BBC News - General

Exactly - you would be surprised at how much of this actually goes on... Take shots from a helicopter recorded with no sound, the helicopter sound is added. A dull press conference? Why not add in some random atmosphere all available on beta tapes for easy dubbing!

All tricks of the trade!

Every helicopter you ever hear on BBC News sounds the same as every other helicopter... That is because almost without exception they are from the News FX tape... Very annoying once you spot it - but entirely understandable as Helicopters seldom have effecs mics in the right place, and a lot of the pictures from them come in mute or covered in commentary.

Similarly crews recording buzz tracks (a period where nobody talks, but where you get the natural sound of a room, location, event etc. to fill in edit "holes") seems to have died out as well... (The BBC News FX tape has "busy road", "quiet room" etc. type effects instead...)

There is another sound effect to watch out for - "crackling flames". Very poor crinkling of acetate-type effect - but it is used rather too often...

I hear Huw Edwards doesn't actually live inside my TV (all three of them).

Yes it gives a false impression.

The Babies couldn't cry as they had resperators fitted. But on BBC News they appeared to. A totally false impression.

The audience may ask, if BBC News gives a false impression of this how can you trust anything.

how sexy is fiona bruce phwooooar

Fiona wasn't singing live though was she? Quite a good voice but a shame none of the other female newsreaders joined in! Was it normally just Fiona and Natasha in the past? Couldn't Emily or Sian or Jane have joined in? Still nice to see Nick Owen and Ben Brown - and Dermot for his final one!!!

From memory, other females who've done it in the past are Moira Stuart, Anna Ford (both retired) and Sophie Raworth. The first year they did it, the weathergirls were involved as well (I seem to remember Isobel Lang, Penny Tranter and Helen Willets being involved). And I can remember Jennie Bond doing a rather raunchy version of 'Grease' with Nicholas Witchell (!).

I wasn't surprised that Nicholas Owen got involved for his first year at the BBC. He's always seemed as though he can take a joke/laugh at himself.

Wasn't Kate Silverton on last year, in the 007 jape?

Yes

this is the fitst year bowen,rawoth,burke,bonnet have not done it.

Yes - in this case it was stupidity, not an intention to mislead. If you stop allowing sound effects to be used every news bulletin in the UK would sound very odd indeed. You'd be amazed how much mute footage comes in - or footage covered in foreign language commentary that can't be used.

This isn't a new technique, when news was shot on film there were two sorts of crew - Mute and Sound. Mute crews were sent to get moving pictures of less important locations (mainly used for OOVs), sound crews were kept for stories that required interviews etc.

Once the film was developed it was the station assistant or sound assistants job to play in sound effects records. (Look East famously played gobbling turkey sound effects over footage of plucked turkeys hanging from conveyor belts - because the script said "Interior Turkey Farm" or similar)

This whole "TV is lying to us" situation is getting ridiculous. There are industry-wide accepted production techniques (dubbing over sound is increasingly needed now they've ditched sound people from ENG crews, and are increasingly sending out self-shooting journos - many of whom don't know how to get decent location sound) - either you trust a journalist to tell you the facts they believe are relevant to the story they are telling, i.e. edit down interviews without distorting them, use pictures that are relevant to cover them etc. - or you don't.

I really do fear if the scaremongers in the industry don't wise up every piece of stock footage / sound will have to be accompanied by a "Library footage / Library Sound Effects" tag, every edit will have to be highlighted and explained and timecodes plus time and date stamps will be required at all times.

Do people really want to see a news programme containing a newsreader sitting at a desk with no reports or footage reading only wire reports and lengthy press releases in full?

Darren Jordon on Outtake TV - superb! He was watching the final of How do you solve a problem like Maria? in the newsroom so they did a split screen with him and the programme as Connie is announced as winner.

There's definitely a programme in there somewhere - fellow BBC presenters commenting on other BBC shows?!