As the son of a journalist I also know how important it is for you to get your facts right. To double-check your sources. So I wonder how you, Dominic, failed to check up more thoroughly on Pepermans?

This is all very well, provided you have two or more sources. Lots of stories are produced with the credentials of your source being regarded as evidence enough - a noted historian, academic or researcher being enough - because they are the only people who have the specialist knowledge.

As I mentioned before, you yourself were prepared to accept the word of the person at the Hergé museum on this basis; what did you do to verify it? You didn’t because you took the authority of the source at face value and why not?

It appears that Dominic went to the same source and got a different answer, which he too accepted in good faith. As it happens, this has proved false, and he has been quite public about accepting this.

It seems to be needlessly niggly to pick the head off the scab again, as it were, especially after two months have elapsed.

I'm just trying to make a point that whereas ordinary members of the public like ourselves may make mistakes and be corrected, it is important for journalists like Dominic to get it right first time. What would happen if the BBC wrongly reported that Gordon Brown had suddenly died? People would look rather foolish in holding premature celebrations.

Of course, and I am sure he would not wish it otherwise. However, journalists are only human, and mistakes do happen. Were journalists to be infallible, they wouldn’t be journalists - they’d have predicted the lottery and retired.


Nothing, really. Just look at the world-wide reporting of the “death” of Jeff Goldblum recently: that just shows that even with modern communications (or perhaps even because of them), errors will happen. People would look foolish, but at the end of the day - so what? Everything that is reported in the media is only ever a polemic, somebody’s take on things.

In any case, there are far more avenues by which the working journalist can check on the veracity of a story like the death of the Prime Minister: Parliament would issue a statement, his constituency office would also do so, as well as his party. A death certificate would be issued by the doctor attending, and that would be a matter of public record.
This is a trivial task, when compared to finding out about an otherwise obscure person, about whom facts were scarce.

The other thing is that journalists have to make deadlines, and on budget. Information is only ever as accurate as the money allows. If you have unlimited time and budget, you hop on a ’plane, go to the source, and research the subject from end-to-end. If you have five pounds and five days, you ring up what looks like a reputable expert at the Hergé museum, and you ask them.

More information about Henri Dendoncker has emerged via a "secret file discovered at the National Archives". I can't say for sure whether this is actually 'new' information (especially since I missed the 2009 BBC Radio broadcast), but there is an article about him in today's Times newspaper.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/arti cle6973256.ece

Many thanks for posting the source of this new info. I wonder whether our little skirmish into the Tintin Boy Scouts prompted this very welcome piece of research. I see Mr Tett echoes my own pleas (made on my Scouing Website) for information about Dendoncker in that he might still be alive aged 93. Alive or not it would be interesting to learn what has happened to him.

I will amend my Herge entry that has details of Dendoncker, in the light of these latest revelations.


Happy New Year

Colin

Right, new year, new question: does anyone know anything about another real-life Tintin?

Nosing about a bit I have found reference to a 10th Anniversary event, celebrating ten years of Le Petit Vingtième. It was held in December 1938 at the Cirque Royal in Brussels, and featured “live” appearances by Tintin, Snowy, Quick, Flupke and the long-suffering Agent 15, as well as a full orchestra and members of the circus company.

This would add another body to the count of the actors who played the boy reporter, not to say what may have been the first Q&F appearance (they performed a sketch, in which they recounted “in their fashion” the Belgian Revolution of 1830).

The question is of course - who were they? Members of the Circus company, or others?