Oh, Cambridge News, you never really fail to get cycling stories wrong do you?
Yesterdays report about an 'Angry Pensioner' who assaulted a cyclist by emptying dog shit over him is a great example. Lets break the article down - I've been dropping sections into Word to do some word counts.
The article starts with what happened - 108 words. Simple to describe, it is unambiguously an assault, and the facts are summarised from what the magistrate would have heard.
Then we've got what the court decided - 27 words. Again, not a lot to say here - pay for dry cleaning and given a conditional discharge. Go away and don't do it again!
We then get a comment from the victim - 155 words or so summarising who he is and what he said. Nothing particularly contentious, it turns out having dog poo tipped on him in a scenario where there's nothing he can reasonably do in response other than phone the police is really rather distressing so he'd like that not to happen. I can't find anything in that to take issue with - I'm sure everyone would agree with him.
Then we get to the biggest part of the article - following a sentence that slips in the fact that its a shared use path so the cyclist had every right to be there - we get 198 words of mitigation or, as it really reads, feeble excuses from the person who committed the crime. So thats more of a platform for the perpetrator than for the victim, in fact the assaulter gets more than the victim and the magistrate combined. And she's given the last word too, saying its ridiculous that this went to court (taking it to 228 words for 'her side').
It is unquestionably the case that Cambridge News has provided a platform for this criminal. The story is overwhelmingly biased towards this persons justifications for her illegal act.
Now lets compare this with how the same rag covers other assaults - ignoring for the moment sexual assaults such as this where no platform is provided for the criminal - if I put 'guilty assault' in to the search box at CN I find that the next report of a court case I find gives no space for mitigation from the guilty party.
The bottom line here is that if you assault a cyclist in Cambridge, and lets be very clear throwing dog excreta on someone is as hazardous as it is unpleasant, Cambridge News will provide a platform for you to explain why you've done so. You'll get the opportunity to justify yourself to the public, with equal prominence to the victim of your crime. The News will do this out of the mistaken view that you need to 'balance' the view of a criminal with that of a victim if, and only if, that victim is a cyclist. Because they won't do that for other assaults.
Cambridge News hates cyclists. Sometimes I don't even think they know they're doing it - but no one 'balances' reports of racist assaults by reporting crass justification for the crimes. Thankfully no one any longer reports rapists saying in court that she was 'asking for it' as if that explains anything. But cyclists? Apparently assaulting us is different.
UPDATE: I don't want to labour the point, but some of the things being left in the comments section are just astonishing. Copied two here straight from above linked story from Cambridge News.
UPDATE: I don't want to labour the point, but some of the things being left in the comments section are just astonishing. Copied two here straight from above linked story from Cambridge News.
My daughter who is 9 was told by this woman "to watch out next time" as she was passing her on this path. If you actually go there you'll see no one whizzing round on their bikes, kids from the local school use it very respectively and mums/dads are usually not far back. This woman has been throwing sticks, shouting abuse etc... for far too long. If she doesn't like cyclist why is she always out with her dog when it's school run time. She abuses people then keeps quiet for a while and comes back and do it again. This article is so one sided it's painful maybe the journo should speak to the community involved. Telling your kids to stay clear of this mad woman just because they are on bikes shouldn't happen.
My childrens (twin boys) first experience of this woman's unstable mental health was when they were 7 years old, when she verbally assaulted them as they were very courteously cycling past her, I was with them (they are now nearly 13). Since then there have been many other instances, including Ms Currall stepping in front of one of them whilst he was ON THE CYCLE LANE, cycling down the bridge on Shelford Road, Trumpington, fortunately my son was alert enough to swerve to avoid collision, again I witnessed this myself. The residents of Trumpington have been putting up with this behaviour for a long time. Most children who take that route to school are told to avoid her. This is also not the first time she has physically assaulted someone. She has gone too far! It surprised us all that she had a bag of dog poo with her because again for years she has been seen to leave her dogs poo on the pavements. This is not about bullying a pensioner.
UPDATE 2: Another brand new article about a cyclist (actually a pedestrian pushing a bike) assaulted. This time THE ENTIRE STORY is about 'mitigation', i.e. the story is all about the pathetic excuse given for an outright assault. This cyclist hating chip-wrapper just doesn't let up; it rains more shit down on us than the above mentioned pensioner ever will.
UPDATE 3: Cambridge News didn't even search through their own files, or so it seems. The chap found guilty in Update 2 (the story which really only covers his excuses) appears top be currently banned from driving due to having been found over the limit, having previously been banned for drink driving. And rather than mention this is a person with a simply disgraceful record on our roads, the 'News' merely chose to detail his excuses for why he got out of a car and assaulted a cyclist.
There is a general problem with the idea in the media that 'balance' is the same thing as 'portraying both sides'. It happens with climate change stories too, where 'balance' is giving a platform to the 1% of climate scientists who don't agree that man-made climate change is happening. Portraying both sides as equally worthy of attention when one is actually a tiny minority (and/or batshit crazy) is distortion, not balance. Which is not to say that you should never seek other sides or print outlier viewpoints (my opinion on what the private motor car has done to our cities and communities is probably something of an outlier), but not in every single article where it comes up.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read the story, and don't intend to give CN the clicks, so cannot comment on the tone of the piece and whether this is a matter of giving the perpetrator enough rope to hang herself.
It seems to me that this is done in a deliberate attempt to stir up comments between cyclists and non cyclists on their comment board. Most of their cycling articles seem to be written with this in mind.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're right - clickbait, basically.
