Re: Morgan Mclernon

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
41

“Investigative” journalism in the transport mags consist of a 6 page centre spread of shiny lorries …

…followed several months later by, the now well publicised elsewhere, reporting of said companies financial or Vosa aided demise :unamused: :unamused: :wink: :grimacing:

There’s far more accurate and genuinely informative stuff to be found on the web in blogs etc. Personally I’d rather read something like “from the drivers seat” written about real world day to day stuff by a regular driver than trawl through the adverts and bling of a mag to find something to occupy me during my errrm bathroom time :blush:

42

GasGas:
The Telegraph purchased a stolen document (some years ago now), and the Guardian reprinted something that was on the internet.

Now, where’s the investigative journalism in either of those?

Real investigative journalism is something like Thalidomide (Sunday Times, pre-Murdoch) or Watergate (Washington Post).

Both way back when in the last century.

The ST used to have the Insight Team, who were investigative journalists who could spend months working on a single story before a word of it appeared in print…axed by Murdoch who changed the paper into a cheerleader for Maggie and urban middle-class consumerism.

Our definitions of investigative journalism are clearly very different. The MPs expenses scandal was one of the biggest stories of the past decade, with many hours of tireless work by the Telegraph. You think we’d be better off if it didn’t happen? The Guardian was instrumental in bringing the Wikileaks documents to the open. The Guardian and Wikileaks were close partners to start with. The Guardian were responsible for bringing Transfigura to book for their disgraceful behaviour in Africa. Another, Stephen Lawrence’s murderers wouldn’t be in prison and the Met would still be riddled with racism (more so) if it were not 20 years of tireless campaigning by The Daily Mail (not easy for me to say that, I hate the Daily Mail). Maybe before you belittle many hard working journalists achievements you should tell us your achievements in this area. You are after all fond of telling us you were a trade press editor. Or were you happy to oversee journalists simply rewriting press releases as seems to be the norm? I’d be interested to hear since you are so dismissive of other journalists work.

43

Two more notable examples, BBC ■■■ Abuse Scandal and News Corp phone hacking. Yep, investigative journalism is really dead…

44

Well said switch, the silence is deafening !

45

Guys the simple fact is, opinion is OK, and has been posted in many threads on many different companies, in the thread that was removed was specific allegations of actions that may be deemed illegal. without any proof of those allegations we cannot allow them to remain. We do not remove threads on a whim, we do so on strong legal advice. We do this to protect ourselves but also the members who may not be aware that they are leaving themselves liable… It is a fine line , but in over 10 years we have managed to tread very well, and leave a lot of negative comment about some companies online. This website is not a free for all, if you want to alledge some that is damaging to a company, provide proof of it or it will be removed

Within the last two weeks we have received two official lawyers letters relating to content on here- both of which we are contesting and none of the content has been removed

So please, understand, you can have an opinion- what you cant do is make allegations that you cant back up- end of full stop

46

CM and/or T&D could no doubt make a fortune if they did an ‘advertorial’ deal with one or more of the brokers, but they won’t

Mainly due to disquiet expressed here about brokers RTM as a company do not accept advertising from such companies- so your views do make a difference

47

Anything in the public domain is open to scrutiny.

These days, sueing people is big business.

If I stated that a certain company were doing things illegally I need evidence. If not, irrespective of whether they are on not, I could be sued.

Rikki has to tread carefully or the ■■■■ could hit the fan completely. I do think there is a lot of moderating that is perhaps a little over cautious but in the current culture of ‘sue the arse off them whenever possible’ it is understandable.

48

I would refer the honourable gentleman to the Richard Long thread…Possibly…Maybe :question: :exclamation:

49

switchlogic:
Two more notable examples, BBC ■■■ Abuse Scandal and News Corp phone hacking. Yep, investigative journalism is really dead…

Well if your examples are anything to go by, it is in newspapers, which was my point:

Saville was ITV, not newspapers…

telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvan … wards.html

News corp was police, not newspapers

telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ … OTWaccused

The Telegraph timeline shows the first substantive newspaper involvement in the Newscorp scandal wasn’t until 2010: Goodman was jailed for his part in it in 2007 after a complaint by the Royal Family in 2005 And the newspaper that unearthed the fresh facts in 2010 was …wait for it… that famous British paper …the …err…New York Times.

