If anyone had bothered to read the article cited, they
would have found a story written by a reporter who did 
nothing more than make the unfortunate error of quoting
the prepared statement a beekeeping association.


"The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) 
said that if the crisis continued, honeybees 
would disappear completely from Britain by 
2018, causing "calamitous" economic and 
environmental problems."

While I agree that the offense of taking the
statement of any beekeeping association at
face value should be grounds for the immediate 
firing of the reporter, the editor, the publisher, 
and the burning down of the entire building just 
to make sure that such a basic error is never made 
again, I think that the beekeepers share some of
the blame here.

Look at the bright side - while the number of reporters 
who have done anything more than drive-by journalism on 
the CCD story can be counted on the fingers of one hand, 
this reporter at least spoke with the BBKA and allowed
THEM to make the extreme statements.

Speaking as a beekeeper, I can confirm that both the press
and the general public alternate between states of utter
apathy and complete anarchy on an hourly basis, with the 
transition dictated by one factor: "Is it in my backyard?"
CCD is no different from any other "environment" story.

Speaking as a reporter, I'd like to point out that they
are called "stories" for a reason. "Just the fact's ma'am"
died with Jack Webb.  People want to read or be told a 
STORY with a beginning, a middle, and an end.  That's 
really hard to do with a problem that has yet to
be clearly defined, let alone solved.  All we have are
facts with no unifying theme, and some of the things
called facts in the recent past have turned out to be 
utterly bogus in light of more recent findings.

And if the reporter dares to presume to connect the dots 
into a cohesive picture that makes some sort of sense, 
some people get all huffy and adversarial about it, 
simply because the reporter did more than copy down
THEIR view word for word and anoint it as received
wisdom from on high. (And if you think I'm talking 
about YOU there, then I am, aren't I?).


And if you are wondering what pressing and soul-searching
questions are asked when informative and entertaining 
articles are being written, I will present you with an 
actual transcript from today:

Q: "If 'colons' is the plural of 'colon', then is 'colon' the plural of
'semi-colon'?"

A: "Only if you are sure you have an EVEN NUMBER of semi-colons!"

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