Two recent announcements suggest “check your facts” policy has gone way of the Dodo.
Call me old-fashioned and call me stuck in the past; but I come from an era in which journalistic facts were checked, double-checked and then checked by a fire-breathing editor who could disable a typewriter (yes, I really am THAT old) at a hundred paces with nothing more than a beer-addled stare.
Sadly, such policies seem to have gone the way of the wrecking ball and crawler crane; consigned to the waste basket of history even though, in many instances, they remain the best solution to a particular job.
And I am not talking about bloggers or so-called citizen journalists here; those people armed with a basic understanding of the English language, a rudimentary grasp of the Internet and blessed with perhaps a little too much time on their hands.
No. The reason for my Friday morning ire is that, during the past 24 hours, I have read two separate announcements relating to high reach excavators in which – quite clearly – no-one has even thought to check their facts.
The first came from a PR company (and yes, I realise that their job is to stretch the bounds of truth to make their offerings more appealing to miserable curmudgeons like me) announcing the fact that a UK demolition company had taken delivery of a Komatsu high reach machine equipped with an “unsurpassed 45 metre boom”.
Hmm, let me think about that. Unless the rules of mathematics have been changed along with the rules of journalism, I think 50 metres still surpasses 45 metres, as does 60 metres and 65 metres. So, this unsurpassed boom is, in fact, surpassed by probably half a dozen machines currently at work on UK demolition sites.
Now I was willing to let that go. I was busy, I was hyped up on coffee and I was feeling generous, even though the errors contained within the press release saw it consigned to File 13, a small basket stowed beneath my desk.
But then along comes this press release from Leeds City Council with the news that a local tower block will be demolished using a high reach machine, “one of only two in the country that can reach to a height of nearly 50 metres”.
For the record, the highest machine currently in the UK has a reach of 65 metres (unless Kocurek have something else up their sleeve); and while 45 metres is hardly a “tiddler”, it most certainly IS surpassed.
So if you are in the PR business and you’re planning to send us a press release, please do us and yourselves a favour: check your facts…because if you don’t, we sure as hell will.
