{"id":935,"date":"2009-09-07T23:51:24","date_gmt":"2009-09-07T22:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/?p=935"},"modified":"2009-09-07T23:51:24","modified_gmt":"2009-09-07T22:51:24","slug":"scouts-banned-from-using-knives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/?p=935","title":{"rendered":"Scouts Banned From Using Knives!"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, not really! But if you read this article<\/a> from Saturday\u2019s Daily Mail, you\u2019d get that impression!<\/p>\n

I first heard of this story on Sunday morning, when one of my friends in the BSA retweeted<\/a> another American chap\u2019s comment on the article.<\/p>\n

So I pointed them to the Scout Association\u2019s knife policy here<\/a> and I also noticed the Scoutmaster blog\u2019s post<\/a> about it. <\/p>\n

I didn’t think much more about it. Until this morning when the \u2018story\u2019 was picked up by other newspapers. And now I read that the \u2018story\u2019 has been broadcast by various media outlets in the USA (anyone heard or seen anything?)!<\/p>\n

Of course it\u2019s false and the original \u2018story\u2019 is a classic case of don\u2019t let the facts get in the way of a good story \u2013 lazy journalism basically!<\/p>\n

The UK Chief Commissioner, Wayne Bulpitt, commented of this<\/a> in his blog today, and laid out the real facts – <\/p>\n

\n

Never before has the saying "never let the truth get in the way of a good story" been true than the current media coverage about Scouts banning knives. We haven’t and I thought you might appreciate a quick heads up before we circulate a more detailed response.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

A Mail on Sunday journalist approached us on Friday having read the latest guidance we issued in Scouting Magazine\/online in December 08 and April 09 on advising Scouts on the situations in which they can use a knife as part of normal Scout Activities. He was looking to make the story into "Scouts Ban knives shocker". The media team took them through the facts and sent them links to our various documents and magazine articles giving him the following info, 
– The Rules changed about wearing knives with uniform in 1968
– We have issued regular guidance to the Movement on this matter ever since 1968 e.g. early 1980’s , 1996, 2008 and 2009 (the latest being the magazine article in April\/May)
– We need to support leaders with information to help them support young people 
 Despite making these facts available the Mail on Sunday published the piece, They used a few selective statements and quotes some out of context..<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

A number of newspapers this morning (Times, Telegraph, Express, Mirror, Sun) have taken the text from the Mail on Sunday (without talking to us) and have run with the story.
We are busy taking all the opportunities today to put the record straight via broadcast opportunities. <\/font>Hope this explanation helps reassure you.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

So there we have it, from one of the Head Cheeses of the SA, we can use knives! It does make me think that if the story had been correct, what the point of having Bear Grylls as Chief Scout would be!<\/p>\n

In fact, I wrote about knives in July<\/a> as we\u2019d been doing a lot of training of Cubs and Scouts in the correct and safe use of knives. Perhaps the \u2018journalist\u2019 should have read my blog first.<\/p>\n

But the thing is that it is worrying that a poorly researched and edited article can spread across the media in this country and spread to other countries. And this in turn presents a poor image of Scouts and Scouting in the UK in general and gives the impression we are no longer adventurous. <\/p>\n

The other thing is that I bet non of the media who run the story will run the real one!<\/p>\n

You can read the actual article form Scouting Magazine here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No, not really! But if you read this article from Saturday\u2019s Daily Mail, you\u2019d get that impression! I first heard of this story on Sunday morning, when one of my friends in the BSA retweeted another American chap\u2019s comment on the article. So I pointed them to the Scout Association\u2019s knife policy here and I … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Scouts Banned From Using Knives!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-scouts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paTxP-f5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nawbus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}