"Bruce" wrote in message
...
"Graham Harrison" wrote:
I think the statements that spooked the markets came from a forthright
and particularly well-informed senior manager of QANTAS.


Didn't help I agree although whether he was as well informed as he thought
he was is another matter.


Well, at the start, he called it right. The as the story unfolded, he
called it right. The eventual solution? He called that right too.

From the beginning to the end (today's announcement of a limited
return to traffic) he called it right.

He was either particularly well-informed or spectacularly lucky.
Personally, I don't think luck came into it.

Perhaps you felt he came across as a little arrogant, but I think it
was the mark of a man who knew his subject inside out and wasn't
afraid to speak his mind. So he upset a few people at RR? Strikes me
that they needed a kick up the backside.

But I'm not a Little Englander who objects when someone well-informed
from a former British colony fearlessly speaks their mind ... I
admired him for what he did in defence of his employer, the
international airline with the best reputation for safety of any in
the world.


I couldn't care less that he isn't from the UK or that he sounded arrogant
(did he?). I'll agree he made the right decisions but I remain to be
convinced he did it from a position of knowledge. The impression I gained
was that Qantas (as a company, not one individual) chose to wait until RR
had done their job, analysed the problem, using (among other things) the
undoubted expertise of Qantas. But, remember that RR provide QF with a
complete package, including maintenance undertaken by LH so I question how
much expertise QF were able to offer on this occasion.

And yes, RR handled the whole incident spectacularly badly.

On Nov 23, 6:00*pm, MIG wrote:
On Nov 23, 3:21*pm, Fat richard wrote:

On Nov 23, 8:06*am, MIG wrote:

On good form today with reports of South Eastern services suspended
between Shepherds Bush and Milton Keynes.

If you will indulge me, I will rewind a bit back to the beginning.

snip interesting explanation of how the chain becomes broken just to
stop this being too long

I was in a hurry, but to put it into context ...

I was listening to a news report (TV in fact) and I heard "Major
disruption ... South Eastern ..."

I was already cursing before I cottoned on that this was, in fact, a
story about disruption on the WCML (or perhaps that's not a story any
more).

I was not taking the PIS out of them getting the TOC wrong, because
I'm all in favour of not even advertising the TOC.

And I'm not criticising those in the chain that got broken. *I am
critisicing people in a local newsroom who seem to have bugger all to
do except read out sixty seconds of the same script every half hour
and don't seem to give a sh*t that the script is nonsense with respect
to a local area that they are supposed to know about.

This time, I think they started getting the TOC right after an hour
and a half, but still didn't bill it as a story about the WCML.

I appreciated that you was just stating the obvious from the outset
and the chain is often broken at then end where the names of TOCs and
locations involved tend to be unknown by the pretty face / voice.
Their lack of knowledge of the system is, to be honest, undertsandable
as they tend to be the journos at the star of the process to becoming
a top flight presenter with brains, that said the appalling offerings
on Skys rolling news does not instill confidence that the (w)anchors
have a clue what they are "on about".



Richard

Fat richard wrote:

I appreciated that you was just stating the obvious from the outset
and the chain is often broken at then end where the names of TOCs and
locations involved tend to be unknown by the pretty face / voice.
Their lack of knowledge of the system is, to be honest, undertsandable
as they tend to be the journos at the star of the process to becoming
a top flight presenter with brains, that said the appalling offerings
on Skys rolling news does not instill confidence that the (w)anchors
have a clue what they are "on about".


I think the Sky News anchors/presenters are probably chosen to be less
than totally bright in order not to make the channel's target audience
feel that they are being talked down to.

On Nov 23, 10:13*pm, Bruce wrote:

Fat richard wrote:

I appreciated that you was just stating the obvious from the outset
and the chain is often broken at then end where the names of TOCs and
locations involved tend to be unknown by the pretty face / voice.
Their lack of knowledge of the system is, to be honest, undertsandable
as they tend to be the journos at the star of the process to becoming
a top flight presenter with brains, that said the appalling offerings
on Skys rolling news does not instill confidence that the (w)anchors
have a clue what they are "on about".

I think the Sky News anchors/presenters are probably chosen to be less
than totally bright in order not to make the channel's target audience
feel that they are being talked down to.

Kay Burley... shudder!