So that’s two big stories that the British press missed for years and years. And both were going on right under their noses.

I recall the Transfigura story was broken by BBC’s Panorama in May 2009: they were threatened with legal action for allegations that dumping by the company was harming the inhabitants of the Ivory Coast.

The Guardian was served with an injunction in October preventing it from reporting a question that had been asked about the matter in Parliament.

Reporting (or in this case not reporting) a Parliamentary question is laudable, but is it investigation?

It’s no more an investigation than reporting court proceedings. According to you this doesn’t count.

And BTW in may own small way I’ve exposed various scam merchants (used vehicle sales agencies and freight forwarders moxstly) over the years and had the resultant silly threatening phone calls too.

But if I had evidence of criminal behaviour (operator forcing drivers to run bent etc) I wouldn’t make a story of it…I’d report it to the appropriate authority.

The Stephen Lawrence business had been running for years before it was on the front page of the Mail.

50

GasGas:
So that’s two big stories that the British press missed for years and years. And both were going on right under their noses.

They didn’t miss them, just as they haven’t missed all the other MASSIVE stories that remain as yet untold.

51

GasGas:

switchlogic:
Two more notable examples, BBC ■■■ Abuse Scandal and News Corp phone hacking. Yep, investigative journalism is really dead…

Well if your examples are anything to go by, it is in newspapers, which was my point:

Saville was ITV, not newspapers…

telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvan … wards.html

News corp was police, not newspapers

telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ … OTWaccused

The Telegraph timeline shows the first substantive newspaper involvement in the Newscorp scandal wasn’t until 2010: Goodman was jailed for his part in it in 2007. And the newspaper that unearthed the fresh facts in 2010 was …wait for it… that famous British paper …the …err…New York Times.

So that’s two big stories that the British press missed for years and years. And both were going on right under their noses.

Errrrrr, well, if you read what I said properly I actually said ‘mainstream media’. You took it (mistakenly) to mean just newspapers…and now you’re making out I mean’t UK only newspapers. You’d make a good tabloid journalist…

switchlogic:
It’s a good job mainstream media doesn’t take the trade press approach and only serve one group, advertisers.

I do love though how you are trying to justify the lack of investigative journalism in the transport trade press by saying the mainstream press doesn’t do it so (even though they do) why should they. Hardly a great way to go about things.

52

Err…so who said this?

“And before anyone says about mainstream media not having to worry about losing advertisers, most of the newspapers are losing money hand over fist. Doesn’t stop them engaging in proper investigative journalism.”

53

GasGas:
Err…so who said this?

“And before anyone says about mainstream media not having to worry about losing advertisers, most of the newspapers are losing money hand over fist. Doesn’t stop them engaging in proper investigative journalism.”

A small example of a part of mainstream media thats losing money. The fact still remains that I was talking about mainstream media, as I said, as my first comment about it said and not solely newspapers as you assumed. UK ones at that. So I assume you think the extent of mainstream media is just newspapers now?

Anyhow, I clearly stated how in the cases I pointed out it was proper investigative journalism, I pointed out stories broken by both TV (as you pointed out yourself) and print media, and asked you your record on the subject. You didn’t answer. You clearly think things like Transfigura, MPs expenses, and ■■■ scandals are meaningless. So whats your record in breaking big stories eh?

54

No, what you said was

“most of the newspapers are losing money hand over fist. Doesn’t stop them engaging in proper investigative journalism.”

You have yet to produce one example of a newspaper engaging in proper investigative journalism in the last couple of years, which is what I challenged you to do.

Most of the examples you produced are rather old, or newspapers rehashing what was on the TV or the internet. MPs expenses was in 2009 for example. Wikileaks was well Wikileaks, reported in the Guardian.

I’d maintain that the heyday of proper investigative journalism in print was in the 1970s.

Back then there was some excellent stuff in a publication called ‘Motor Transport’ too, much of it written by an ex-copper called Jim Duckworth. Then MT was turned into a controlled circulation paper, and the fire seemed to go out.

And at no point did I say these stories were meaningless…just that they are either rather old, or weren’t broken by newspapers.

