Sloppy Journalism #18 – More poor sub-editing

Fran O’Sullivan appears to have been a victim of poor sub-editing today. Her opinion piece had two errors. One of which was repeated multiple times.

First O’Sullivan’s article read, in print and on-line:-

There is a fine line between leveraging the impact of the international recession on the financial health of the Government’s own assets to create what in management speak is often referred to as a “burning deck“ to force radical change, and downright chicanery.

Adam who has worked in change management thinks the phrase should be ‘burning platform‘. He has never heard anyone use the phrase ‘burning deck’. The derivation of ‘burning platform’ being the Piper Alpha oil platfrom fire in the North Sea, when those trapped either burned to death or jumped into the freezing waters.

The second error being the naming of the WSJ journalist who wrote the recent piece on John Key as Mary Bissel.When if you look up the WSJ piece you find:-

By MARY KISSEL

Wellington, New Zealand

These days, you have to travel far to find a national leader who is talking about market-based approaches to the global recession. All the way to the other side of the world.

Sloppy, just so sloppy.

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