On Nov 23, 6:07*pm, MIG wrote:
On Nov 23, 12:48*pm, "Mizter T" wrote:





[Sorry, ineptly managed to post this reply before I'd finished it - here's
the whole thing]

"Chris Tolley" (ukonline really) wrote:

Mizter T wrote:

"Chris Tolley" (ukonline really) wrote:

MIG wrote:

The newsreaders just keep on dumbly reading it out every half hour..
You'd think that the London travel newsroom would have some vague
idea about transport in London.

Would you? Why? Do you think it is a requirement for people who mention
London in the things they read out to be Londoners?

Except that's not what MIG said.

What isn't? I'm asking questions which are clearly about what MIG said.

He didn't mention anything about Londoners, let alone any requirement to be
one.

I don't think it's unreasonable that BBC *London* should strive for
accuracy when it comes to reporting London travel news.

All right, same question to you then, but unpacked. The implication
behind your (and MIG's) comment seems to be that staff whose job it is
to *read* the news ("newsreaders" above) on Radio Xtown should have some
intrinsic knowledge about Xtown so that they can correct the news in
real time if it is not correct on their script. Why should this be so,m
and how should it be achieved?

Well, in relation to MIG's comments it'd be useful if he unpacked them too -
it's unclear whether he's actually trying to suggest that corrections to a
script should be made on the fly, which does seems like a bit of a potential
recipe for disaster (that said, I think just that does occur a little in
these days of rolling news - one of the benefits of having journalists as
opposed to mere newsreaders doing the job).

However the bracketed comments in my earlier reply were actually quite
relevant - the travel news reports on BBC London radio are read out by a
member of the travel team who is actually involved in compiling said
reports, they are not just a newsreader (though again, see above - many of
those reading the news on television these days are 'proper' journalists,
not just readers of scripts). Therefore they may actually have been
responsible for compiling the report themselves, or else one of their
colleagues may have done so - so one could argue that they should be able to
spot mistakes and correct them in later broadcasts.

I hardly ever watch breakfast television (too preoccupied coming to terms
with consciousness!), but racking my brains I do now seem to recall that on
the local London inserts on the Beeb they do use (or at least have used)
members of their London travel team to present the travel segment - so again
whilst correcting something on the fly is going to be a bit of a stretch,
they could get it right next time round. Also, if there are other members of
the travel staff around who were able to monitor the output (whether on
radio or tv), then again corrections could be made.

Should newsreaders be employed on the basis of what they know, or the
quality of their vocal projection? My view is that presenters on radio
should be employed on the basis of their ability to speak so as not to
be misunderstood by listeners. Anything else (e.g. unscripted banter
e.g. Eddie Mair, interesting regional accents e.g. Ian MacMillan, or the
propensity to dissolve in fits of giggles e.g. Brian Johnston, are all
bonuses.)

See all my comments above about the decline of 'pure' newsreaders - BBC
television news now has its programmes presented by journalists not
newsreaders (see the case of Moira Stuart); Eddie Mair on PM is a
journalist; the various presenters on Radio 5 are generally journalists, at
least w.r.t. the news orientated output (not necessarily saying some of them
are any good though!); and I think on BBC London local radio and television
the presenters are often journalists too (FWIW, 'BBC London' is a so-called
'tri-media' operation - tv, radio, online).

That said newsreaders of the more traditional mould do live on in radio at
least, e.g. on Radio 4 - and they're not just script readers either as they
partake in the process of compiling the script - indeed some of them have
come from a journalistic background (and arguably they are by their nature
journalists - cue debate on the definition of journalism!)

(MIG doesn't however state which outlet this was - i.e. whether it was
BBC
London radio, or the local London inserts on BBC Breakfast television
programme - I never watch the latter so don't know how it's presented,
but
the former are read out on air by members of BBC London's travel team who
are also involved in compiling the information - they also 'tweet' here
http://twitter.com/bbctravelalert - my impression is that they're
fairly
on the ball, TBH.)

If you *know* the BBC is broadcasting something that is inaccurate, then
wouldn't it be constructive for you to contact them directly to correct
it? Complaining about it here won't achieve anything.

Plus, I don't think the inaccuracy that prompted MIG's post was really
all
that heinous either!

Me neither.

Coming back into this rather late, I wasn't particularly interested in
taking the PIS out of them getting the TOC wrong, and I certainly
didn't have time to be phoning the BBC or looking up the London news
email address (it was TV news, by the way).

Getting the TOC wrong is not so terrible, given that I don't think
TOCs are worth mentioning anyway.

In this case, I heard "Major discruption ... South Eastern ..." and
began to curse before cottoning on that this was a story about
disruption on the WCML.

