Sunday, January 25, 2009

Swindon's Flimsy Reporting Backbone "Going Nowhere Fast"


Once again, the mention of Swindon in the national media has raised mostly unfounded "uproar" from who exactly?

Just the Adver.

The Adver used the headline "BBC jibe at town causes uproar" in response to a detailed and well balanced report by the BBC's Mark Easton on the effect of the recession on the town.

They hooked onto one line in the report, that Swindon was a town "going nowhere, fast", which was in the wider context of Swindon's historically fast growth and used it to justify another piece about Swindon bashing.

Swindon Centric Says ; People in this town have far more backbone and sense than the Adver assumes in it's reporting and no "uproar" has been evident in the streets of the town, on the buses (for further details, see the post below) or in the pages of the newspaper (apart from councillors and MPs, who were probably asked to comment).

They missed the entire point of the report, which showed a former Honda worker retraining at college and the far better position the town is in compared to other places to cope with the recession.

The Adver's reporting policy needs to grow some backbone, stop focussing on pettiness and fully understand a story before publishing it.


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