In certain rescue circles there is traditional hostility to the Press. This has been fostered for decades by irresponsible reporters, but there is also an element of adolescent aggression in the behaviour of rescue teams, particularly those of the RAF. The majority of these men are very young; when they come down off a mountain after a long search or a dangerous rescue they are suffering to some extent themselves from shock. Aggression, which takes the form of surliness or active violence, is a release of pressure, and the Press is a better stalking horse in that resentment against its methods is sometimes merited.

Rescuers have another - and firmer ground - for complaint: inaccuracy. The fantastic report following our rescue of the sailor has been mentioned, but this was an extreme case; the responsibility for the fantasy being shared as much by the man who posed as rescuer as by the newspaper men who accepted his story at its face value.

But it is a recognised fact that, as far as reports of mountain accidents are concerned, they are almost invariably inaccurate, even ludicrous - which results in a great many people saying, “If we know this to be wrong, how correct are the Press in other matters, of which I know nothing?“ They change their papers, to find that inaccuracies still exist, but they are fewer and less blatant. On the whole the Guardian and the Liverpool Daily Post carry the most accurate reports, probably because they circulate in, and are more concerned with mountain areas.

Reporters have an extremely difficult job. They are, for the main part, as incapable of understanding the cause of an accident and the mechanics of rescue as a child is of understanding Einstein. Mountaineering is outside their comprehension. They have to rely on snippets of information, grudgingly given them, even, sometimes, deliberate lies thrown out as a sop, and on these they have to build a story. So a hundred feet becomes a thousand, blizzards and gales are manufactured out of still air, and a broken hillside becomes a sheer precipice. And yet the really sensational facts: the dangerous work, the careful technique required for cliff rescue, the use of a piece of equipment creating a precedent and rendering an operation, hitherto dangerous, safe, these will pass unnoticed. All papers should have a Mountaineering Correspondent as they have Medical Correspondents, Air Correspondents and so on.

It has been suggested that the (responsible) leader of a team engaged on a rescue should hold a Press conference at the end, stating the facts and making sure that they are understood. Sometimes this happens, sometimes the subsequent reports match the true fairly well, but it is a practice open to abuse, for on a long search, when the organisers remain on the hill, too many people Continue to page 9