Benazir Bhutto Killed

In which country - Pakistan? It's BBC World - not Pakistan.


Now, it could be justified as a mark of respect to their Pakistan viewers - but I'm sure even the most hardened muslim would know what a Christmas tree is and it's significance.

Just starting to read this thread, so am not aware of later comments, but I just wanted to say that face time on screen means that a journalist isn't able to make phone calls to useful contacts to confirm reports or get further information.

They do need some off air time to do some newsgathering, especially if they have particularly specialist knowledge, which would include contacts.

Before we start rabbiting on about political correctness and silly furriners not respecting our Great British traditions...a woman has been murdered by extremists, leading to riots and more deaths. Has it not occurred to any of you that somebody probably thought it was inappropriate to have a Christmas tree merrily sparkling in the background, whatever the time of year is? Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, the death of the little boy killed by a rottweiler should have been announced with grins, the pulling of crackers and the wearing of silly hats.

There's wasn't anyone actually in Rawalpindi at the time, so I think you're perhaps referring to Sohail Rahman (formerly of Granada News and CNN) out of Islamabad?

Yes, you're correct in your assumptions.

When the presenters are ad-libbing like that, they're often reading from a computer screen just out of view/under the desk top or wherever, reading the latest information directly off the wires.

The information on the wires isn't on autocue, so if they were in vision, they wouldn't be looking to camera, they'd be looking down or away at a computer screen, so it might look a bit odd.

Also, while ad-libbing, they might be multi-tasking and reading internal messages about the name and designation of the next live phone guest to be popping up, which again means they're not looking at the camera.

Brekkie Boy mentioned that reason in the quote you posted.

And as has already been mentioned, the tree is a symbol, not some happy decoration, or at least shouldn't be.

That can't be the reason. If that was the case, News 24 wouldn't have had a Christmas tree at all. N24 has had a Christmas tree for several years and, to my knowledge, it has never been removed before, despite terrible news stories over past Christmas periods. The only logical reason for the tree's removal is that it is because BBC World viewers are watching. After all, if the tree was removed solely because of the news story, they wouldn't have put it back when BBC World went its own way, would they?

BBC World is a commercial organisation competing against many home broadcasters throughout Pakistan and across the world. The tree just looks completly out of place and doesn't make sense to many of the viewers and broadcasters.

A symbol of what? As far as I know the tree is a remnant of pagan times when the Winter solstice was celebrated.

Yes, I understand the reasons behind BBC World not wanting a Christmas tree in the background. However, my problem is over the handling of the recent simulcasts. Why have poor souls been carrying the Christmas tree out of and into shot all week when they could just have used the BBC World studio for the simulcasts?

Well that's probably down to the fact News24 was better staffed over christmas with more resources available and the gallery being better equiped.

The other reason for showing pictures rather than the studio is that showing the pictures of the event gives you something visual to look at which helps tell the story, rather than presenters in London (and we know what they look like after all) who don't really add anything by being in-vision.

The argument goes that people flipping channels are far more likely to stay and watch if they see real news pictures, rather than a pretty tedious talking head. Yes they get repetitive when continuously looped - but even when looped they are more useful at telling the story than a two shot of presenters looking at copy.

One of the first rules of breaking news coverage on any news network is show the first pictures you get, and keep showing them until you get something better. If you are surfing news channels and see CNN have pictures of a breaking news event and Sky just have a presenter in London, then most people will watch CNN...