Confusability: BBC News Item or Death Race 2000 Remake?

Every working day for the past ten years I have travelled between Bristol and Swindon on the M4 motorway.

Today I had to extra careful with my speed as cameras had been placed along the section of the M4 I use every day which would be used to automatically fine people £60 and give then three penalty points on their license if they followed the majority practice of travelling at 80 or 90 miles an hour.

There was a story on the BBC News site entitled "Cameras stem from huge death toll", which explained that the cameras were being introuduced to try and reduce the number of fatalaties on that section of the M4. The story stated that "240 people died on the M4 in Wiltshire last year ".

That meant that almost five people died every week on my route to work in 2003. Now I may be a bit forgetful, but I am sure that I would have noticed if hundreds of people were being killed in motorway accidents. There was obviously something wrong with this story, but when I read the next sentence I was even more bemused to read this quote from Saira Khan a spokeswoman for the Swindon & Wiltshire Speed Camera Partnership where she said "If those 240 people had been wiped out in one day there would have been an outcry."

Yes Saira, and there would also have been an outcry if 240 people had died in dribs and drabs over twelve months let alone all in one go. After a quick google search I found an article from The Times that "There were 18 deaths, 69 serious injuries and 641 slight injuries between junctions 15 and 17 between 2001 and 2004."

Now this was evidence that the BBC story was way off the mark, perhaps they had added a zero to 24 by mistake, or perhaps they were talking about the number of badgers that had been killed on the M4 last year.

After e-mailing the BBC with my concerns the story was changed very, very quickly.

The title was changed to "Cameras used to slow drivers down" and the fatalities statement was changed to a more reasonable "240 people died or were seriously hurt on the M4".

But the change that shocked me was the change to the quote from Saira Khan which had been changed from:

"If those 240 people had been wiped out in one day there would have been an outcry."

to:

"If those 240 people had been involved in in one incident in one day there would have been an outcry."

You can see captured images of the two stories side by side by clicking on the image below:

http://usability.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/montage.jpg

I can understand that a reporter might had mis-read the statistic about the 240 people, but how did they mis-read or mis-hear the quote from Saira Khan?

Trust is very hard to earn, but it can be damaged very easily.

BBC News Story : Cameras used to slow drivers down - 13 April 2005 10:24 GMT

I then noticed that there was another version of the story on a different section of the BBC site that had a more reasonable title of "Speed cameras target M4 drivers". It contained almost the same content as the other story, the number of deaths and injuries were described as "more than 200 people had died or were seriously injured on the M4 in the past year", but the Sahira quote was still "240 people died on the M4 in Wiltshire last year ".

These two stories hadn't even been changed in a consistent manner and it changes the view I have of BBC journalists as being ethical and measured in their reporting.

BBC News Story : Speed cameras target M4 drivers - 13 April 2005 10:56 GMT

I will pass this complaint onto the BBC and see what happens.

Comments

if what you say is correct-the story had been "changed very, very quickly" then why is that where the page was last updated it is the same as before? both say they were last updated at 10:24 GMT 11:24 UK. i find it hard to believe u came accross the story, read it, emailed bbc and then they changed it all in that same minute. thats just something i noticed if i'm wrong at all please enlighten me. i could always learn a new trick on the PC.

Posted by: observant1 | November 06, 2005 at 11:07 PM