Wrongly taking the blame for panic at pumps

It is a classic case of ‘don’t shoot the messenger’. How anyone can put the blame of our current not-the-petrol shortage on the media defeats me. The whole point of a free press is that journalists report the news as it happens.

Anyone who has been out in the real world this week knows that there have been queues at the petrol pumps and, in my home town, the streets were gridlocked as motorists remained still in traffic with their engines running while waiting to top up their tanks at stations.

Obviously, some desperately needed fuel. No one can run a car indefinitely just on fumes unless it’s one of those new-fangled electric things.

Boy, I bet their owners were laughing all the way to the nearest power socket.

The fact that there were problems at the pumps needed to be reported, if only to warn people to expect delays.

None of the stories I have seen in the mainstream media told the population to get in their cars, drive directly to their nearest garage and suck out as much fuel as they could.

One of my friends is convinced he saw a woman trying to fill up two bags for life with petrol on a forecourt.

If it’s true that is one of the saddest stories I have heard.

Apart from anything else, it’s deadly dangerous and just plain stupid.

While taking photos of the queues one driver stuck in the tailbacks wound down his window and yelled: “This is all your fault. “You shouldn’t be reporting on it.

“Go and report on proper news.” Proper news? One of my first news editors proudly proclaimed: “News is something that someone, somewhere doesn’t want you to print.

“Everything else is a press release.”

He was dead right. There are many stories we hate writing.

But that’s our job.

‘No one can run a car indefinitely just on fumes, unless it’s one of those new-fangled electric things’