BBC News 24 on RTÉ Drama "Fallout"

Some of you may find this interesting. RTÉ One showed a repeat this evening of last year's hypothetical drama called "Fallout" in which there is a nuclear accident at the power plant in Sellafield, Cumbria. The first programme of the 2-part series has quite a bit of footage supposedly from BBC News 24. I've uploaded some of the News 24 clips (the most interesting ones) onto YouTube. The News 24 footage appears to have been filmed in the current set with altered graphics and with Stephen Cole and Gwenan Edwards. It looks, like the rest of the programme, to be strikingly believable aside from the obvious bias towards the Irish implications of such an accident. I would love to know when this could have been recorded in a news set that is used continuously? And how did RTÉ producers manage to persuade BBC News to do such a thing? Perhaps someone here knows something! I'm not sure but I think the original air-date on RTÉ was some time in early 2006.

And apologies that the image is squashed, but I did create the video in 16:9. YouTube must have not recognised that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNtKAnW68Yc

I think this was discussed here at the time, the main thought being how scary those images would be to someone just switching on - there was no effort to disguise them as would be required in the UK.

There are lots of times this could have been done, even though its News24 theres a good 4 hours a day overnight the set isn't on air and even more during the weekends. As for why they did it, the BBC and RTE have always had a good relationship, sharing resources, and they could say it was a training exercise giving some new people a chance to work in N8.

Yes thats right, in the RTÉ News thread I think, but nobody posted any video of it so thats why I brought it up again!

I missed it. What are the one year after effects?

I believe it was filmed overnight when the News24/World simulcast came from the BBC World newsroom.

And I imagine cold hard cash would've been enough to persuade the BBC to allow RTE to do this.

If that does not break producer guidelines on honesty what does?

Amazingly - some drama is a fabrication and not real. Is that dishonest?

Is it any different to Jeremy Thompson appearing in The Bourne Ultimatum, or Bob Friend in Independence Day (both on the Sky News set?)

I think the public are sophisticated enough to realise that a news bulletin in a fictional drama is likely to also be fictional, or should we insult their intelligence and create fake news channels with fake news presenters (and diminish the dramatic effect)

There is a difference between honesty and assuming your audience is stupid and unable to tell fact from fiction.

The point at which it becomes a more interesting point is if you fabricate a news bulletin for a docu-drama - where you are creating a dramatic representation of a real event - with dramatic licence taken. Then I think you are on much stronger ground.

(For quite a few years the BBC rule was that you could have the real presenters of a network show, on a fake set, or "second rung" (i.e. non network) presenters on the real set - to ensure that there was little confusion between fact and fiction. Thus you'd get Tim Wilcox on the BBC One set in Jonathan Creek, or Dermot Murnaghan on a fake Breakfast set in Absolute Power. I think this may have been relaxed - as for a series of Spooks the producers only used Sky News recreations - and no BBC News outlets...)

I agree with you to a point, I detest anything which treats the public as stupid - unfortunately many genuine news items do this - but there is a problem when you show a news bulletin as fact. Yes you can cross genres docusoap docudrama but dramanews? Given rightly or wrongly that the BBC is supposed to be seen as the purveyor of all that is factually correct, faking a news story for dramatic purposes crosses that line. If that exact clip were transmitted on N24 would the public be able to tell fact from fiction?

But the clip isn't going anywhere near News 24. It's an insert into a piece of drama. That's it, and as with all drama when the credits roll that's the end of the matter of the preceding events until the next episode/series.

I think we would need to worry about more than distinguishing between fact and fiction if it ever comes to a point where News 24 is transmitting rushes it made two years ago for entirely different reasons at the time.

I read about this at the time, they were under a fair bit of pressure to get it done but it certainly was done overnight. Not sure exactly what N24 were showing at the time but IIRC they may have had an hour or two to themselves in the studio.

Well, News 24 would have moved to BBC World for the overnight shift, as often happens when things need to be done in N8. Don't forget, between 0100 and 0500 UK time, BBC World joins News 24 from N8. That's why those bulletins have a distinct international agenda.

Alternatively, it could have been done during Breakfast, as the studio is not used then.