The lack of copy and proof reading with the BBC is getting annoying now, I've pointed things out to them, I've blogged about them, but we're down to basic bad copy now, as a journalist I think your first order of merit should be to write coherent text, which can only be scanned one way... The moment your words could be interpreted two ways you've failed in your job of clearly communicating.
Here's an example, from a BBC blog about the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz...
See it... "Dozens of the Nazi killers at Auschwitz escaped justice after the war"... That can be read two ways... That there are dozens of killers whom were Nazi's who escaped being brought to justice... Or that there are dozens who killed Nazi's who escaped justice...
I know, and I presume most of you know the history, so we know the writer intends to mean that the Nazi's were the killers and they escaped, but history teaching, cultural differences and the sheer number of holocaust deniers might want to read that differently.
I personally knew a British Solider whom was part of the very first units to get to Belsen, I saw the look in his eye as he described what he saw, I do not deny the Holocaust, I hold it up as the biggest crime ever, EVER, committed, a crime which cuts through divides and should unit all people to resolve never to let something like that happen again.
But then I meet kids now who don't know it happened, that don't know who ran the countries, I've heard kids who know the name Hitler, but they associate the name more strongly with caricatures in computer games, they find it hard to realise the dark days Europe went through, the dark days which my grandparents gave their youth to abate.
And we read of parts of the world where there is conflict today, even driven - as the holocaust was - in part or in full by religion, and one has to question what is the point, why fight?
There are extremists from all over, Islamic, Christian, Orthodox, then there are extreme wings of politics, and it all leads back to a lack of context, you can fight and maim and attack today, but should you?... If you and your family, your country, your people had been ravaged by true horror, would you?
In the Ukraine, Russians do not want to remember the Great Patriotic war's beginnings, they did not until recently acknowledge they had murdered Polish officers when they sided with Nazi Germany and invaded Poland, the history is brushed under the carpet. Just as it is with the cock-eyed Russians running into Ukraine, a whole other sovereign country, and declaring they are fighting to restore their country.
No, no you're not, you've forgotten the horror, and turmoil thrown up nearing a century ago by one World War and then another, you've got no back story, no history, perhaps only propaganda.
And propaganda has been seen to be journalism tainted with a strong bias, so journalism has a lot to answer for, and the least it could do it write coherently on matters of import.
