[tux]

Quote

The woman, 60, and her husband, were forced to climb out of the windows of their four-wheel-drive after it was swept 300 metres downstream in the creek about 9pm yesterday, a Tuena resident said.

The husband, 61, clung to a tree for more than an hour while the woman was swallowed up by the raging torrent.

Does anybody else find this next bit a bizarre detail to include, given the subject matter?

Quote

He turned up on the doorstep of a friend's house, "wet, muddy, with the BlackBerry [mobile phone] scratched", the woman said.

link to smharticle

[Bernard L. Madoff]

Maybe the comment from the woman was so 'out there' it got included.

Quote

"wet, muddy, with the BlackBerry [mobile phone] scratched",

[Ruffian]

tux, on 15 February 2010 - 05:28 AM, said:

Does anybody else find this next bit a bizarre detail to include, given the subject matter?



link to smharticle

More likely it is just poor reporting, and the man turned up 'blackberry-scratched' - much more likely - and the urban reporter on the other end of the phone got it all so very wrong...

Personal experience with the media has made me very cautious - fact checking is, ahem, sketchy, at best.
It is something that makes me always conscious of the fact that the media is indicative of a situation - including housing and (sob) economics- rather than the authoritative voice on the matter.