Is there no human being in a London newsroom capable of recognising
that it was a WCML problem and that a more significant bunch of
services were affected than those from Shepherds Bush, which ought to
have got first billing?

(Rushing again.)

And I should also have said that I was kind of assuming that I was
posting against a background of threads on the lines of "Yet yet yet a
nother nother nother disruption on the WCML" and noting BBC London
News was reporting it as major disruption on South Eastern.

However, this background may not have been correctly assumed, given
that it's hardly news any more.

On Nov 23, 7:23*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Tue, 23 Nov 2010 10:10:12 -0800 (PST), MIG

wrote:
On Nov 23, 6:06*pm, Paul Corfield wrote:
Not ideal I accept but would you really want artistic licence sprinkled
on top of your morning transport information?
No, but maybe someone in the newsroom on seeing that the bulletin was
nonsense might have made the odd phone call or something to find out
what was really happening.

They only relay what they are told. *I would be surprised if the people
in the newsroom had any real clue what TOC ran where or in this case
that two TOCs run over a stretch of line in West London and that one of
the services could be affected by a problem at Watford. *There might be
some BBC employees who know because they use the service to Shepherds
Bush but I suspect their ability to inform the newsroom is rather
limited.

Or if they really can't even do that, why bother at all?

There will be many occasions when the information is perfectly fine
because the source info is fine. Therefore people will find the info
helpful. That's probably sufficient reason. I recognise that the real
world situation changes faster than the telly can but I am grateful that
I can see something on the telly as I get ready to head out rather than
having to switch my PC on and wait for it to warm up, get connected to
the net etc etc and then have to switch it all off again.
--
Paul C

In this case I was only listening to the TV because I was making
myself late by trying to get my PC to do something it was having a
problem with ... but didn't affect my ability to post through Google.
It should really have been off by then.

I nearly didn't listen after the "major disruption ... South Eastern"
part of the report. If I'd been using the WCML today I might have
been peeved that the real problem wasn't highlighted.

On 23/11/2010 13:24, amogles wrote:
On 23 Nov., 13:00, wrote:


And that's what the broadcasters generally have to work from.

However, if information is cryptic and unclear, the least they can do
is grab the phone and clarify.

From what I've seen of friends in (commercial) radio, it is one person
rushing round like mad. They probably wouldn't get away with dropping,
say, the sport or weather because they were too busy asking the railways
to double-check which TOCs run which services (which the punters
probably all just call "the overground" anyway...).

If the people doing the reports really had detailed knowledge of
everything they were talking about, they would be doing something other
than local media (AIUI in many cases, at least outside London, they may
not even be paid for doing it. Or maybe that was my mates trying to get
out of their rounds?).

But because the people who parrot the information don't actually
understand it, they don't notice how potentially confusing or
misleading it can be.

And it all gives an insight into how meticulous and trustworthy these
folks will be in their other reporting.

If you think any of this kind of stuff is merticulous and trustworthy,
e-mail me about an investment scheme my cousin is running in Lagos.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

On 23/11/2010 09:04, Chris Tolley wrote:
MIG wrote:

The newsreaders just keep on dumbly reading it out every half hour.
You'd think that the London travel newsroom would have some vague
idea about transport in London.

Would you? Why? Do you think it is a requirement for people who mention
London in the things they read out to be Londoners?

Could be interesting for the shipping forecast...

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK

On Nov 23, 10:40*pm, Arthur Figgis
wrote:
On 23/11/2010 09:04, Chris Tolley wrote:

MIG wrote:

The newsreaders just keep on dumbly reading it out every half hour.
You'd think that the London travel newsroom would have some vague
idea about transport in London.

Would you? Why? Do you think it is a requirement for people who mention
London in the things they read out to be Londoners?

Could be interesting for the shipping forecast...

I'd expect whoever organises the shipping forecast to know something
about shipping and weather, and I'd expect whoever organises London
travel news to know something about London and travel.

Well, not any more I wouldn't.

On 23/11/2010 10:31, Northolt Park Gates wrote:

It seems to me that it should really be the job of the industry (via
either ATOC or Network Rail) to put out a single coordinated press
release with complete information, rather than individual TOCs
providing information piecemeal to the media.

-roy
BBC East were reporting that there were "Operational problems at
Watford Junction". Now if that isn't TOC speak, I don't know what
is. Perhaps all those who slag of the BBC would be happier if the
incident wasn't reported at all.

Surely a TOC would say "Operational incident in the Watford Junction
area"? Nothing ever happens /at/ somewhere.

--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK