Brian Blair wrote:
The front page intro from Wednesday's Daily Record, Scotlands largest
selling tabloid, read:

"A 124 mph Hurricane hit Scotland last night.."

I guess "A gust of wind measuring 124 mph was measured half way up a light
house, on a cliff, on an uninhabited island in the Outer Herbrides last
night, meanwhile most of urban Scotland experienced gusts of 50-60 mph" -
may not have pleased the Editior so much


I have two views on why these stories are reported in the way that they a

1) Addiction to superlatives - everything has to be bigger, better,
worse, louder (as applicable) than it was in reality.

2) Lack of vocabulary - they do not know what the words they are using
really mean and lack the will to find out.

While o/t, the 'Shipman' case in England some time ago was a rather good
example of both the above, when a news report there suggested that
Shipman was 'the worst mass murderer in history'.

View 1 is demonstrated in their use of 'worst' ... he was a long way
from that ... 'prolific' might be more accurate.
View 2 is demonstrated in their use of 'mass murderer' ... he was not
that. He was of course a serial murderer and they are very different
things.

Perhaps the reason I cannot choose between my two views is that the
reports are usually constructed from a combination of both.

In an ideal world, the news (and after-the-event weather) reports would
tells us the truth, but I am not sure that such a situation has ever
existed. I gave up reading newspapers many years ago ... about the same
time as I realised they would not know the truth if it bit them.

--
Gianna Stefani

www.buchan-meteo.org.uk