More rumours of U2 visiting Australia in December
As we reported two days ago, two timeframes are rumoured for U2 to tour Australia, November/December 2010 and February/March 2011, and the Australian media has been hyping the earlier date. Latest to join in is Brisbane tabloid the Courier-Mail, owned by News Limited - the same people who own Melbourne's Herald-Sun, the other recent press publisher of this rumour.
The Courier-Mail does provide some additional material for the rumour mill. It reports here that the second week of December is "firming" as the window for a U2 concert at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium. They claim that police licensing have signed off on the event - all that is needed is medical clearance for Bono before the date is confirmed.
Unfortunately for the Courier-Mail's credibility, their article is shot through with shoddy journalism and an absence of fact-checking. They make three particularly notable claims that are, put simply, wrong. Firstly, the Courier-Mail claims that Bono's "slipped disc [was] injured during rehearsal in Germany in May", which we know is not exactly what happened. Secondly, this supposedly "forced the cancellation of the band's '360 Degrees' tour" rather than just postponing one leg of it, and thirdly, it's "been widely rumoured the Irish touring juggernaut will restart in Oz", which is patent nonsense. Or is this forthcoming European leg just a fiction and delusion of U2 fansites?
The Courier-Mail may be on the money with their prediction of U2 visiting Australia in December. The timeframe has, after all, been rumoured well before News Limited publications picked it up. But given the woeful factual inaccuracies in the second half of the article, why should anybody be inclined to believe what is in the first half?
This U2gigs article proudly brought to you by frustration with the dire reporting that passes for modern journalism.
The Courier-Mail does provide some additional material for the rumour mill. It reports here that the second week of December is "firming" as the window for a U2 concert at Brisbane's Suncorp Stadium. They claim that police licensing have signed off on the event - all that is needed is medical clearance for Bono before the date is confirmed.
Unfortunately for the Courier-Mail's credibility, their article is shot through with shoddy journalism and an absence of fact-checking. They make three particularly notable claims that are, put simply, wrong. Firstly, the Courier-Mail claims that Bono's "slipped disc [was] injured during rehearsal in Germany in May", which we know is not exactly what happened. Secondly, this supposedly "forced the cancellation of the band's '360 Degrees' tour" rather than just postponing one leg of it, and thirdly, it's "been widely rumoured the Irish touring juggernaut will restart in Oz", which is patent nonsense. Or is this forthcoming European leg just a fiction and delusion of U2 fansites?
The Courier-Mail may be on the money with their prediction of U2 visiting Australia in December. The timeframe has, after all, been rumoured well before News Limited publications picked it up. But given the woeful factual inaccuracies in the second half of the article, why should anybody be inclined to believe what is in the first half?
This U2gigs article proudly brought to you by frustration with the dire reporting that passes for modern journalism.
Posted on by Axver