55

GasGas:
No, what you said was

“most of the newspapers are losing money hand over fist. Doesn’t stop them engaging in proper investigative journalism.”

You have yet to produce one example of a newspaper engaging in proper investigative journalism in the last couple of years, which is what I challenged you to do.

Yeah because if it didn’t happen in the last couple of years its not worth anything is it? Transfigura is a great example and 3 maybe 4 years ago. I only mentioned newspapers because I wanted to point out that some parts of the media take financial risks

Anyhow, how did this turn into me defending giant corporations? When after all you never gave a decent answer, well any answer, to why the transport trade press is so toothless and spends it’s time rewriting press releases and court reports. Go on name a big story from the past couple of years that a major transport magazine broke. And still not answered the question about your own record I see.

Like I said earlier, not gonna hold my breath on this industry changing with such useless journalists reporting on it.

56

I stopped buying the mag after having seen, and grown tired of, every permutation of aftermarket chrome and lighting product, mounted on a Scania, and your own column of uncritical DCPC cheerleading - phoned in once a month.

57

I stopped regularly buying trucking magazines when the only decent one, Truck, was shut down and they gave us some vouchers to try the other second rate offerings from the same stable. I really do think the whole thing needs a good stir up.

58

switchlogic:

GasGas:
No, what you said was

“most of the newspapers are losing money hand over fist. Doesn’t stop them engaging in proper investigative journalism.”

You have yet to produce one example of a newspaper engaging in proper investigative journalism in the last couple of years, which is what I challenged you to do.

Yeah because if it didn’t happen in the last couple of years its not worth anything is it? Transfigura is a great example and 3 maybe 4 years ago. I only mentioned newspapers because I wanted to point out that some parts of the media take financial risks

Anyhow, how did this turn into me defending giant corporations? When after all you never gave a decent answer, well any answer, to why the transport trade press is so toothless and spends it’s time rewriting press releases and court reports. Go on name a big story from the past couple of years that a major transport magazine broke. And still not answered the question about your own record I see.

Like I said earlier, not gonna hold my breath on this industry changing with such useless journalists reporting on it.

Hold on a minute those kids’ scribbles don’t publish themselves.

59

In the last couple of years:

Continual complaints from the Traffic Commissioners about VOSA interfering with their independence.

Reluctance by VOSA or anyone else to acknowledge that AdBlue bypass kits were on open sale, and the implications for air quality.

Implications of VOSA’s initiatives on load security, and the ‘load security matrix’.

All published in Transport Operator since 2011.

Prior to that:

Inadequacies in the Oshkosh HET spec that meant it was inferior to the truck it replaced (got chased around the CV show by someone who ‘wanted a word’ with me for that one).

Fair Tax for Trucks campaign that got road tax for slashed for British trucks,

Various dodgy freight forwarders exposed.

Questions over durability of early disc brakes on trucks and trailers.

all published in Trucking/Trucking International during 1995 - 2005

Prior to that various stories about dubious tactics in bus wars, unethical behaviour by vehicle brokers, poor build quality of coaches and various other stuff in Bus Business and Coach & Bus Week.

So yes, given that I operate in a fairly small world, I’ve broken my share of good stories.

k

60

switchlogic:
It’s a good job mainstream media doesn’t take the trade press approach and only serve one group, advertisers. Truck & Driver can have driver in its title as much as it likes, as I see it it does nothing for drivers. Like I say, they are all just promotional tools for companies. And before anyone says about mainstream media not having to worry about losing advertisers, most of the newspapers are losing money hand over fist. Doesn’t stop them engaging in proper investigative journalism.

totaly agree with that,youve only got to look at the front cover blinb bling blimg i mean this months got got a big spread about david g davis n some 26 year old piloting there new xf 106 this isinot about real haulage its crap the truck is all blinged up n looks good in a magazine i can name at least four hauliers that have had centre page spreads in t n d n are now all dead n burried all flash n no cash
pleasedont think im knocking people with well turned out moters because i aint what im saying is t n d focuses on a small minority of transport companys the ones that fit the profile imho
i think the problem is its full of journos running the show n not truckers if only they could take a leaf out of top gears book