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Media Coverage of Alton Towers

The mirrors latest:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alton-towers-smiler-crash-survivor-6028700

Thought I'd highlight either the lies, or bad journalism.
  • "Leah Washington needing her left leg amputated BELOW the knee"
  • "Joe, who has previously slammed the theme park"
  • "the brave teenager, whose middle right hand finger"
  • "Smiler staff got him and Leah off and on the attraction three times before the ride started."
  • "saw ‘my knees splattered"
  • "remain together despite them being on their first date at the time, as ‘doing fine.’"
  • "Dancer Vicky Balch, 20, from Leyland, Lancs, and Leah, both lost their limbs in the June 2 smash."
 
I'm not even going to ask if they bother fact-checking their articles before they're published, because from that, it's pretty clear they don't bother!
 
Tom said:
It's actually because the story had the potential to be of such a massive public interest, it is not worth ignoring or half-covering.
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That was my point, have to cover major events, then back down. Noticed how straight away they switched Alton towers tickets to legoland.

Read private eye you'll see just how papers choose what to say and report depending on advertising money.
 
^ I know precisely how the media operates and is controlled for the most part, but for others that would be sound advice!
 
They REALLY can't let this drop can they?

Just using any old crappy link between victim and Towers to re-run the whole story again. There should be a law against this type of poo 'journalism'.
 
How is someone receiving gifts in hospital even news? Do people really care about this stuff? Yes it is lovely that she is receiving such gifts but come on. The Mirror have a real hate campaign against Towers.

:)
 
Ok, so if someone loses their leg in a more normal way (you know what I mean, car crash or something like that) it isn't important. It won't make the news (let alone stay in the headlines for over a month) and sometimes the injuries would be worse than on the smiler. But as soon as it is under unusual circumstances, it is extremely important, it has media focus on every card and present they get, there is conspiracy theories made up about the place being haunted, and it ends up in that place losing millions, even before compensation is paid out.

I understand that, for those involved, it was a life-changing, but that doesn't mean you need to start an all-out war campaign against Alton towers, when there is a chance it's not their fault, and they are being beyond reasonable with how they are handling it. I find it ironic how one of the victims is not angry at anyone, and won't start blaming people until he knows what happened, yet, the media are literally trying to destroy a decent (ok, I know it's merlin) company.
 
It's not so much to do with a hate campaign against Towers, more to do with the amount of traffic they get to their website from these articles. Just looking at The Mirror's Facebook, these articles have had tens of thousands of 'likes', been shared 1000s of times and have 1000 or more comments per post on Facebook. It all spreads The Mirror's name around, gets more 'clicks' on their website resulting in more advertising revenue and probably helps with paper sales to a lesser extent too.

I doubt they care whether it happened at Alton Towers, Barry Island or Disneyland. It's all about the website clicks and money made from the story. Since they are keeping it going at the moment they are obviously getting enough attention to warrant dragging out a story that most people don't really care about.

Like none of us on here really care about these rubbish stories but I bet a lot of people that say that are clicking on the article link above and giving The Mirror what they want. We're better off ignoring it all together if it annoys us.
 
Your right, it just seems like a hate campaign. Has the same effect, people read it, people don't go, people do go, people complain, people sell their story, more articles.

But when someone died at disneyland not that long ago, i only saw one thing on bbc
 
Leah said:
Ok, so if someone loses their leg in a more normal way (you know what I mean, car crash or something like that) it isn't important. It won't make the news (let alone stay in the headlines for over a month) and sometimes the injuries would be worse than on the smiler. But as soon as it is under unusual circumstances, it is extremely important
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Absolutely - that's why it's making the news! This isn't a run of the mill car crash. This is a horrible accident/incident at the nation's favourite theme park.
 
Yep, it's all about news values and newsworthiness. Unfortunately the crash was both negative (something the media really feeds on) and out of the ordinary, creating this repetitive cycle of bad news reports based on the park.
 
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