BBC News' Reporting Skills

At 07:13 this morning, i was watching BBC news and the Breaking News graphic came on to the screen. Then i followed the story and it said that Prince William had split With Kate Middleton.

Call me pickey, but this does not deserve to be Breaking News if they had time to call up the Royal Correspondant. Could they not have just put it in the Bulletin?

Also when the 15 Service personell who were captured in Iran were being flown over, the Reporter at Heathrow (Cant think of his name off the top of my head) was stressing the point about wether they would be in Uniform or not. WHY SHOULD IT MATTER!! It is not crutial element of the story to tell the viewers what they should be wearing.

Then when they had Jeremy Bowen in the studio he was being asked the most stupi questions that anybopdy with a brain cell could have answered! Some of them were like: If the sailors were armed with guns, and the Iranian Navy had machine gunsa and rifles, why didn't the Navy fire at them? I won't answer it to see if i can prove my point.

Perhaps not so much a question of Reporters' skills, but rather a question of editorial content?

UK terrestrial TV News has become more and more tabloidy in recent years, and the elevation of the Windsor-Middleton split to "Breaking News" category merely proves this.

I guess it's a question of what the viewer wants. Whether we (on this forum) admit it or not, a sizeable chunk of the UK viewing public would have sat up and taken notice this morning of the Breaking News story about Prince William, given our insatiable thirst for gossip and the like.

The advent of rolling news lends itself entirely to the immediate breaking of such stories as and when they happen.

In the old days of Burnet, Gall, Lawley and Witchell, it is highly unlikley that such "breaking news" would have warranted an interruption of normal programming to deliver this piece. However, the same piece would still have appeared close to the top in the running order of the next scheduled bulletin (at least featured as one of the bongs).

The big difference today - aside from public interest in gossip - is the fact that the "next scheduled" bulletin is always here and now and within the next few seconds!

You are entirely missing the point. All the captives had been forced to wear new suits provided for them by the Iranian authorities. The question of whether they'd still be wearing those when they landed in the UK or whether they'd have been given fresh Navy uniforms was an important point of propaganda. It would have been quite coup for the Iranians (and a huge mistake for the British) for those sailors to have disembarked in the UK still wearing those Iranian suits.

Well, Not really i have alot of connections within my family with the Armed Forces, Paticularly the navy and i asked him and he said they were flown out fresh AWD 4's, and the media were told this. So why the need to make such a story of it?

You may have some connections with the armed services, but not everybody else does.


I refer you to my answer above.

I was going to post something similar - however, just about today's main story. Why is this the main headline today? It's only two human beings, one of them a prince - so what? This isn't news - it's just celebrity gossip.

Well they aren't really "celebrities" - it is to do with the Royal Family. Like it or not, they are rather important. If William and Kate had married, she would have been a prominent member of the Royal Family, especially when William becomes King. It is exactly the same as Charles and Diana/Camilla. They get just as much attention in the news, and have done for many years. Remember when Diana was hounded by the photographers? Exactly the same was happening to Kate. The Royal Family always has been, and will continue to be, important to the media. It doesn't help that today's society is gossip driven, but Charles and Diana's split got just as much coverage and although they were married, I'm sure there would have been the same attention given if they had just been dating.

Well I don't like it, it might well be news, but it's of no importance to the everyday lives of anybody, except the two individuals concerned.

Lazy journalism, nothing more.

Agreed!

Indeed, It sounded so silly when it was the first main headline at the start of the BBC News and straight over to Nicholas Whitchell with the latest. It was like a parody

I mentioned this in the Breakfast thread, that this "breaking news" was the Sun's front page headline so can't have "broken in the last few moments" as claimed.