News station violated radio ethics code in reporting on SkyTrain security
November 13, 2008
News station violated radio ethics code in reporting on SkyTrain security
November 13, 2008
My colleague Drew Snider from TransLink media relations just posted the saga of a complaint TransLink filed with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council over at his blog, Vancouver on the Lines. The long and short of it: we filed a complaint about CKWX (News 1130) misrepresenting and sensationalizing an interview from Doug Kelsey, CEO of SkyTrain—and the Council ruled that News 1130 had indeed violated multiple articles of two broadcast journalism ethics codes in their reporting. Read Drew’s blog for more.
Jhenifer, you are awesome! Love the blog!
I had to “lecture” a new colleague, who had just moved here from Toronto a few months ago, about the problem with sensationalist media reports on the “evil scary SkyTrain”. I remember a report in one of those free commuter papers that had a headline that went something like “Teen girl dies at Edmonds SkyTrain”.
It turns out that the girl’s death was due to her using illegal drugs with her friend. She died of an overdose. Nothing whatsoever to do with SkyTrain, CMBC or TransLink! The only correlation was that the girl died while on TransLink property. They had walked to the station and weren’t even in the Fare Paid Zone!
I’m betting they didn’t even have a valid fare anyway. The audacity that such a story be labelled a “SkyTrain death” shows just how far these tabloid rags are going these days. Most people don’t bother reading the entire article, and fewer still actually engage in critical scepticism of the so called “facts” being reported and how they might be interpreted.
Luckily, I think I convinced my colleague about the reality of safety on the transit system, and even convinced her in the same conversation that understanding the three fare zones was a piece of cake!
Slightly OT (off topic), but an interesting article about Skytrain safety from another point of view….
http://thetyee.ca/News/2008/11/18/SkyTrain/
Very interesting, xl – thanks for the link. I’m not sure I have anything to add here since Doug Kelsey responds quite thoroughly in the piece.
@Dan: Thanks for your comment, and your vote of confidence in SkyTrain safety!
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