Liverpool Echo — seriously misleading article

This post was pub­lished over 700 days ago and there­fore may not rep­res­ent cur­rent Out­side Con­text think­ing or opin­ion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoy­ment of it!

The fol­low­ing hash of report­ing was found online :

£1 for the gun that crippled my Dave

Aug 22 2005

By LIAM MURPHY, Liv­er­pool Echo

David Hazel with part­ner Patti Wil­li­ams after being para­lysed by a gun­shot in the back

THE part­ner of a man left para­lysed by a BB gun has told of her hor­ror at find­ing sim­ilar weapons for sale for just £1.

Father-of-three David Hazel, of East­ham, was shot in the back in a ran­dom attack as he left his house last year.

The former sol­dier was para­lysed for life from the waist down when the pel­let lodged in his spine.

Since then his part­ner Patti Wil­li­ams and their fam­ily have been cam­paign­ing for the guns to be banned, with the sup­port of Wir­ral West MP Stephen Hesford.

But this week, while shop­ping in Ellesmere Port, Ms Wil­li­ams went into Pound World where she dis­covered BB guns being sold for £1 each…

Full story here : LIVERPOOL ECHO

The art­icle has inflamed a lot of out­cry from the air­soft com­munity not only because it is fac­tu­ally incor­rect (we are more than used to that), but because it is in effect scare­mon­ger­ing of the worst kind.

Con­sequently I have com­plained to the Press Com­plaint Com­mis­sion and I urge you to read the art­icle and decide for your­self what you should do.

My com­plaint:

1 i) The Press must take care not to pub­lish inac­cur­ate, mis­lead­ing or dis­tor­ted inform­a­tion, includ­ing pictures.

ii) A sig­ni­fic­ant inac­cur­acy, mis-leading state­ment or dis­tor­tion once recog­nised must be cor­rec­ted, promptly and with due prom­in­ence, and — where appro­pri­ate — an apo­logy published.

iii) The Press, whilst free to be par­tisan, must dis­tin­guish clearly between com­ment, con­jec­ture and fact.

This art­icle is fac­tu­ally incor­rect and delib­er­ately mis­lead­ing in con­tent. Specifically:

“Then there’s no stop­ping someone modi­fy­ing these — that is how access­ible they are.”

It is impossible to modify a £1 “springer” pis­tol to become a lethal weapon.

“The former soldier’s spinal cord was severed by a ball bear­ing in the attack in out­side his home in Wood­church, Wir­ral, in June 2004.”

It is clear that the reporter doesn’t know the dif­fer­ence between the types of items described. A £1 pis­tol could on no account give the injury men­tioned here. The pis­tols being sold are “air­soft” guns. I am reg­u­larly shot by air­soft guns vastly more power­ful than any £1 pis­tol and sus­tain noth­ing more than a slight bruise. No £1 gun can fire at a velo­city needed to harm a human.

The journ­al­ist has in my view dis­tor­ted the facts to paint a pic­ture of leth­al­ity that doesn’t exist. For the lay­man a good ana­logy would be as follows:

– A man is attacked with a samurai sword, and sub­sequently a damning art­icle is pro­duced claim­ing that fen­cing foils should be banned –

There is a strong need for a cla­ri­fic­a­tion in this mat­ter. It is impossible that the facts in the art­icle are cor­rect and the entire text shows signs of care­ful con­struc­tion so as to fab­ric­ate a pic­ture which is obvi­ously entirely wrong.

Most damningly under sec­tion 1iii and the following:

“LAST year David Hazel was left para­lysed from the waist down after being shot in the back by a man with a BB gun in what police described as a ran­dom and motive­less attack.”

Whilst the vic­tim in this case may not know the dif­fer­ence between dan­ger­ous weapons and harm­less air­soft rep­licas it is imper­at­ive that any journ­al­ist actu­ally checks their facts before inflam­ing an already mis­un­der­stood issue.

Please act.

Many thanks

Grrrr. I ser­i­ously dis­like the press sometimes.

Related Posts

• No Related Posts