Re: Zak Carr killed: paper reports congestion...

I submit that on or about 18 Oct 2005 01:58:37 -0700, the person known
to the court as ukrc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx made a statement
(<1129625917.303040.146700@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in Your
Honour's bundle) to the following effect:

Yes, I emailed and also got a reply as below

(from: me to: editor)
I guess by now you'll be aware that your story of 17 Oct caused a bit
of a stir in the cycling community, with its headline suggesting that
a traffic jam was more important than the death of an internationally
known competitive cyclist.

To be fair to you, perhaps it was not clear at that early stage how
serious the injuries were - but even if he were only hospitalised,
that would still surely be more important than a few delayed
commuters?

One phrase often appears in reports: a cyclist "was in collision with
a car". In most cases where a cyclist is injured (between 2/3 and
85%, depending on which study), the fault is that of the driver - and
in most cases, regardless of blame, the car hits the bike, not the
other way round. I know it's a notionally neutral phrase, but it is
antagonistic to many.


(reply from editor, probably boilerplate to all of us)

Thank you for your e-mails regarding our initial report on EDP24
regarding the tragic accident involving Zac Carr.

I can understand your anger at what seems an insentitve report, but
perhaps you will allow me to explain in a little detail.

The report you have read at around 8.30am on Tuesday was posted at
1.40pm on Monday and was all the information we had at the time. In
other words, police had not at that stage confirmed the accident was a
fatality or even indicated its seriousness, and had not named the
cyclist involved.

We became aware of the extra facts (via the police) at about 6pm on
Monday and our printed story in Tuesday's EDP reflects the strong
affection Zac was held in among the cycling community. We ran follow
up tributes to him today (Wednesday).

Where the problem with the web version arose was in our inability to
update the story once the full facts became clear on Monday night. Our
web team is small and can not operate 24/7, which meant the update was
left to our duty night editor late that night. Regrettably, he became
embroiled in a number of newspaper production issues close to deadline
and failed to post the new version of the story.

That was remedied when our web team came in on Tuesday morning and the
new version was posted by 8.40. I hope you would agree it now properly
reflects the gravity of the incident and pays due regard to Zac as a
champion cyclist.

Our apologise for the slip in our normal and expected standards, but I
hope this explains why things happened the way they did.

Paul Durrant,
assistant editor,
EDP.

(from: me to: Paul Durrant)

> Thank you for your e-mails regarding our initial report on EDP24
> regarding the tragic accident involving Zac Carr.
> I can understand your anger at what seems an insentitve report, but
> perhaps you will allow me to explain in a little detail.

I wasn't angry, I quite understand that the report was written before
full details became available. I know others flew off the handle a
bit, mind (see below).

> Where the problem with the web version arose was in our inability to
> update the story once the full facts became clear on Monday night.
> Our web team is small and can not operate 24/7, which meant the
> update was left to our duty night editor late that night.
> Regrettably, he became embroiled in a number of newspaper production
> issues close to deadline and failed to post the new version of the
> story.

Yes, it can happen to anybody. No malice was perceived (by me,
anyway). But: the fact of the tailback receiving priority over the
fate of the cyclist did grate (cyclist hurt in A11 crash might have
been more sensitive). It is, after all, the case that any collision
involving a car and a cyclist (especially on a fast road) has the
potential to leave the cyclist seriously injured or dead.

And I will repeat that in the light of the known fact that the great
majority of serious and fatal cyclist injuries are caused by driver
negligence, the phrase "the cyclist was in collision with a car" is
always a red rag to some. I know it is formally neutral, but at least
it could be turned around to "a car was in collision with a cyclist"
as it is almost always the car which is moving faster and which
violates the cyclist's right of way. It's also often stated that the
car driver was uninjured, and you can just imagine how well that goes
down - I have never heard of a case of a car driver being injured in a
collision involving a cyclist (which is not to deny it could happen).

Thanks for the clarification, I do appreciate that this was a result
of a bad conjunction of timing and resource limitations, it is the
points above that I really wanted to make - this story merely
highlighted them. A more human-focused headline and the reversal of
the implied cause and effect of collision would have done much to rob
the original report of its sting.

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken
.

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