What has the world come to, when a BBC 'journalist' can write an article like this, without even including the words 'fata morgana'?
Of course, we know the answer, it is a comprehensive lack of education, and a total failure of any claim to knowledge, by a self-appointed class, which pretends to tell us about the world.
I would normally just say caveat emptor, and hope the journalist would be fired, or the news agency go out of business immediately, but the Brits have a mandatory tax, called the 'TV License' to sustain all this bullshit.
Comprehensive lack of education? People received an education for ~12 years.
In most parts of the world, I would say _caveat emptor_ and the agency would go out of business immediately, but the Brits have a mandatory tax, called the 'TV License' to pay for this bullshit.
Would they?
This is the first time I heard of this phenomena, so I wouldn't know.
If you are British, you will recognise my italics.
It is perfectly acceptable for any member of the public to be ignorant of some unusual phenomenon. It would be fine if this was a blog from the walker who took the photo. But it is not acceptable for a professional 'journalist': either they are a 'science correspondent' and they should know the answer; or they are temp-ing in the science department, and should ask an expert, or at least find 5 minutes from their busy day to google the explanation.
Then again, most 'journalists' these days seem to be employed by the 'social media' department.
I am not an expert but according to Wikipedia this is a superior mirage just as the article says but not a Fata Morgana [2] which is a subclass of superior mirage that has multiple stacked images. So the uneducated author got it right after all. ;-)
Your 5 minutes of googling is already more informative than the article. Did the article say it was not a 'fata morgana'? No. How long did the effect last? We don't know. Did the ship image move, or disappear, or return to the horizon? We don't know. Were there multiple images? We don't know. Did he take just one photo? We don't know...
Wow, what a toxic attitude you have towards journalists. This is a fluff piece, not a serious piece of investigative journalism. The bar does not not need to be very high for this kind of article.
Even for a fluff piece, this clears a relatively simple yet efficient bar: get the impressions of the photographer, bring in an expert's take to explain the science behind it, and that's it.
Note that apparently the expert didn't need to mention the words "fata morgana" either, so maybe that's a stupid focus point after all which just sounds like elitism at this point.
I know who here "pretends to tell us about the world" and it's not the journalist.
Well, the bar should be a little higher, and in particular, it should be higher for the taxpayer-funded BBC, which would once have thought it had a reputation to protect, but now seems to have destroyed its integrity in favour of fluff pieces - whatever that is supposed to mean - empty articles for empty people?
I don’t look at BBC news much, but now looking at its website, I have to agree with you that there is too much of this kind of content there. Its home page has articles about flying ships, eggs, and pterodactyls.. it does look like they are hitting a pretty low bar across the board, so maybe you’re on to something.
Of course, we know the answer, it is a comprehensive lack of education, and a total failure of any claim to knowledge, by a self-appointed class, which pretends to tell us about the world.
I would normally just say caveat emptor, and hope the journalist would be fired, or the news agency go out of business immediately, but the Brits have a mandatory tax, called the 'TV License' to sustain all this bullshit.