One of the consolations of being a humble blogger with one reader and not a local and even national journalist, is that I can write what I want and not what someone else tells me to write, or write stuff purely for website clicks. A prime example today is Bristol Live, the on-line version of the Bristol Post, once a much respected and even loved daily newspaper. As with all other newspapers, the printed edition is in irreversible decline, although I do sense the Post may be ahead of the curve when it runs with stories like this.
Unusually, Bristol had snow last night. We woke up to a Christmas-like scene, as you might expect on the second day of spring. But not all of Bristol and, it turns out, nowhere at all at or near Bristol Airport. However, let’s not let simple facts get in the way of tacky clickbait. The senior reporter came up with this gem at 8.34 am:
‘Flights at Bristol Airport have been delayed this morning (March 2) after half the city woke to a blanket of snow. According to the live departures board, no flights have taken off.’
Hmm. I don’t know which departures board the reporter was looking at but by 8.30 am just the 27 flights had left Bristol and I got my information from … various departures boards. Not only are flights leaving, there are no abnormal delays at all due to the weather which may be due to the fact that at Adge Cutler International Airport there is no adverse weather.
In order to pad this story out, the reporter resorted to social media to back up his story and found this quote from an unnamed person: “25 minutes stood on a bus with no communication at the gate, five minutes then stood on the bus outside the plane with no communication.. on board and there’s no catering , the first officer and cabin crew had to go and find it due to a plane swap.” Eh? What’s this got to do with the weather? Airlines swap planes around all the time. This isn’t even a story at all and it’s certainly nothing to do with the weather.
At 9.22 am we get this:
Flights are starting to take off now
The first flights that were originally scheduled to take off earlier this morning have taken off. The most recent three departures were the flights to Grenoble, Dublin and Geneva, and there appears to be only small delays now.
A flight to Amsterdam that was due to take off at 9am is still boarding, and flights to Milan and Chambery that should be departing now are also still boarding, but it appears Bristol Airport has caught up with itself and the earlier delays.
In terms of arrivals, all flights are coming in ok, apart from one that is late in from Amsterdam.
But hang on. There are no unusual delays at the airport. Bristol didn’t need to catch up with itself because there have been no delays.
At 9.49 am, the reporter finally adds this: ‘Bristol Airport officials have confirmed that there is no snow at the airport this morning and no cancellations or delays to flight operations,’ clearly running out of time and space before he could add “Everything I said before was bollocks.”
For good measure, the reporter adds that some trains have been cancelled or delayed, but he somehow omits the fact that trains are running completely normally today. Overpriced and unreliable, yes, but that’s the norm, not the exception. The worrying thing is that so many people believe anything they read in the papers or on the internet. Witness these examples from the Bristol Live facebook page:
‘wonder how the airports in Scotland n Norway n such places cope‘
‘Planes, trains, buses grounded for what, half inch of snow, we have to be the laughing stock of the northern hemisphere.’
‘How do they survive in countries where there is lots of snow does it come to a halt‘
There are plenty more comments like that, basically from halfwits who mistakenly think they’re being clever and funny when in fact they are making complete twats of themselves and showing they believe anything on the internet.
So, it was all clickbait nonsense and all the time and it worked, including with me. Even though I have done my best to ridicule this embarrassing nonsense, I gave them the clicks they wanted. And doubtless the reporter who wrote the piece is being warmly congratulated by his editor for doing his job, which sadly has little or nothing to do with actual journalism. Or has it?
According to my dictionary, ‘journalism is the job of collecting news and writing about it for newspapers, magazines, television, or radio.’ So maybe the Bristol Live story does come under the category of journalism after all, in the same way as the rhetoric and propaganda that passes for journalism in the red tops.
The ‘Bristol Snow Shock Horror’ story is barely a story at all, in as much as nothing much as been affected by snow. But hopefully it’s a useful reminder to check yourself to see if something is true before writing about it for a newspaper or website or sharing it on social media. Clearly the Bristol Post senior reporter didn’t bother and if the messenger can’t be bothered it’s an even better reason for us to.
