Detectorists: A peculiarly British Band of Knowledge Thieves

I do not see how any archaeologist can say this:

Wendy Scott @exleicflo · 5 min
Very good, balanced piece on detecting by Ben Macintye in yesterdays Times. @findsorguk #recordyourfinds

Ben Macintyre, 'Detectorists: A peculiarly British band of time-travellers' Sunday Times 31.08.2019

Here's her photo of it, as the Times want you to pay for their "quality journalism" online, all well and good if that is what you are getting for that money. In this case this text is far from "balanced", or even factual:

I think Mr Macintyre is trying to be funny (and when will we see again factual articles on heritage theft with photos of real heritage-takers and not the fictional pair in this article?) The text gives a fluffy-bunny account of the Chew Valley Hoard find and then the Coil to the Soil Rally where the topic is not the destruction of part of the archaeological record but a drug-laced cake. The leitmotif? "Here are two sides of the metal detecting coin, important history and a gentle sort of British madness". Believing firmly that the situation is considerably more multi-aspectual than this  dichotomous dumbdown pap, I really think we could have deserved better from the Sunday Times - as I said in two tweets replying to the ex-Leicestershire FLO:

Paul Barford @PortantIssues · 3 min   In what way would you say this is "balanced"? It is also not true that you need a detecting permit in Scotland, is it? It is not only nighthawks that sell artefacts on ebay without them being PAS-recorded is it? We have again a black and white, a "balanced" text would pay an equal amount of attention to the "grey" area, the many tens (?) of thousands that do not report much of what they find (he says there are 50k tekkies - if so MASSIVE underreporting - is that not worth being the main topic of a 'balanced' text?)

I doubt it will get much of a reply, FLOs are trained to say fluffy things about 'metal detecting', few of them like being asked to actually think through what they say. Until they do start telling the public like it is, until journalists STOP writing fluffy crap, the problem of the massive destruction of the archaeological record under British archaeologists - apparently wholly unconcerned - noses will continue. That's the real British madness.