Fear Huge Icebergs

An unstoppable iceberg four times the size of Manhattan is coming, possibly to the same shipping lanes in which the Titanic sunk. It's huge, and we've had a summer of near biblical climatical havoc, like wildfires in Russia and killer floods in Asia. It's so big it cannot be stopped from drifting, it's unstoppable.

And don't think I'm sounding hysterical to make a point about some news post. All of this was written by Karl Ritter in the first three opening paragraphs of his post for AP. I'm sorry, but when the article starts like a Godzilla movie you expect the ending to be about a giant lizard fighting an ice monster at the heart of Tokyo by the end of it. When the article goes to talk about global warming it's just disappointments all around.

Oh, and the picture is not related to this. It's the ever industrious Thais dumping tanks to create artificial reefs for fish to live in. (source.)

How About Them Supercarriers?

If you are a news reporter sent on to an aircraft carrier, you are expected to write about aircraft carriers. It's just that Eric Talmadge comes off as a fanboy as soon as he gets going: "Nothing projects U.S. global air and sea power more vividly than supercarriers... America's virtually invincible carrier fleer has long enforced its dominance of the high seas."

By now I've skipped over the parts where he talks about ships bristling with fighter jets, all in the first paragraph. Later he delves on to the fact file to tell how long the flight deck is (1,092-feet) and how it has 6,250 personnel, but that's him missing his own point.

The article is about the Chinese carrier killing DF 21D missile. Actually, I remember reading about the weapon more than a year and a half ago, but then I wasn't aware of the designation. Actually, I wasn't sure he was talking about the same weapon since he didn't mention it was a ballistic missile until pretty much the end of the article, but it is.

Really, that's pretty much the new information presented, the name, Dong Feng 21D. The rest of it is fact-file stuff and carrier praise.

Cool if you enjoy reading about missiles, carriers, airplanes et cetera, but it's not very fresh.

Buzzwords - Bubonic Plague

There are a couple of buzzwords that get attention due to popularity, like the BP oil spill (it wouldn't be a so much of an entity if it was Mexico Gulf instead of BP,) or Chinese coal mine accidents. We get a lot of articles on both, but it doesn't mean news reporters won't use a scary term on a boring bit of news. It's the old art of headlining and everyone does it to an extent.

The most recent example I found was about Peru, where a preventable disease killed one and infected 31 others, who can be treated with antibiotics. That's long, boring and fails to grab readers; how about this: "Bubonic Plague Outbreak in Peru." Much catchier. AP actually used "Peru plague outbreak kills 1, infects at least 31." striking the middle ground.

I'm sure they would've just passed on this if they couldn't have said "plague." One dead and 31 infected to a curable disease which only needs antibiotics and had the last outing in Peru 1994 is less newsworthy than the yearly Influenza wave in Finland which kills about a thousand people.

Cheap news, anyone want some?

AP, through Yahoo

Blog Entries Are Not News

William Foreman (for AP) posted a blog entry about riding a bicycle in Guangzhou. It would be a nice bit of blogging, except it was delivered between real news.

I've ran in to this before, McClatchy Newspapers had their blog in my China News feed too, but the connection was easier to make - if one searched for the newspaper they found a link to their China department, the head of which kept a blog. This got swept up by the feeds and delivered between news.

I don't really mind the personal opinions and anecdotes as content if they are clearly identifiable as such. In this case you might just think it's newswriting. As far as real news go, this one isn't.

If an AP editor would like to include this blog in their feed, please feel free to email me.

(The entry is here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091101/ap_on_re_as/as_china_mean_streets)

This Is Why You Do Not Want to Exaggerate

I'm just going to select a few choice bits from the most recent AP post about the Typhoon Lupit.

Cruel, erratic, baffling, frustrating, would ram, barreled on course, dangerous system.

Even though I've selected the words and taken them out of context they are a very descriptive selection. The whole article makes it seem the Typhoon could be a serious shock just after a huge one.

Would you like some reality instead?

Lupit is a tropical storm, downgraded from a typhoon. It's not going to slice trough Philippines like the article says, it's not barreling on course to anywhere since it's moving at 1 knot. It's sustained winds are 55 knots peaking at 70. That's still a 10 (of 12) on the Beaufort scale, but it wouldn't qualify as a hurricane.

Sure, there is now a storm headed for Philippines, but that's a serious swing and a miss for AP. Hrvoje Hranjski wrote it, but he should have checked his facts near publication too.

I kept wondering why Lupit didn't get any more attention in the news (while it still was a typhoon heading for Philippines,) and when someone finally wrote something we got this. Instead of say, reliable reporting.

Here is the article I'm talking about:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091023/ap_on_re_as/as_asia_storm

Here you can find the storm warning I used to check my facts:
http://www.usno.navy.mil/NOOC/nmfc-ph/RSS/jtwc/warnings/wp2209web.txt

Can I Get a Why

So, cheery news from Australia. According to an AP news post an Australian woman was convicted of murder for starving to death her 7-year old daughter. The husband got manslaughter and that's about all the piece has to tell us.

Oops. I don't mean every article should be full of background information, but a reason would be nice. The only detail added is that they can't report their names due to legal reasons. Convenient for the reporter for sure.

Just for the "That's Terrible!" -factor they report the girl's weight was 9kg at death. That's all.

If you want to see how sparse the article is go here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091002/ap_on_re_as/as_australia_starvation_death

I bought this up just for the sheer What The Hell -factor of the article and the missing why. Let's hope we won't have too many of these coming up. Oh, and the reporter's name is omitted so I can't blame him specifically.