Media Musings

I’m no genius. I’ve made mistakes and will likely make a few more.  But there are a few fundamentals about the news business that too often get forgotten in this era of budget restraint and I find it deeply disappointing.   

The other day, some fool tried to rob a bank here in London.   He was unsuccessful.  When a suspect was arrested, police issued the customary news release.  It stated that a 32 year old St. Thomas man was in custody.  Police believe he is the guy who tried to rob the bank and then took off in a taxi, which he didn’t pay for.  Among his charges was threatening with a dangerous weapon. 

Nowhere in the release was a weapon mentioned, other than the actual charge.  I read it a second and third time.  No weapon. I got in touch with the media relations officer and asked, why the weapon charge?  He replied that the robber had claimed to have a knife but he actually threatened the bank employees with a pen.  The weapon was a pen!  What an awesome detail to the story.  This loser goes into a bank armed with a writing instrument and tries to bluff that he has a knife.  The employees see through his ruse, aren’t frightened by the pen and he gets away empty-handed, but not before ripping off a cabbie.  He was caught pretty quickly.  Beautiful.

I checked the updated stories by other media the next morning and not one of them had the knife/pen detail.  To me, it’s a natural question: if there is a weapon charge, what was the weapon?  If you live anywhere near the bank you’d want to know if the guy took off through your neighbourhood with a loaded gun…or a pen.  One of the fundamentals of being a journalist is to be inquisitive and to question things, like obviously missing details.  I only wish I could have gone on the air that day.