UK Air Accidents

I did send an email to the editor of this paper complaining about this
article. I got a reply back from him in which he was very apologetic and
explained that he was a glider pilot himself.

He was on leave that week and the article was passed by a sub editor. He
would have squashed it if he had been there. I believe that a retraction
was published a couple of weeks later on an inside page, but the damage
had already been done by then.

I wasn't in a position to offer the journalist a flight, because I was
doing a comp a long way from home and only had a single seat glider.

I suppose that from a journalistic point of view, 'glider lands safely in
large empty field' (not a school playing field btw) is not very
newsworthy. A bit like the famous (London) Times headline 'Small
earthquake in Peru, not many killed'!

Derek Copeland


At 09:06 18 June 2009, Ian wrote:
On 17 June, 18:00, Del C wrote:

They also got my name and the make of my glider wrong. The only facts
they
got right were that I was unhurt and the glider was undamaged! They
never
spoke to me, only a couple of witnesses and the police who had checked
that I was OK.

What can you do?

Phone the reporter and invite him/her for a flight?

Ian

In the UK we have a body called the Press Complaints Commission. The PCC's
function is to adjudicate when someone who considers that a newspaper has
broken the Editors' Code of Practice makes a complaint against that
newspaper. This is an extract from the code that covers the kind of poor
reporting that leads to the kind of rubbish some local papers tend to print
about gliding:

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or
distorted information, including pictures.

ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once
recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and - where
appropriate - an apology published.

iii) The Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between
comment, conjecture and fact.

Raising a complaint with the PCC against a newspaper is simple and
inexpensive; it can consist of as little as a phone call. If the PCC finds
that a newspaper has indeed broken the code, it will instruct the newpaper
to issue an apology and a correction to the original article. While this is
all a voluntary system for newspapers, it does provide a means of putting
pressure on journalists and editors to get their facts right.

Maybe we as glider pilots should be a little more willing to make that phone
call?

"Ian" wrote in message
...
On 17 June, 14:46, "David Starer" wrote:
If we
insisted on balanced, accurate, and informed reporting maybe we could
start
preventing this kind of ignorant rubbish from appearing in print, along
with
the damage it does to our sport.

There isn't the slightest chance of anybody being able to insist of
"balanced, accurate and informed reporting". Insist to whom? Under
threat of what penalty?

Ian

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.

Unfortunately, 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!

Even more alarming is the case where you make a perfectly good landing in a
field and by the time you have got out of the cockpit to seek a phone (in
the days before mobiles), an ambulance, a fire engine, and a police car meet
you at the gate. This happened to me twice! I never made it to the news
sheets.

Alistair Wright