Thread: How to manufacture a "sensation� Daily-Maily stylee

Just the headline: “Gunman kills teacher� conjures up all the terrible incidents reported in the newsrags recently of kids going postal, and gives the impression that this is just another one of those attacks:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...evacuated.html

What really happened is in this (Boxheed) report:

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justi...678807,00.html

So the fella was running around the school, totally pissed off at the bad marks he’d scored and looking for revenge. He had a blank-firing pistol on him, but he actually stabbed the teacher to death with the chiv he was also carrying.

Nowhere in the Daidly-Maidley report is there any mention of the teacher being chivved (which is tragic enough in itself), but instead readers are forced to come to the conclusion that he was shot.

Very bad form indeed.

MsG

Journo's at their best eh? Why bother to spoil a good headline by printing the WHOLE truth!!

Admittedly "Gunman stabs teacher to death" would look a bit odd.

I doubt the semantics would make much differance to the teacher...

I'm still waiting for the headline ' Man eating donkey'

It's whether you lock your doors or serve chips with it.

Truth and journalist are two mutually exclusive words.

Suprised they didn't claim he was on his way to teh UK forin the back of a truck

"Teacher stabbing gunman gets council house in UK" sounds so much more Daily Mail


"He watched Black hawk down police fear Somallian link"

I remember this....

From about 4 years ago.

Oh, and here it is on Arrse from that time

http://www.arrse.co.uk/Forums/viewto.../start=60.html

Still, its pretty amusing.

Originally Posted by mistersoft

I'm still waiting for the headline ' Man eating donkey'

It's whether you lock your doors or serve chips with it.

Like 'Man Eating Fish Spotted Near Westminster Bridge'?

Not a crime that just the daily mail commits, pretty well every paper, journo, etc - left, centre and right all do it. Make it up, miss out a bit or just ignore it.I see everywhere there are reports of the tali tubbies using civilians as human shields, not a word on the bbc, a british squaddie apparently kicked a donkey in Basrah in Feb 2003 and hey presto front page news,

all twats.

Originally Posted by muhandis89

Truth and journalist are two mutually exclusive words.

But that's exactly the point! They don't actually NOT tell the truth, just not ALL of it.

This is how easy it is to fabricate a "sensation": imagine the following headline: "Tory MP Living With FOUR Women (and one of them is married!)"

Then you read the story and discover that three of the "wimmin" are his teenage daughters and the "married one" is his wife. Eezeez, innit? But it's not what you'd call impartial, is it?

MsG

Originally Posted by offhand

I see everywhere there are reports of the tali tubbies using civilians as human shields, not a word on the bbc, a british squaddie apparently kicked a donkey in Basrah in Feb 2003 and hey presto front page news,

all twats.

Page last updated at 16:09 GMT, Wednesday, 17 February 2010

I noticed it when I checked this morning.

On the original point, I remember Martin Bell saying that people think journalists are where the news is, whereas the reality is that the news is wherever the journalist happens to be.

I suspect personal aggrandisement makes up a fair portion of the consideration as to what gets reported as well. The ones I've met had at least a touch of the Messiah complex about them.

Originally Posted by FrankCastle

I doubt the semantics would make much differance to the teacher... :roll:

.....and nor, apparently, would the English.

It was also quoted on TV as "ein Amoklauf" he ran amok. There was also mention on Winnenden, where about one year ago a teenager shot and killed a number of people and finally killed himself. Sensationalism is not restricted to the Daily Wail.