At least tabloid readers are under fewer delusions

Too many journalists and editors do damage to their outlets and journalism in general due to daily blunders, which they don’t seem to care about.

The attitude could be that few people in specialised areas will notice so it does not matter, or it’s covering a minority so it does not matter. Or it could be that the journalist needs to get the story or create a new angle and nothing else matters (ie filling the white space journalism… if they were skilled they could have been a copywriters and got paid more).

A prime example of this is in today’s Irish Independent: ‘New 'cycle to work' scheme gets just one query.’

The headline is clear, one query. The first par then reads: “The Department of Finance has received only one query regarding its cycle-to-work scheme announced in the Budget last year.”

But one bicycle shop sent a message into the Last Word saying bicycles have already been bought from them under the scheme, a press release from Ciaran Cuffe today said “Over 7,000 people have visited the Green Party's bikescheme.ie” since January 1, and at least one company, biketowork.ie, has been set up to handle the paperwork.

So the Indo got it a bit wrong then?

Worst still, it was a follow-up story that was covered in the Sunday Times yesterday. Which in its self was flawed enough to start with.

The ST story centred on how departments have been slow to take up the scheme. But it had to go on to say “Calls to seven of the 10 companies voted ‘Best places to work in Ireland’ revealed that only one has introduced the programme” – which is like akin to conducting a political polls by doing a vox pop on the street out side the newspaper.

Comments

[Damian]

It was lazy journalism in both cases; why bother to research an article properly when you've got your headline already written and can just pad the story out? It's hard to fathom what drives such sloppy reporting.

Admittedly, it stems from a bizarre Department of Finance answer to a Parliamentary Question from Ciaran Cuffe which saught to gauge how proactively the civil service was marketing the scheme (as it happens, not at all). The mandarins claimed that only one cycle supplier had contacted them. In reality, people I work with have directed hundreds of people to the Department's helpline. Either their logging of questions from the public or their ability to respond accurately to questions put to them is seriously flawed.

We've experienced the very opposite of a 'muted response'. We've never had such a big reaction to a campaign before. In fact, the reason we set up the bikescheme.ie website was because cycle shops were contacting us before christmas requesting information about the scheme because so many customers were asking them about it.