Journalistic Prejudice and Cycling Accidents

pedylan

The language in this article - from the BBC, which as an institution, whatever you think of them, ought to present better balance, sums up the media attitude to cyclists.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/sou ... 863476.stm

The cyclst "collided with a car" he was not hit by a car. There's no supporting evidence in the article to indicate what did happen and therefore none to support this description.

The pedestrian was struck by a motor cycle - obviously no pedestrian can collide with a motor vehicle but the rods are full of cyclists colliding with cars!

I hope both cyclist and pedestrian recover.

In essence reporters are representative of the majority and the majority are car using road owners who see cyclists as a nuisance.

mercurykev

I read that story and thought the same thing. The BBC are really bad for using the 'cyclist collided with a car' line. A couple of months ago a cyclist as killed when a car travelling in the same direction hit him and the report still said that the cyclist collided with the car!

Ralph Cooper

The more appropriate wording would be

"A cyclist and a car were (involved) in (a) collision"

There is the least amount of prejudice in that.
Good journalists will repeat the phrase later in an article, but with the parties reversed to add balance.

We should complain to the editor and the regulator (can't remember the acronym) when there appears to be bias.

Reporters finally seem to be dropping the phrase "accident" in favour of "collision". We should encourage that too!