Tabloid journalism and aircraft

And during the Gulf War the Washington Post described the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 as the fighter version of the McDonnell-Douglas A-4.

It's often said that no American newspaper would ever let its sports editors be as uninformed as its military editors...

Cheers,



Dana

This is a little off topic but still illustrates how ill informed some journalist can be when it comes to technical matters.

When Hinckley attempted to assassinate Reagan in 1981, he was rumored to have used explosive bullets, a .22 cal if I remember right, not hollow points, but explosive.
There was a illustration in Time magazine as to how explosive bullets worked.
It showed a whole round, cartridge case and bullet, coming out of the gun, hitting the target and exploding.

Dana Bell said:

And during the Gulf War the Washington Post described the McDonnell-Douglas F-4 as the fighter version of the McDonnell-Douglas A-4.

It's often said that no American newspaper would ever let its sports editors be as uninformed as its military editors...

Cheers,



Dana

Click to expand...

Military editors?

Virtually no newspapers today are likely to have either aviation writers or military writers on staff. They'll pull some kid off covering the social calendar or pothole filling, and that kid is probably getting paid less than the people sticking parking tickets on your car.

Heck, most don't even have regular editors any more.

I once told a local rag, for a modest fee, mind you, that I would be happy to review any article they might be preparing for print, home-grown, or off the wire, for accuracy in terminology or nomenclature, but they did not like that, This, even after pointing out their errors in the previous six months.

Ain't no fixing stupid.

You run across it everywhere . . . Miami Herald prints an article about a local gent who was one of the SBD drivers striking the Japanese carriers at Midway . . . except he was not. Great story, but, alas. Took me all of about 15 seconds to say,"huh?" and start checking on it when it was obvious, from the story, that he's never been decorated with the Navy Cross. If you were flying an SBD and dropped out of the sky on one or more Japanese carriers at Midway you got the Navy Cross.