Dave Swindell said:

Aww, come on, he was pretty close! Not like he was calling it HMS Battleship is it? 

Yes, that's another one. People who think "battleship" and "warship" are the same thing.

 

My great-great-grandfather Cap'n Henry John Nicholson (Ha haar!) would have shivered his timbers if he'd heard some landlubberly swab make that mistake.

[Chimpion]

I find that whenever I actually know something about the story, there are always glaring inaccuracies in almost all news reports. It makes me wonder what rubbish they're spouting about the stuff I don't know about. Generally the better news sources get the right impression across, but the details can't be trusted. I think the reporters are under too much pressure and have to cover too wide a subject area to be able to understand whether they're being accurate or not.

[bentwaters81tfw]

If you don't read newspapers, you are uninformed,

If you do read newspapers, you are mis-informed.

 

...Mark Twain.

[Mr T]

On reflection, in this case I would be willing to cut the reporter some slack. I would be quite anxious being on a warship that is at action stations apparently for real (I understand that it's weapons system were fully online and ready) and surrounded by other ships and aircraft with what appear to be hostile intent. The guy can do nothing about the situation, he is there and can only talk into a camera whilst possibly having images of Falklands War ships on fire or blowing up going through his head. My thoughts would be at least 'Attention, clean up in aisle underpants'

Stress reduces people's ability to think, that is why I assume people in the forces are trained to respond in certain ways as it saves their lives and enable them to function. How many of you without the appropriate training would function well in a resus room or on a ward when dealing with a casualty or a big postoperative bleed? 

Edited June 26, 2021 by Mr T

[Bullbasket]

1 hour ago, Beermonster1958 said:

With all due respect, I was not amused at all. If it was a deliberately provocative act, then I would say it was an act of crass stupidity.

This is just the sort of nonsense that could easily have tragic consequences

 

John

As it was explained in the report, it's like a public footpath through the property of a landowner. If the footpath isn't used, then the landowner will close it off because of lack of use. I've no doubt that in the coming days/weeks/months, there will be other NATO ships carrying out similar journeys.

 

John.

[Black Knight]

One the other day, on a radio news report

To set the context only; the radio news reporter was talking about the latest happenings within the UK government.

 

The reporter then quoted what ex-PM Sir John Major said on the matter

 

Then the reporter 'quoted' what ex-PM Margaret Thatcher had to say on the matter!

Did he have a direct line to her to get a quote or did he go via Derek Acorah ?

 

(No political responses please)