How to fool the media
- Work for a large organisation
- Pretend to represent affiliated organisations
- Repeat
Apparently professional journalists these days are becoming sloppy in their ability to sniff out the truth. Either that, or they just don’t care unless it involves late Princesses or Z-list celebrities.
Since October the ECU issues that have arisen here in Exeter have begun to hit the news everywhere. Not in a big way, but generally appearing as small articles in papers or deep in websites. Being in charge of the Student website here has opened my eyes to the ineptitude of journalists around the country, not only in researching the facts but also in attaining quotes.
In almost every publication covering this story you will find a quote from “Emma Brewster, CU worker”. Only thing is, she isn’t who everyone thinks she is.
Emma Brewster isn’t and has never been a student at the University of Exeter. So how can she be a worker for the (E)CU here? Simple, she’s not!
Google her and you’ll quickly find that she’s actually the South West regional representative for the UCCF (Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship), an organisation that the ECU here are affiliated to.
So, given that she doesn’t in fact represent the ECU, but instead the UCCF, how can she make statements on behalf of the CU claiming to be a worker for them and implying she’s a student here?
Further more, is the current action being taken even the will of the Exeter ECU? After all, with Emma doing all their talking for them, how can we know what it is they really want, especially since the President of the ECU stated to the student newspaper Exepose that “we will respect the decision of the student body that we should be called the ECU”.
Sounds like the UCCF are starting a fight no one here wanted in the first place, lets hope the ECU do the right thing and tell them where to stick their wholly unchristian, anti-democratic bully tactics.
On the flip-side, the UCCF and ECU aren’t entirely to blame for the cock ups of the countries media. Sure, they may have purposefully mislead them, but its the responsibility of journalists to check their sources and get the facts right, otherwise, how can they expect people to believe them? I’m seriously considering sending a letter to all the news organisations at fault with nothing more than the dictionary definition of “research” written on it. After all, it couldn’t hurt.