I know many of you will have seen or applied to the Berghaus Adventure Challenge in the past. I applied and was shortlisted in the September edition. I believe I was cheated out of victory by the actions of UKClimbing.com and that the September edition of the Berghaus Adventure Challenge has no credibility. Berghaus refuse to take responsibility for the manipulation of their own competition. For those of you who feel aggrieved by the lack of accountability in the corporate world or modern media ethics, please have a read and help me take a stand at: http://www.facebook.com/Boycott.Berg
I had a similar problem with that £110 million lottery prize recently. I believe I was cheated out of it by the actions of Outdoors Magic's Windy thread. Boycott the lot of them, and tell the bloke who thought he won £110 million that that particular lottery draw had no credibility.
I read the UKC article and did not sense any particular bias. The earlier piece in the UKC Gear section in fact favoured you in as much as it included a pic and more details of your attempt, than the others.
My experience of the chaps running UKC is that they're decent and fair, and unlikely to deliberately cheat anyone out of anything.
The original article published on UKC on 15/09 gives your entry a much greater emphasis than the others. Was this 'unfair'? Was this 'cheating'? Should they not have devoted as much page space to the other entries as to yours? I note that you posted on the associated thread. Was this against the UKC posting rules that you think your competitor broke?
You mention that Al James made some disparaging comments about Berghaus, and express surprise at that, Berghaus being a 'UKC customer'. Frankly, it doesn't really surprise me; Alan was being honest in his opinion of Berghaus PR. If Berghaus aren't properly publicising their competition entries, that seems pretty poor, and worthy of comment.
You say your competitor posted a thread on UKC at 17:05 on 16/09 (according to you), which was taken down independently by UKC at 09:00 the next day (according to you). They don't (and can't) monitor every thread all the time. I think that was a reasonable response.
If this is the offending second article, written by the 'crony' Jack Geldard, it looks pretty balanced to me. I couldn't find another article on the Berghaus Challenge written on the 16th Sept as you claim; maybe it was taken down.
As an outside observer, it looks pretty fair to me.
Bad-mouthing potential sponsors is a sure-fire way of ensuring you get sponsorship from no-one in future; not a great bit on PR on your front, I suspect. The competition was for £2k of kit and cash. Take it on the chin and find the cash from somewhere else.
@bellie - the original article article was written after I contacted UKC to ask about posting protocol. At that point UKC did not know who the other teams were. The original article was posted in the UKC Gear forum, where to date it has received just over 100 views. Then, the other team posted directly onto the forums, which generated a surge of votes in their favour, allowing them to overtake me for the first time. This action was in breach of UKC's own posting guidelines.
The second article included(apart from the profile pics of me and the other team), 2 other photos and 1 video from from the other team, compared to 1 video from me. The article also included 2 links to previous UKC articles about the other team. There were no links to any of my own media coverage from previous expeditions. The article also contained factual errors about my expedition and did not include full details of my objectives. For example, it stated that I was trying to climb Australasia'a 3 highest peaks, when I had already explained to the Director of UKClimbing by email that this was a follow up and my 'climbing' objective was Carstensz Pyramid. I have an equally important scientific objective, which is to compile a photographic record of Papua' fast-receding glaciers. There was no mention of this in the article. The other expedition, meanwhile, was described accurately and in detail. This was posted as a feature news item on the front page of UKC as a 'Head' to 'Head', when I was clearly winning, and was viewed over 2,000 times. This led to a surge of over 300 votes for the other team, which ultimately won them the competition.
Would you still say that you detect no bias? Now consider that the author of the article has personal and professional links to the winning team. When I challenged UKC about this, describing it as cronysim, the response was: "It it is certainly not something we could un-do. I am not sure what you propose I should have done here - employ an impartial editor for this one article just in case there was any bias?"
Personally, yes, I would expect that ANY media outlet would employ impartial editors. That is a fundamental ethical requirement. There is a conflict of interest. Bellie, if you still think there is no bias in the content of the article, we can agree to disagree and then leave it at that.
@Captain Paranoia - Thanks for taking the time to respond in detail - please take a look at my response to @bellie above, which covers most of the points you raised. In response to your two specific question:
1. "I note that you posted on the associated thread. Was this against the UKC posting rules that you think your competitor broke?" The reason I posted on that thread was because those were direct instructions from UKC when I originally got in touch. So no, I fully complied with UKC posting guidelines.
2.Your arguments are counter-intuitive. On the one hand you defend UKC for criticising one of their advertisers. On the other hand, you tell me that bad-mouthing potential sponsors is a sure-fire way of ensuring I get sponsorship from no-one in future. The difference is, UKC, as a business, rely on advertising revenue to remain a going concern. My expeditions are my private hobby and I can fund them independently through savings.
3. I don't expect UKC to be able to monitor every thread. However, if someone breaches their own posting guidelines, I would not then expect that they would be rewarded for doing so as described above. I had the courtesy to contact UKC before posting and would expect others to do the same.
In summary, your experience of UKC's 'fairness' and my experience are quite different. I would guess that our understanding of professional ethics would also differ.
I read the 2nd article at the time, and from an impartial casual view did not find it biased one way or the other. I didn't feel the writer persuaded me towards your competitor. Which is what you imply by your argument. - I'd read your info from the FB page. The vids I never looked at or the links. Just one persons actions upon seeing the article I know, but thats that.
So I guess, yes we will have to agree to disagree.
Having said that, good luck with the expedition. Hope it goes ahead.
