On Jun 17, 8:26*am, "David Starer" wrote:
"José Jiménez" nospam@please wrote in message

...



David Starer wrote:

In many other European countries gliding is part of the fabric of
everyday life and I would expect reporting there to be better informed
and as a result, much more balanced and accurate.

)

A member of my club recently made a perfectly normal, safe outlanding in
a field in Lincolnshire near to a field where a cricket match was in
progress. Unfortunately the local rag found out and reported it in the
usual sensationalised "Glider Pilot in Shock Horror Death Plunge" kind of
language.

Unfortuately, this is the norm rather than the exception even in Germany.
For the very least it's titled as an "emergency landing".

At least that's a "landing" of some sort; here it's usually reported as a
"crash", even when it's blindingly obvious there wasn't one!

The only bright spot is that these local rags are rapidly dying for
lack of advertising revenue. The screaming headlines and lurid
stories are a desperate attempt to hang on to readers for their
advertisers as long as possible. Real "news" vanished from their
pages long ago - pretty much everyone knows that.

The Internet with it's unlimited choice has won. For newspapers, the
'light at the end of the tunnel' is the headlight on a train named
Google.

I still relish the look on the face of a newspaper marketing guy who
knocked on my door with an unfortunate lad in tow trying to get me to
take the local paper for "free" when I told him, "No, I don't want to
pay the refuse collector to haul it away." If you can't sell "free",
you're toast.