I am not, nor have I ever claimed to be a journalist but there’s something bugging me at the moment. I’m going to use yesterday’s news as an example. The story begins that the Scot. Govt have not follow up contacted a single person flying into Scotland. If true this is very bad

Turns out that IS true but Jeanne Freeman explains that it is because they did not have access to Home Office Data and therefore couldn’t contact anyone. At that stage I would have thought that the focus of the story would have changed.

Either it becomes OK, why didn’t the SG plan ahead and secure access to the data in advance or OK why didn’t the UK government give them the data? That’s what you’d expect to happen but that’s not what’s been happening.

What happens is that the headline at 0700 is repeated, almost verbatim at 1200 then again at 1600 and so on. The story should have moved on but it doesn’t, it stalls and this is what is bugging me.

Moving the story on does not mean that anyone is being given an easy time, it means that you are acting on information received and building on that intelligence. You will be testing the facts and digging deeper and I can’t think of a single coherent argument for NOT doing that

Continuing to use a headline which is misleading or only half the truth can only damage a news organisations reputation for impartiality. Worse still it makes them look lazy or incompetent

There must be a reason this happens but I don’t know what it is - understaffing? Lack of training? Genuine bias or a determination to score points that just can’t let go? Any thoughts?