Message-ID: <36AA88E5.FB90E276@no.junk.mail.bigpond.com>
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 13:43:49 +1100
From: Steve Small <steve.small@no.junk.mail.bigpond.com>
Organization: "Personal Opinion Only"
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Subject: Re: The Bruce Artwick is dead - oops, he's not - story
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ASmithkids wrote:
> 
> When this goes out, wrongly, in the 'news', who is responsible? -

The publisher who authorised the article before checking his stringer's
facts in a rush to be first in reporting the inaccurate and unverified
demise of Mr. Artwick. Consider for a minute the distress to the family
of a someone wrongly reported as deceased, hearing of it through a third
party. This is insensitive, irresponsible journalism. I'd be rather
surprised if anyone at avsim.com is actually an accredited journalist
because this is really basic research. The sheer stupidity is that there
was nothing to be gained by NOT checking facts.

From Tom Allensworth's editorial
(http://www.avsim.com/pages/0199/travesty/edit8.htm) which couched in
nonchalant, flippant language adding insult to injury  :

" A couple of hours of level headed investigation 
- before we ran the story, would have shown this 
breaking news, to be far afield. 

"We at AVSIM can probably spend a lot of energy 
beating ourselves up over this, but we choose 
not to."

     ... and in doing so learn absolutely nothing. Perhaps Avsim had
better decide what their role really is.

rgds,
-- 
Steve Small 
Canberra, Australia
