Italian newspaper with mixed up ideas about space
Posted by Michael on 28 Aug 2007 at 02:16 am | Tagged as: italy, massmedia, space
I learn from my friend Alessandro (http://csidnc.altervista.org/blog.php?entry=entry070824-144120) that there is no end to the ridiculous.
On Friday the 24th, the local pages of La Stampa, a national available italian newspaper, had an interesting mini-article about a mysterious “Orbital Lunar Observatory“.
You can read the article below, of course in italian. But here’s a translation.
What the hell is the “Lunar Orbital Laboratory” for crying out loud?! How on earth is one supposed to think of the ISS after reading that title?
Plus, from a source that I’m not going to name, but I encourage to post a comment, even anonymous, I learnt that the…journalist (and I think I just found an improper use of the word ‘journalist’) found out about the iss lunar transit transit some weeks ago. The ISS has manouvered since then, and the transit (not all that rare) simply didn’t occur, at least not in the ground stripe descripted in the article.
And I’m not even going to comment about the errors in the writing(but you find them in the translation).
I’d like to know who’s behind the initials R.L. Is mr. (or miss, or mrs.) R.L. too shy? Or too ashamed? La Stampa readers deserve to know who are they wasting their money on!
This is one of many examples of how the space is presented (when is presented) on the italian mass media. Kinda makes one wonder about what do they tell us when they talk about politics, war, economy, medicine, you-name-it. E.g., when it comes to Computer Science, they often oversimplify and end up changing the meaning of the news or over-inflate problems to add drama, or bash on technology. This is the same.
Two clues make an evidence?What do you think? How do the mass media cover your area of expertise? Let me know in the comments!
Stay tuned, more to come.
Aug 28th - UPDATE: well, turns out that the author defends himself by saying that the titles aren’t decided by the authors but by the editors. And I believe him because it makes sense.
But the point remains, the charge aren’t dropped, they’re just moved from R.L. to someone else. The title is wrong, the article is not precise. This is no way of doing information. No way.
Stay tuned, more to come.
For my own area of expertise (aeronautics) is very close to space…they can’t do much better. I remember I told you about an article (in the same section, ie Novara and province news) where they referred to a picture of a Tornado in the local militar airport as a F35. And this was not only a lack of technical skills matter: the entire article was about the . : PROJECT : . to bring the F35 assembly line at Cameri Air Force Base. So my article you’ve linked above should have been entitled “LaStampa 2 - Logic 0″
Bye
Alessandro
Well, it’s quite astonishing… how the hell am i supposed to trust what i read on newspapers? It’s better to avoid further comments… a bit ashamed of my country’s journalists…
Al direttore.
Le scrivo in relazione all’articolo dal titolo in oggetto comparso il 24 di agosto sul suo giornale. E’ naturale pensare che l’autore dell’articolo - signor R.L. - non abbia la minima idea di cosa stesse parlando. E fin qui poco male. Ma non mi pare però una pretesa eccessiva chiedere che almeno, prima di scrivere, si documenti in modo decente. Sorvoliamo sul fatto che l’evento descritto non si sia mai verificato. Sorvoliamo anche sul fatto che il “laboratorio orbitale lunare” sia un’entità inventata di sana pianta (la ISS è bel altro). Ma non possiamo sorvolare sul fatto che l’autore abbia serie difficoltà a far concordare i generi. Signor R.L., la parola “sedute” è un femminile, dovrebbe quindi scrivere “predisposte” anziché “predisposti”. Ne faccia tesoro per il suo prossimo articolo.
Cordialmente,
Tommaso Leonardi
Tommaso, you write:
“Ma non mi pare però una pretesa eccessiva chiedere che almeno, prima di scrivere, si documenti in modo decente.”
The problem is that both me and Mike, before writing our posts…we asked TO THE SAME PERSON Mr R. L. did.
This crap goes beyond a good source of informations…
Bye
Alessandro
To be fair, I added that the title is not decided by the author, who shares our surprise in reading such a monstrosity.
But still, it’s not what I would call a professional.