"El Maximo" wrote in message
...

I'm a former journalist with a degree in technical journalism. There is
no part of the curriculum or stylebook pertaining to aviation and at no
point does somebody come up to a student journalist or young reporter and
say "Look, you guys. It's called an engine failure. Not an engine
stall..."

I was more referring to his sweeping statement that "They often get all
sorts of things wrong".

Yeah. It's pretty easy to trash-talk somebody who writes under a deadline,
probably lives in near poverty and might have to cover politics, medical
science, aviation or economics on any given day. Journalists get a lot of
crap because they're never as much of an expert as the experts they're
quoting.
Granted...some reporting is just stupid. It would be useful for local
publications if they had journalists who were aviation experts, or medical
experts, or whatever but not all of them can or do.

CNN has a few pilots on its staff that they consult whenever there's an
accident. That's useful. Plus, it adds a -lot- of credibility to that news
outlet. Unfortunately, most reporters don't make nearly enough money to dump
into an aviation hobby.

The easiest way to convert a publication that may be lukewarm or clueless
about general aviation is to take some of them flying. A professional pilot
in a clean aircraft who can demonstrate the concepts to them and answer
their questions will gain their respect. The FBO owner in Troutdale has
done just such a thing; when he installed his new TruFlite sim he put some
reporters in it and appeared quite favorably in at least two newspapers and
local TV.
That's good advertising! (The TV reporter augered, though.)

-c