London/UK Riots Coverage (Sky News/BBC News Channel)

LBC are reporting unrest in various parts of the City, Enfield and other zones - if there was a blackout I would have assumed they would have obliged.

LBC are talking about the TV News channels ignoring the unrest.

My thinking is that a DA Notice may have been served to the UK TV news broadcasters about the unrest situations, would be the logical explanation to the non-existent TV coverage.

@JonathanHaynes
Jonathan Haynes, Web news editor, the Guardian.
"Oh one last thing, suggestion of a "D notice" stopping broadcasters covering it are untrue. Getting cameras to right places tricky though"

@metpoliceuk
Metropolitan Police
"Police have not requested a #mediablackout and are continuing to provide updates"

My assumption would be that it's proving a challenge logistically and security-wise to cover and verify the latest reports on Twitter.

Thing is though, its been going on for well over two hours and we still haven't seen any 'recorded earlier' VT or Pics from the journo's on the ground.

These people cover warzones on a daily basis, yet cant cover a riot on there door step!

LBC have just reported that BBC staff have been advised to stay away from Westfield.

Sky News now live on the ground in Brixton.

the shops shut at 6pm on a Sunday anyway!

Apparently there was a fairly high police presence (and White City station was closed for a while to prevent people turning up) but ye olde weather camera was pointed at it to confirm nothing was going down.

Last night's disturbances did seem to be popping up in pockets all over the place. While a few journalists (Paul Lewis from the Guardian, notably) were doing a good job of sending live updates, it's a lot easier for them to report inconspicuously. If you send a camera out, you've got to have some way of getting the footage back - which is either a 45 minute drive from Enfield back to TV Centre, or a sat truck. And a sat truck needs a crew, and maybe there's not one rostered to be on overnight on a Sunday. (Maybe there was one but they felt it wasn't safe to go out, in light of what happened on Saturday)

I'm not excusing it, I'm just pointing out that our news channels aren't geared up for big stories - even ones in their own back doors - when they happen late at night at the weekend.

When are we going to stop messing about with these people?................if it happened anywhere else they would have had baton rounds, water cannon and tear gasit's time we stopped being soft

Whilst many might agree with you, that's not really what TV Forum is for. Its to discuss the presentation of news items, rather than opinions on the stories themselves.

I imagine there are plenty of sites that encourage such discussion.

Doing something like that would constitute a horrible assault on the right to free speech. Trying to censor electronic media coverage of riots is something DeGaulle did in 1968 -- and it severely damaged the reputation of France as a democratic country at that time. Unless national security itself is under threat (and it's not in this case of these riots), I seriously doubt that any EU country would resort to such censorship nowadays.