Tuesday 11 August 2009

Lies, Damn Lies and The Bristol Evening Post!

If you daren't use a good headline, pick one that won't fight back!
That seems to be the bullying strategy of some Bristol Evening Post journalism.
Its article on Saturday, 9 August
Bristol's Old Market on Toxic Danger List is a case in point.
The story is utterly misleading about Old Market and leaves readers believing something that is patently untrue.
Whether this is deliberate scaremongering, just bad journalism, or both is difficult to say.

Either way, it wantonly damages Old Market's recent attempts at regeneration after years of having to live with another, ill-deserved reputation.
People who live or work in Old Market are no more at risk than those who live or work in Cabot Circus.
The statement that "The busy street, which provides one of the gateways into the city centre, is on a list of 15 'danger areas' [...]" is simply misleading.
It is not the Old Market Street gateway that has been monitored for toxic pollution.
The pollution measuring station just happens to be called "Old Market" because it is sited near the junction of Bond Street and Old Market Street.
In fact, it is located under the pedestrian footbridge, behind the old escalator building.
Obviously, it measures primarily the toxicity of the fumes from the traffic going through the Temple Way underpass, a busy dual carriageway.
This is the traffic that passes Cabot Circus and far exceeds that travelling through Old Market.
If the sensor station had been sited on the other side of the road, it might have been called "Castle Park". Then the headline might have been the absurd, "Castle Park on toxic danger list".
It is also true that there are only two functioning monitoring stations of this type in Bristol, so inevitably the data will refer to the area in which they are sited. In reality, it may or may not be any different from other parts of Bristol.
No doubt the story is newsworthy. People should be alerted to the dangerous levels of traffic pollution in Bristol.
However, the choice to malign Old Market when the news refers just as easily to Cabot Circus is despicable.
It clearly has not mattered to the Post’s journalist or editor that this sort of scaremongering unfairly damages Old Market's already unjust reputation and is therefore utterly irresponsible.