29th November 2004, 11:33
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Registered User
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: St.Austell
Posts: 22
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this was left at magicseaweed on the forum - may clear things up a bit - very funny 
Quote:
a small amount of gloating from mediaguardian.co.uk - probaby as they didnt run with the story at the gruniad....
Journalists from across the country descended on Portreath in Cornwall last week to witness for themselves what one national newspaper described as the "surf rage" that threatened to "cripple the thriving local tourism on which the town survives".
But this week the threat of all-out surf wars receded when a group of marketing and journalism students claimed the whole thing was a hoax - and boasted they had hoodwinked the nation's media.
The story centred on a group of vigilante Cornish surfers bent on violently confronting visitors to Portreath using "guerrilla tactics".
The BBC, the Times, the Independent and the Press Association all reported the "Locals Only!" campaign on the north coast of Cornwall during the past week after it was initially picked up by a local paper.
But yesterday, the group posted a new message on its website, locals-only.co.uk.
"We are students currently accepting job offers in marketing, design/web design, photography and journalism," the message read.
"We here at Locals Only wish to come clean about this fraudulent campaign.
"We did not for one second think that anyone with half a brain would take this seriously! This website was researched thoroughly by all press before they went ahead with their stories and they should be ashamed to call themselves journalists after reading the content!"
"Surf rage has broken out across the West Country as part of a fierce battle by locals to reclaim the swell from the out-of-towners who are apparently crowding their line-ups," Arifa Akbar wrote in the Independent on Saturday
"A group calling itself Locals Only has announced that it intends to use harassment and force to make the visitors realise how unwelcome they are," Simon de Bruxelles wrote in the Times on Saturday.
De Bruxelles told MediaGuardian.co.uk that Locals Only were "a bunch of prats" but said that other surfers had backed up the story.
"There's genuine antagonism between local surfers and visitors which has become pretty apparent over the past few months," De Bruxelles said.
Several of the reports quoted anonymous group members talking about so-called "localism" - the practice of residents treating visiting surfers harshly.
BBC Spotlight, the south-west TV news programme, ran footage of one group member, Johnny, dressed as a surf hobo, walking along the beach.
But a BBC reporter who turned up to the beach on Friday night with a view to filing a report for the Today programme, smelled a rat and did not file a report.
On Sunday the Times sent reporter David Lister to go surfing on the beach at Portreath.
In his report he quoted Craig Crack, 30, a surfer from Manchester, who warned him that "aggro locals" were using Hawaiian-style tactics to intimidate outsiders.
Lister reported that a yellow "Locals Only!" warning had been painted on a sea wall in Portreath in recent weeks, while Akbar reported that there was a "rash of red graffiti".
But Dave Reed, the national director of the British Surfing Association, whom de Bruxelles quoted in his article, said he had expressed his doubts about the veracity of the story to reporters from the Press Association, BBC, the Times and the local paper, the Newquay Voice.
"There were no incidents of localism reported to the BSA all year," Mr Reed said.
"I expressed my doubts," Mr Reed said. "It would be easy to be taken in by someone who showed conviction about what his storyline was."
A spokesman for the Independent said the locals were aware of an ongoing problem and it was one that involved more than just one group.
"We didn't rely on the website. A reporter spent two days in Cornwall and the story was thoroughly researched," he said.
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