BBC National News: Presentation

It's only a dead body. You'd be great in a crisis wouldn't you!

Maybe you'd like to explain why it's in the public interest to degrade a deceased person in that way? The fact that the individual can't be identified from the photo doesn't change anything. It is still a human being and their relatives, colleagues and friends will be able to tell who the person is from the location.



I love a crisis! But I can't think of a justifiable reason for the broadcasters to broadcast that image.

Because its news. And more often than not, news involves incidents like this. It may not be nice but it's important...

So if this was one of your parents, or your son or daughter, you'd be happy for them to be degraded to the level of a lumpy sheet in the gutter on national TV? Okay...

The image doesn't convey any information at all, therefore it is not 'important'.

It is a vague, covered-up body being shown as part of a very important news story. It may not be nice but it is important.

If they were identifying the body, saying "Majorie Bhamas, 58, was killed" whilst showing her body that would be different as it would be about her, not about the story. Equally you could argue referring to "five fatalities" or "at least five deaths" is degrading in that it's referring to the dead as statistics rather than people, not that I personally agree with that.

And it's not the news broadcasters who have degraded him/her to the level of a lumpy sheet in the gutter, but the gunman who somehow lacked humanity and put a bullet in them.


Fiona Armstrong giving a lot of information about the region - not entirely sure how relevant some of it is but nevertheless interesting.

Good use of Fiona, like I said earlier I thought that must have been why she wasn't presenting with Matthew Amroliwala.

I wonder if they will keep her on for the BBC News at Five/Six - after all these over 50 presenters were supposed to be returning to national news sooner or later?

Yes it does. It shows that someone has died and it sets the scene of where they died. At that early stage in the story it tells that story in one single picture.

I suspect Fiona wasn't on with Matthew because she isn't featured on BBC 1, also true of Tim Wilcox, and they wanted a more senior presenter on the network. Also there was speculation and hope the over 50s would end up on national bulletins but, especially given their contracts, it's unlikely. Having said that Julia Somerville did a Bank Holiday Breakfast a few weeks ago!

Yeah, that makes sense - thinking about it, I doubt they've even considered keeping her on for the Six, George or Huw are probably making their way up there now. She could be on the Five depending on who is heading there and when.

Yes, it shows that a person has died at the side of a random street.

Not that several people have been murdered in Cumbria

The image could relate to any incident in which a person has died and the police have attended the scene.

Anyway, there's no point going back and forth about this all day. Hopefully the victims will be respectfully named in due course and photos of them in happier times will be shown in their memory.

Is this better or worse than photos / videos of bomb attacks in Afghanistan or natural disasters?

You are okay with news programmes using images stolen from people's Facebook accounts to illustrate a story then? Even if the image doesn't convey any information at all, and is therefore not 'important'?