Journojism

I have pretty much given up on bothering with journalists when it comes to reporting on anything that requires a smidgen of understanding. If it has 'owt to do with science then New Scientist or Scientific American are a good place to start, rather than a newspaper or the telly.

But I've always kind of assumed that the sports coverage was of a higher calibre. The papers just seem so obsessed with it, football, rugby, cricket and the Telegraph's in-depth coverage of tennis for a fortnight every year (transparent puff pieces on nubile young female players lavishly illustrated in colour).

Nope it's just as poor. Anybody who had even a passing interest in MotoGP last season will remember that Rossi had a problem caused by a combination of too much front grip and a stiff chassis - causing the front of the bike to 'chatter' under braking, even the birds in the trees knew about it. This well known nugget of intelligence seems to have passed by the Times scribbler...

Here he is quoting Jerry Burgess, Rossi's technical director and helping us all out with his analysis in brackets.

“Yamaha didn’t give him what he needed and a little bit more at any one race would have been enough. “We had a chatter [motorcycle intercom] problem all year

Needless to say intercom systems aren't even allowed in MotoGP.