[Cycloid]

 

About 4 o’clock on Saturday afternoon 17th July a cyclist was in collision with a motor vehicle near the village of Goostrey in Cheshire, he died later in hospital,

The Congleton Chronicle, the local newspaper, reported the incident in it’s next issue. The article gave three paragraphs to the incident followed by seventeen paragraphs of anecdotal stories from local residents accusing cyclists of inconsiderate and reckless riding.

For some mysterious reason the whole scenario was overlooked by the ghost of 1950s cycling champion Reg Harris.

You can read the article Here:-

https://www.chronicleseries.com/goostrey-villagers-voice-safety-concerns-after-cyclist-dies-in-collision/

The website has a “Contact us” option to leave comments, which do go to the editor.

The Congleton Chronicle is a good local paper and has given good coverage to both cycling and active travel in the past. On this occaision I think they totally lost it.

The article also begs the question, “Do the adjacent parishes of Goostrey and Twemlow have the highest concentration of cycling haters in the country?”

Any comment on this post MUST restrict itself to the quality of the journalism, (and the local residents). This is NOT the time and place to discuss the sad death of a gifted cyclist. Please consider his bereaved family, and bear in mind thar this incident may result in a court case, which could be influenced by opinion and unsubstantiated allegations.

I ask the moderators to enforce this condition.

Topic

[AlsoSomniloquism]

I do have to admit that the

I do have to admit that the bit about the church car park is so pig headed. Instead of blaming the organisation who the money is being paid to for not arranging a section to be used normally, it is the fault of the cyclists for paying to hire it out. I wonder if they also moan about other people paying into the local economy. 

Although this rival newspaper article over the parking at the Railway Station seems to indicate no one is safe on the local roads. 
 

[Rendel Harris]

I got an identical response,

I got an identical response, mine was this:

Hi Jem,
Thank you for such a swift response, much appreciated. I do also appreciate that you need to be balanced in your journalism. However I can’t say that I think citing the fact that my namesake Reg used to ride round that neck of the woods is sufficient balance for an article that was 95% biased towards hearsay evidence from irate residents who are anti-cyclist, without any right to reply from cyclists or cycle clubs, whom I’m sure would have plenty to say about the way people drive on the roads in question and so forth.
I also appreciate that you have a duty to, and an interest in, reflecting the views of your readers, but that should not prevent you offering fair and balanced journalism. To take it to a ridiculous extreme (and I am in no way equating anti-cycling bias with racism, just making an example), if 90% of your readers were racist, I’m sure you wouldn’t pander to them by publishing articles that were 90% in favour of the racist viewpoint?
Your thoughtful answer shows that you are clearly a responsible journalist who does give consideration to such matters, but I still feel you were mistaken in allowing the tragic death of this individual (for which, as far as I understand, no blame or fault has been established?) to be used as a vehicle for residents’ complaints about cyclists in general. Surely it would be far better to have run such an article, if it were deemed necessary, without reference to this incident? As it stands it does appear to the casual observer to have a tone of “cyclists only have themselves to blame”.
Thank you again for responding so quickly.
Best regards,
Rendel
 

[Captain Badger]

Captain Badger wrote:

Thanks for the email.
…..
 

And my response:

Jem
Your piece was victim blaming. It started off with biased report of the death of a person on a bike and descended into a bigoted rant against people on two wheels that relied solely on prejudiced anecdotes with no verification or fact check. This was not reporting, it was hate.
Shame on you.
 

 

[Captain Badger]

Here is the response I just

Here is the response I just got:

Thanks for the email.
We had the story about the fatal accident in the week before, with
tributes etc and quotes. The story you have seen was the week
after, part of a long-running issue in the village about the roads – there’s
an illegal waste tip nearby, the lanes are used by HGVS and
huge tractors and fatalities are sadly all too common.
I’ll copy a long letter I’ve just written to two local cyclists
below, which  explains it all in more detail than you
probably wanted.

Jem

Jem Condliffe, Editor / MD 
Congleton Chronicle Series
Market Square, Congleton CW12 1BW. 
(Company number 2154383)

Before I start: I have no car. I walk or cycle most of the time, although I cycle much less than a decade ago, when I was run over by a car at the bottom of Astbury village and lost my nerve. All I saw for years when I got on a bike was road kill. My sympathy is not with the cars. I think every road should have a cycle track and cars should be forced to go slower, in fact I find our obsession with cars slightly depressing. I have never done a time trial, but I have done triathlons, which involve a road stage.

That’s me, however. As editor, the Chronicle has to represent all sides in the community without bias.

As for the general principle: we often report a fatal accident involving a car and then have letters / stories / parish council reports about speeding / bad driving / bad roads in the area. Usually these are ongoing issues, and the fatality brings them to the fore. This is the case here. Traffic is a regular issue in Twemlow and as you will know the main road through the village has had a number of fatal accidents. We reflect the views of the communities we cover.

In this case, we reported the tragic death of the cyclist. The following week – and I would stress it was the following week – a freelance who sends us copy almost daily sent us the story you have complained about. He is retired but worked for the nationals, then ran a successful news agency in Goostrey and now runs a blog in the village covering the area. He lives there and knows everyone. He has a family member on the parish council. He does not charge us for his stories and sends them in to promote the village he loves.

On this occasion he followed up concerns in the village about road use. This was not an attack on the cyclist or cyclists per se and nor was it a few random people who dislike cycling in itself. He mentioned Reg Harris to show that the area has a long cycling heritage and pointed out that time triallists are using the same roads as leisure cyclists.

