I am tired of reading calamity reports from Nigerian newspapers. Why is it so difficult to fact check and edit stories before publishing it.
Haba! In the story below, an absolutely false statement was passed as fact by a journalist who practically dubbed a press release or whatever and thereafter worsened the situation by showing up his ignorance in an attempt to sound cool… He added his own uninformed and utterly rubbish opinions.
I mean the story below is so full of errors, I stopped reading after scanning through a few lines. How on earth does such stories get past the desk editors in the first place? There were so many factual errors in a simple short news report, it beggars belief. No prior research, no fact checking, nothing at all.
Take a look at these few quotes below:
In the triple jump, Tosin Oke will have to train hard to near 14.95 championships record set by Françoise Mbango Etone of Cameroun in Tunis 2002. Oke’s personal best record of 16.92 achieved in NNPC/Mobil meets may not be enough for the country to win a medal in Triple Jump.
Judging by her development, Abugan is likely to win 400m event since controversial world champion Caster Semanya has been left out of South Africa squad .
Interestingly, Long Jumper Stanley Gbagbeke’s new record of 7.92m at NNPC/Mobil event has given strong indication that Nigeria may grab Long Jump gold medal in Kenya. The Middle Tennessee University, USA, jumper was able to beat African championships record of 8.34m set by Morocco’s Younes Moudrik in Alger 2000.
Now, Tosin Oke is a man with a personal best of 17.05 so he has no business with Francoise Mbango who is a women ‘s champion. Btw, a simple maths should have alerted this reporter to the fact that 16.92 is already more than the 14.95 record he was referring to.
In the 2nd quote, Semenya, even if she were to compete, would not race against Shade Abugan in the 400m, because Caster is an 800m runner.
3rd quote, how can Gbagbeke’s record of 7.92m beat the African record of 8.34m? how can that mark ‘give a ‘strong indication that Nigeria may grab Long Jump gold medal in Kenya’ when Senegal’s Ndiss Kaba Badji (8.27m), South Africa’s Godfrey Khotso Mokoena (8.15m) and Ghana’s Ignisious Gaisah (8.09m) have all jumped higher this year. Besides Stanley had jumped 7.96m in 2010 already.
Very lazy and poor reporting work I must say. A few mouse clicks and 5mins of internet research is all that’s needed to avoid these horrendous mistakes.
The full story as published in the NATIONAL DAILY two days ago
http://nationaldailyngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2328:countdown-to-african-athletics-champ&catid=145:athletics&Itemid=654
