RIP quality journalism

The Gruaniad is a newspaper that seems to pride itself on notoriously poor standards of fact finding and editorship, but I have just been bowled over by a superlative piece of garbage that went up on their web site this week. No surprise that it appears in their "environment" section and no further surprise that it is yet another lame piece of climate change alarmism.

Have a look at the article and then do as much fact checking that you can in, say, nine tenths of a second.

Adelaide latest victim of global water shortages

Australia's fifth-largest city could be reliant on bottled water as early as next week as overuse and drought stretch the Murray river to its limit

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/adelaide-water-drought

Pretty self explanatory really, but also seriously alarming. Adelaide (the fifth largest city in Australia) must surely be in a state of emergency given such an imminent event. Can you imagine the logistics involved in the supply of a city with bottled water, the restrictions one would need to place on any water use at all in order to prevent all manner of disasters and even death?

Google must be running hot with links to local press warning the populace of the danger they face and the things they need to do....





Oh.

9 potential news articles. Only one referring to this disaster, from the Gruaniad itself.

No bother, this means nothing. The Gruaniad journalists are quick off the mark. They get the scoops weeks before other inferior news hounds. A quick look at primary sources will reveal the astonishing speed with which these paragons of the news media have pounced on cold hard verifiable FACTS:



























Oh.

Adelaide reservoirs 90% full. Maybe they are filling the bottles at the reservoirs for distribution to this thirsty city.

Never mind, the South Australian Water authority are consummate professionals. They will be on the case and will be ensuring that water is being used for the most essential purposes only. Sure enough, they have put everyone on LEVEL 3 ENHANCED WATER RESTRICTIONS!!! This is definitely serious.

Dripper systems and hand-held hoses fitted with a trigger nozzle can be used for a maximum of 3 hours a week

What? Don't these dolts realise that there will be NO WATER NEXT WEEK? And they are still letting people waste it on their gardens!?! They are rushing headlong into this disaster.

I await the upcoming Gruaniad reports of this unfolding crisis in the coming days with great anticipation.

UPDATE 14 OCTOBER:
I received this disturbing e-mail today [I do hope this poor soul survives]:

Still waiting on the bottled water to arrive. Can't hold out much
longer. So... thirsty...