Sweet mother of Joseph and Mary (Yeah, I know, that’s not REALLY a “curse phrase,” but it still sounds sort of inappropriate, without exactly being inappropriate… it’s my favorite thing to teach my young nieces and nephews)! It’s clear out there today! No fog! Well, there IS fog, sort, of, but “clouds of pollen” don’t really inhibit driving visibility, so it won’t be considered for this report. Don’t you ALL wish you were driving a pollen- camouflaging yellow car today?!?
No fog, no rain, no ice, no snow, no lava, no road construction on Hwy. 18 (not yet… wait until May 30 for that!), no hanging chads (not yet… wait until June 5 for that!), no chain control… easy ride.
So… last week, there was a traffic incident in which a vehicle crashed over the edge of Hwy. 18. MountainReporter reported the vehicle’s distance from the road as “600 feet,” as this was the information given by officials at the scene.
However, the story gained steam within media circles over the next few hours. And, apparently, big media folks are members of the “700 Club:” They “round up” to the nearest 700. As reported in the national- level media stories, the car was now 700 feet from the roadway… it had flown, tumbled, driven- downhill- at- very- high- speed, or some combination of that, 700 feet from the roadway.
Subsequently, some locals then called out the writer of MountainReporter.com’s story, Raymond Ray, who had reported 600 feet, as being WRONG… because BIG media called it 700 feet. Words used included “inaccurate and unreliable”.
“Splitting hairs,” perhaps… but the accusation was made that MountainReporter was reporting “inaccurately.”
Many of you may recall an incident about a year ago, one in which a vehicle was (intentionally) driven off of the 4000 ft. turnout on Hwy, launching over the edge, and crashing onto the roadway below. This distance is about 250 feet. However, THIS story, also being spectacular in nature, garnered the attention of big media, but SOMEWHERE, somehow, among the countless retellings and information- plagiarizing, an extra “zero” was added into the distance measurement. National news outlets, which typically seem to plagiarize to some extent, ALL reported the launch distance as 2500 feet! Wait… what? Did they not even consider the fact that there’s just no way for a car to fall/ tumble/ crash/ that distance on these roads? A half of a mile? That’s about THREE- QUARTERS of the distance from Crestline to 40th St., as far as elevation alone is concerned… simply not even remotely possible. However: 2500 feet seems far more exciting to report than does a measly ol’ 250 feet, so every major source out there reported it as 2500 feet (Apparently, at the time, none had joined the “700 Club” yet, or else the distance would have been reported as 2800 feet).
So, back to last week’s over- the- edge incident… Over the weekend, measurements were taken. The distance? 570 feet from the edge of the roadway (PDC to 600 feet from the roadway path- of- travel!) (Oh, and I don’t explain what “PDC” means to the nieces and nephews until they are six years old), and 413 feet worth of elevation drop.
(Incidentally, some (not all) major news sources reported this accident as occurring WAAAAY out in the high desert, where Hwy 18 and Hwy 138 meet out there: Apparently, since other news agencies had reported that the accident occurred “near Hwy. 18 and Hwy. 138,” well, looking at a map, they saw that this was (one of the two places!) where these highways intersected.
So, they reported it… even though this is many, many miles away… and there aren’t any cliffs out there. However, since many— most—of these news agencies don’t even have actual reporters on scene for the stories they report on, well, they go with what they read elsewhere, they speculate, they conjecture, they do the rounding- thing up to 700, they add exciting details, and they reword… so that it doesn’t look like plagiarism.)
Know this: MountainReporter doesn’t do it that way. MountainReporter is going back to the “old- fashioned” method of reporting: If there is not absolute, solid confirmation of a detail or fact, it won’t be reported as solidly confirmed detail or fact. MountainReporter will only report on things that have reporters with first- hand knowledge of an incident, usually by being on- scene as things unfold, and will use information provided by officials… not by other media outlets, speculation, rumor, or even, “everybody- knows- that” types of things. MountainReporter is bringing back an ancient and archaic standard, once found in abundance, now nearly extinct within the news reporting world: Integrity.
Years ago, on my radio, Don Henley explained the whole “Dirty Laundry” concept… many reporting agencies don’t really care about the details or the accuracy of stories. Entertainment— ratings!— has a lot more monetary value than does accuracy, so altering the details, or making a story more exciting, for the sake of entertainment, is a common standard. Not so with MountainReporter: Here you’ll find facts, and integrity.
And that’s no BS (12 years old for the N & N, just to be clear).
LOVE LOVE LOVE Mountain Reporter! Please don’t ever go away. I remember during the Old Fire, the absolutely HORRID reporting of locations. They mixed up the Cedar Fire, Cedarpines Park and Cedar Glen. GET A MAP, PEOPLE! Been telling everybody I know to check out Mountain Reporter.
Thank- you so much, Dianne! Indeed, I recall during the Old Fire, as I stood in Valley of Enchantment one clear and sunny day, with not even a hint of smoke in the air (the fire was a great distance at that time), hearing a LIVE report on the radio (not to name the guilty, but the station’s identifying name rhymes with, “Klay Eff eye!”) in which the breathless reporter had to cut his broadcast short, as flames were licking at his actual news van, from the completely decimated wasteland of, “Valley of Enchantment.” According to the reporter, there was absolutely nothing left of Valley of Enchantment. (For those who are unaware, Valley of Enchantment remained untouched by the fire… at all. Ever. I can only imagine the evacuated residents of this area being devastated by the news that their homes, their community, had been “destroyed by fire.”) And, as you suggested, the media made little distinction between Cedar Glen, Cedar Falls, Cedarpines Park, the Cedar Fire (which was in San Diego County, for the love of Pete!) or a cedar hole- in- the- ground. Apparently, the details were of little importance… getting some entertainment delivered to the ratings machine RIGHT NOW was not going to be hindered by pesky research and facts.