Telegraph, you’re fired
You know that spring is in the air when the days are getting longer, the weather is getting warmer, and everyone stops organising social events on Wednesdays. The fifth series of The Apprentice starts tonight, which means forsaking all others for a midweek date with Sir Alan Sugar until June.
Anita Shah gets fired two hours too early by Telegraph.co.uk
I was looking forward to watching the first episode until I made the mistake of turning to Telegraph.co.uk for a news fix this evening. The paper’s Twitter feed directed me towards a bold headline that announced “Anita Shah ‘gutted’ to be fired by Sir Alan”. The story went on to explain that “last night’s episode on BBC One, in which Sir Alan revealed someone had ‘bottled it’ before the cameras had started rolling, saw the hard work start immediately” before giving a blow-by-blow account of the first show.
Which is all very well, except the story was published online almost two hours before the programme was actually screened.
Journalism may be about getting the story fast and getting it first, but The Telegraph’s online editors were too quick off the mark with this one. Needless to say, the link to the story had gone dead within an hour, but it still features on the paper’s Twitter feed.
At least television newsreaders have the decency to tell you to “look away now” before they show you a spoiler. Still, let’s hope they do the same before the show’s final so that I have time to put a bet on.
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This is rather ironic. Last year I got a mouthful from a Telegraph journalist for pitching them a recruitment story, using the previous nights ‘Apprentice’ show to demonstrate my point. Unfortunately for me, this Telegraph journalist had not seen the episode and infact had it Sky+’d for her viewing pleasure that night. She went into a rant about how I was (a) ignorant and (b) inconsiderate.
What this shows is that we all make mistakes, but some journalists should acknowledge this. That, or just watch The Apprentice when its shown