London Terror Incidents

At the end of the day, ITV is a commercial business. From a logical perspective, most wouldn't find out about the news until the morning, and Jackpot 247 rakes in a bit of revenue for ITV (I may be wrong on this).

Dreadful news though, especially as the country was already reeling from the horrors of the Manchester attack.

ITV News coverage.

Is there any BBC staff rather than freelancers involved in the current coverage as it isn't very BBC in nature.

Ben Brown now anchoring from the scene for BBC News.

Goes without saying that this pales into insignificance in the context of what's happening. But...

Anyone who works in broadcasting needs to care about Ofcom rules whether or not you might agree with them. This clearly was broadcast in error, it is the strongest language in an aggressive tone, which shouldn't be shown without a warning even long after the watershed, but these things do happen in live TV (though Ofcom takes a dim view when it's a recorded clip) and the best way to mitigate the damage is to quickly apologise.

Yes, there are some cases where it's better not to draw attention, it's why football commentators will not apologise for most offensive chanting which most viewers wouldn't notice until it's pointed out, but they will if a single voice is clearly heard (as it was in this case).

Won't say much more other than everyone I've seen on air tonight has done an excellent job. My brilliant city will keep going as it always does, and I know that people will be back out in those pubs and those streets as normal in weekends to come.

As an Australian mind you (we use that word much more often than Brits or Americans), who cares?

It's news. It shouldn't be censored or sanitised.

This is just dreadful news for people who live in London at the moment. My thoughts are with them as they have had a few horrible hours of fear and panic being thrown onto them for just enjoying a Saturday night after a hard weeks work.

BBC News now saying that three hospitals in London are on lockdown to keep patients & staff safe as a response to the attacks.

I hope everyone in London will remain safe there for the rest of the night.

Trust me things will be far from normal for a few days yet.

Sky News are showing adverts again.

And on the other side of the Atlantic MSNBC has been commercial free.

Edit :

And in an unusual turn MSNBC just aired an interview from the BBC.

RTÉ News had coverage of this story on their website up 1:50am this morning. They have referred people reading the RTÉ News website to listen to their radio news bulletins throughout the night for further updates on the London terror incidents.

A tweet from outgoing Taoiseach Enda Kenny on tonight's incident.

Terrible news coming from London - we stand with our close neighbours again tonight. @IrelandEmbGB monitoring the situation.

— Enda Kenny (@EndaKennyTD) June 3, 2017

The BBC did an excellent job on both the news channel and 5 Live, being very clear about what they did and did not know and giving correct introductions to eyewitness testimony. The recorded swear word moment was an unfortunate incident - I had seen that video earlier on Twitter and when I heard the sound I knew where it was going - but I would hope some leeway would be given to them given the pressures on staff in a breaking news situation and the clear apologies that were given afterwards.

ITV ... hmm, we're back here again. On the one hand everybody knows that in the event of breaking news people turn to the BBC. But from a station brand viewpoint it's dismal to take a comparative age to get on air, then go off the air soon afterwards to go to a Jackpot programme. I would have at least ditched that. If this sort of thing is going to become more common then ITV is going to need to work out how it covers serious breaking news as it goes forward, because it seems to be decided on the hoof. ITV isn't Sky 1, it's a big heritage station in a decent-sized country.