I remember a similar issue in Great Budworth a few years ago, when the parish council wrote to cycling to clubs and, while admitting that the problem was not club riders but more unregulated groups, the issues were very similar.

One person quoted in the story is the chairman of Twemlow Parish Council. He is concerned enough with the issue to put it on a parish council agenda. This was not just a made-up story.

The background is that people in Goostrey/Twemlow are upset about roads: there is an illegal waste transfer station, so they get lorries using the country lanes as well, and now tractors, which are causing great damage to the roads.

The chairman of the parish council’s involvement makes this a matter of public interest. Are you suggesting we should ignore what the elected chair of a parish council says because he takes a stance with which you disagree? If the parish council has a discussion about the roads mentions the fatal accident, do we not report it? I’m sure you would not want that.

Nor would you want us to silence villagers with real concerns over safety: you may not like it, you may disagree, and they may be confusing organised time trials with ad hoc groups racing through the village, but we cannot just tell them to shut up.

I do not dispute it is an emotive issue but that does not mean it cannot be discussed, and such tragedies often bring to the fore long-standing issues.

As for the roads and lorries: as I have said to one of you, I have heard that the cyclist rode into a pothole and that neither he nor the van driver are to blame. I don’t how true this is and only an inquest and / or court case will reveal the truth, but residents are concerned about the state of the roads and the danger this represents.

We tried to make sure the story read that the cyclist in this case was not to blame – and as I say above, the information I had was that he was not.

There is possibly an issue about road use more generally and whether the Chronicle – as someone else has suggested – should “censor” anti-cycling new. As you will know the Government is planning to to introduce new rules to the highway code. I would hope it would change the hierarchy of the road use to protect the more vulnerable users. You might argue that the Chronicle could do to adopt a more cycle / pedestrian friendly policy as official, but again it’s difficult – do I then delete letters from people who don’t like cyclists?

When I wrote an editorial supporting the highway code changes, I had irate emails from drivers (some advanced drivers get particularly narky) and the same happened when we promoted active travel, with motorists giving us abuse over our support for cycling. We carry many pro-cycling stories throughout the year, too. Only the other week we reported on the new trikes that active travel is introducing in Congleton.

Having typed all this out, I suppose the fundamental problem is that you see this as a standalone issue – a cyclist has been killed and we have run a story criticising cyclists. I see it in the context of all the stories we write about transport where people are constantly fighting over access to roads and safer road use, parish councils are discussing potholes, bad roads and bad driving, and people are campaigning for active travel measures to be taken and we report them all.

Clearly, I am sorry that the story has upset people and that was never the intention – but equally clearly there are concerns in the Twmelow area about certain road users, and as a local paper we will report this.
 

[Hirsute]

Don’t know if it is the worst

Don’t know if it is the worst, just an example of how poor local journalism is on any subject. My local rag now has a letter/comment item but they don’t organise a right of reply or fact check anything. There was one letter about corona virus or ‘chinese virus as I like to call it, after all they called it the spanish flu’. And that got published as is with no comments from the Ed. Cue 3 or 4 letters the next week to correct this.

Usual nonsense in the article – a group exclusively hires the village hall car park so of course they don’t want any one else using it during in their hire period – why even include a complaint about it.

“Someone needs to have a word with the clubs” – so why didn’t the paper do that and tell us their protocols and code of conduct ?

 

[wtjs]

Standard junk- cyclists

Standard junk- cyclists breathing and spreading Covid, and ‘cyclist killed in collision with a van’, implying cyclist hits blameless van, whereas it’s almost invariably (it’s a time trial, so I admit there is another possibility) it’s van hits cyclist because the van driver thinks cyclists are always travelling at 10 mph. It appears there is a lot of inbreeding around there.

[Hirsute]

“I was doing 30 down the hill

“I was doing 30 down the hill” – course you were mate.

 

[brooksby]

brooksby]

But residents are increasingly concerned that many cyclists, often clad mostly in black and travelling at speeds of more than 30mph, could collide with a walker or cyclist using one of the narrow lanes.

And clearly no motorists are ever travelling at more than 30mph down those narrow country lanes…

[Captain Badger]

brooksby wrote:

……

Simon Greenwood, of Chelford Road, said: “I have been overtaken by a group of four cyclists going down the hill at Bridge Lane. I was doing 30mph and they were exceeding the 30mph limit. That cannot be legal.”

Hmm… 

…..

BUT IT’S TWWOOOOOO. They don’t pay tax either……

[brooksby]

Quote:

But residents are increasingly concerned that many cyclists, often clad mostly in black and travelling at speeds of more than 30mph, could collide with a walker or cyclist using one of the narrow lanes.

…

Simon Greenwood, of Chelford Road, said: “I have been overtaken by a group of four cyclists going down the hill at Bridge Lane. I was doing 30mph and they were exceeding the 30mph limit. That cannot be legal.”

Hmm… 

(and we get the ‘cyclists spreading the Plague’ stuff too (is that extra credit?)).

[brooksby]

Aren’t they all owned by

Aren’t they all owned by Reach now?  The company which first aggregated all of its local teams into ‘regional’ teams and which has now decreed that all of its staff will work from home permanently…

[hawkinspeter]

That’s extremely one-sided

That’s extremely one-sided reporting – I didn’t see that they’d asked any cyclists or clubs about their opinion.

[Shades]

Most probably down to

Most probably down to economics, but most of the previously well-regarded local newspapers have grouped up under various on-line news channels; the standard of journalism is woeful and just designed to generate click-bait and get people wound up ala Daily Mail style.

[Author]

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