DeleteThe other annoying thing the Cambridge News does is it's headlines always include the gender of female cyclists but never of male cyclists.
ReplyDeleteI think you are reading too much into this. CN articles are often poorly (and apparently hastily) written but that doesn't mean they have a hidden agenda. I bet they simply wrote whatever verbatim quotes they had from the different parties in order to generate enough copy, and the balance of the article wordcount simply is what it is. Of course it's your blog and your opinion, but my opinion is that fastidiously counting news article words and writing statements like 'Cambridge News hates cyclists' does nothing but reinforce the image of the paranoid ‘militant’ Cambridge cyclist which, in turn, does nothing to further the cause of cycling in our city.
ReplyDeleteReinforces the image? Only if the viewer thinks that already.
DeleteIf this were accidental then by chance alone we would sermon articles apparently biased in favour of cyclists. We do not so i conclude that is unlikely.
I agree with Cab, that this is biased and contains an agenda - not a particularly hidden one though.
DeleteHaving read the article and some of the comments, I could summarise it thus:
"Woman with three previous convictions, two for assault and one for criminal damage, and mental health issues, is convicted of an assault against a University Fellow"
Had he not been riding a bicycle at the time, I have no doubt that that, in summary, is exactly how it would have been reported. As with the other cases Cab cites, there would have been nil or minimal defendant's perspective quoted in the article.
As a former Oxford man I recall the "town & gown" tensions there, and also hearing from contemporaries who went to Cambridge that the tensions were far worse there, perhaps because Cambridge is a smaller city, more dominated by its university than Oxford, and with far more (proportionately) students at other institutions including the various language schools. Is the anti-cyclist bias in the CN a reflection on that, and the identification of cyclists, to a large extent, with students?
Brave man declaring a former Oxford affiliation here :)
DeleteSome of the anti-cycling angst here is certainly transference from anti-student. But cycling transcends all parts of town AND gown here far more than you might imagine - hence its a hate that CN can plug into that effectively trolls most demographics.
The assailant in this case has a history of harassing cyclists on the path by the Trumpington allotments. But perhaps she has a point? This path is very narrow, but it's become the best way for cyclists to get from Trumpington to Cambridge (it's the shortest way to get down from Shelford Road onto the path beside the Guided Busway). I suspect the path has become much too busy for its width, and this inevitably leads to conflict between pedestrians and cyclists.
ReplyDeleteIt's a similar story in other places where the infrastructure is inadequate for the traffic (for example, Green Dragon bridge or Midsummer Common). If the council won't improve cyclist facilities in response to increases in traffic then assaults like the reported one are going to follow.
If its the same person I've heard complaints about before (and comments at CN imply that may be the case) then this is someone with a bee in her bonnet who's looking for conflict; I don't believe that the width of any path is relevant when someone seems to be looking for trouble.
DeleteBut heck, might not be the same person. There could be two of them...
Generally shared use facilities need to be scant used or very wide to work - I think for the most part the guided busway route works okay (except when its dark, when it still unnerves me), whereas (for example) Milton Road is dreadful. Green Dragon Bridge is an excellent example where nearly everyone using it gets on okay - most cyclists pootle slowly and get off if there are loads of pedestrians, and most pedestrians are fine moving to one side. There's a tiny minority of irate folk who seem keen to make it out to be way worse than it is though!
I mentioned Green Dragon bridge because I've seen pedestrians assaulting cyclists there a couple of times, and it's clear that they do it because they feel alarmed and intimidated by the speed and proximity of cyclists, and lash out in response. Which is not to excuse the assaults, but to point out that they are a consequence of an overcrowded and stressed facility.
DeleteYeah, I guess you're right - but I maintain that aggro at Green Dragon isn't a common occurrence. Its sad that it happens at all (and undoubtedly for reasons you state) though.
DeleteIf you really want unbalanced look at the Telegraph's coverage of the same story. But perhaps that's to be expected.
ReplyDeleteThe only possible and acceptable defence of this lady's actions are her alleged mental health issues. That said, it's pretty clear that the CEN relish a good cycle story because of the attention they attract. Contrary to @ChrisHavergalCN 's suggestion on Twitter, I rather suspect that this lady is enjoying the attention too.
Do you fancy riding around down there to see whether she's changed her habits? No, me neither :)
DeleteI'll pass on that. Don't want to be the subject of yet another CEN story!
DeleteAnother tendency of local papers in particular, is to take the actions of one cyclist as completely representative of all cyclists, and to allow their readership and letters to carry on this viewpoint. Imagine if we did that with motorists (all motorists are red light jumpers 'cos I saw one do it, once).
ReplyDeleteI think what makes these stories particularly interesting is that they both involve court proceedings. There are guidelines on court reporting which say that both the defence and prosecution views should be fairly reported. What "fairly" means is that for example if the defence took up roughly half the time of the court, which is certainly possible in the first case, that should be reflected in the content of the article.
ReplyDeleteIt does bother me that the "defence" in both cases is given prominence in the headline. If anything makes the reporting unfair and biased (to my non-legally trained mind), that is it. I'd also like to have heard the reaction of the magistrate chairing the bench in both cases. If they had said anything significant, it could have markedly changed the tone of the reporting.
Oh, covering mitigation (or excuses, basically) given by the defense is the whole point of these stories. Thats the whole focus - by bigging up why the criminal says they've assaulted the cyclist the paper basically sides with the (convicted) defendant.
DeleteI'd say its cynical and biased, but its far more likely to be a symptom of plain old fashioned prejudice.