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Friday Diary: Bad Journalism, Angry Train Drivers and Noisy Hand Dryers

Shelagh Fogarty divulges some of the bad experiences she has had with journalists.

By Shelagh Fogarty

25 Nov 2011, 08:00

* The evidence given to the  Leveson Inquiry this week has been both shocking and unsurprising. The Dowlers,  the McCann family, and Jim and Margaret Watson have all had their hearts stamped on by the tabloids and deserve our respect and sympathy. The  right to be heard in such a lofty court is the very least the nation can offer.  The celebrities deserve to be heard too. Whatever you think the price of fame and wealth is,  all of them have stories to tell of sustained harassment and defamation.  It's not just tabloids though. On two occasions I've been stunned at the sloppy and even deliberate inaccuracy which has peppered a couple of articles about me since I became a presenter on a national radio network. One, written by a Guardian reporter I'd actually met socially,  dealt with my decision some years ago not to support a particular NUJ strike.  She left a message on my mobile phone asking me to ring her to talk about it. I chose not to and what do you know? An article the next day inventing a dispute between me and the then Controller of Five Live, suggesting that I turned up to work almost by accident. When I challenged her and her seniors, all seemed unconcerned at their fiction.  As a journalist who strives daily for accuracy I'd have been mortified.

Another article some years later, this time in the Telegraph, related to an incident which happened while I was working for ITV. A gun had been pointed at me and the crew I was working with but thankfully nobody was hurt. Naturally we told the Police and were to give individual  statements a few days later. Before those statements had been taken the newspaper ran an article with "quotes" from me.  Totally invented. I hadn't spoken to anyone and the language used by imaginary Shelagh was laughably unlike me. It's not funny though. Backed by the threat of legal action, I insisted they correct it.  The statement I was to give to the police had to have integrity. It couldn't as long as those "quotes" remained in print unchallenged. It seems so simple to me. 

A Liverpool docker once refused to speak to me on tape because, he said, I"d edit it to twist his words. To gain his trust I invited him to watch the editing process at BBC Radio Merseyside and off we went. Who can blame him for his mistrust? Is integrity really so hard to come by?

* Maybe it was his natural disposition. Maybe he was having a bad day. Maybe passengers on his commuter train through leafy Richmond are normally belligerent. I don't know. As we arrived at the stop a handful of people preparing to get off looked at each other, nonplussed, when the doors wouldn't open. We presumed the driver would notice but the train started up again and we were on our way to Reading! I don't do passive on trains so I went to the driver's booth and knocked on his door, not to complain, but to inform him rather than have a trainload of people end up in Berkshire because they we're too polite to speak up. His reaction stunned me. Immediate defensiveness and an insistence on his part that all was well with the doors. As I explained I wasn't complaining I was struck with an urge to, well, complain. Instead I shamed him with perfect manners. I do enjoy that!

* I tweeted the other day about hand dryers.  I hate them. The most up to date versions are alarmingly noisy. In the changing rooms at the pool I use in West London they installed one quite recently. An oasis of peace and fluffy towels has been transformed into a motorway service station loo. At actual service stations I nip in and out of the Ladies' faster than you can say Christine Ohurugu and dry my hands on my hair, so aggravating is the sound of ten dryers at once.  Now at the new BBC offices in Salford the super noisy hand dryer has put paid to the tradition of having a chat in the loos with a colleague. A cry is completely out of the question.  What's the point if nobody hears you and asks, kindly, from the other side of the door how you are?