Could it bee more lazy journalists?
Posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 9:38pm. #
CC licenced photo of bees on a mobile phone from Carol Esther
I wrote a while back about a particular story about lazy journalism where an obviously fake story simply wasn’t checked before printing or broadcasting.
And now, another - the case of the mobile phone towers that ‘kill bees’. First reported by The Independent on Sunday, the story was copied right round the world.
Shame it’s not true. Indeed, the scientist who’s quoted in the original article says (my bold)…
“Ever since The Independent wrote their article, for which they never called or wrote to us, none of us have been able to do any of our work because all our time has been spent in phone calls and e-mails trying to set things straight. This is a horror story for every researcher to have your study reduced to this. Now we are trying to force things back to normal.”
I’ve spotted stories being copied and embellished before, and (as a non-journalist who’s never worked in journalism) I do find it quite amazing that people lift stories from others without any checking at all.
