Manchester Terror Attack

I'd say unconfirmed reports of two bombs 20 minutes after the incident has happened is completely unacceptable, to be honest, and would be disappointed if the BBC and Sky did the same thing. This could well have turned out to be something far different and it risks causing unnecessary panic. The correct approach was to report that there had been a major incident and by all means if eyewitnesses say there was an explosion and that it felt like a bomb allow them to tell that story, and make it clear nothing is confirmed yet.

(Look at me, someone who used to work on tabloidy papers getting all moral high ground. God I've got old)

STV behave more like a national broadcaster than a local one, and throw tons of resources at their news operation that they don't have to. I would imagine they would be in a far stronger position to react to something like this than a local ITV station. I wouldn't be surprised if such a scenario has been discussed at the station since.

In terms of ITV - they can't win with the "but it was online" case. It kind of undermines their entire set-up as a broadcaster to say "just go online if you want stuff". Thing is though, it's a lot easier to get something online than it is to get a TV operation up and running. So they may well have known something was going on as early as 10.58pm, but they wouldn't have known if it was a local incident, albeit a horrible one, or a targeted terror attack for sure for some time after that. For a very long time after the story initially broke it wasn't clear whether it was a bomb, gun shots, or a crush caused by people panicking over a noise. I'd finished work not long before everything happened and spotted it purely by chance on my Twitter timeline before hastily logging back on. Most of the poor sods at ITV were probably incommunicado on the Tube or something.

BS.
Newsday is an Asia region breakfast show (as Babita has said on twitter...), which goes out on the NewsChannel because there is nothing else, it regularly features promos for output that is not being shown on the News Channel and often doesn't even mention what was the main headline in the 23:00 hour.

Despite being aimed at Asia, on the night of the Manchester attacks it dropped the portion of the programme that came from Singapore and came solely from London looking only at what was happening in Manchester, effectively doing as good as job as it would have done if it was just branded as BBC News.

Possibly but the post tried to claim that on a normal night Newsday is just the same news coming from a different studio when that is not even close to the truth.

I saw that report from a young reporter who was obviously caught up in the moment, and I was thinking I hope he's right (well I didn't hope he was right but you know what I mean), as if he hadn't been he may have been hauled over hot coals. He needs to know that in TV news you talk about stuff in general vague terms initially, you don't mention bombs specifically until it is fully confirmed.

But they are rolling news channels, not general entertainment channels like ITV.

Their audiences are small enough in the day, even smaller at night. That's why one effectively closes and the other goes to a basic service. But they still need to be there overnight as that's what they do and that's what people expect, plus of course their content is seen in places where it's not night.

That's not the case. What you see overnight is BBC World News with a few UK-centric elements replacing things like weather and ad breaks. It's produced by the World News team and if course the news agenda is World's not the News Channel's

I would hope the reporter in question isn't hauled over the coals or anything like that. At the same time I hope the station would go over its output on TV and online and offer guidance in the correct way (with demoralising someone who's gone above and beyond) That reporter did a very good job to get there so fast and have a coherent story off and running, he just seemed a bit overexcited by events (which will always sound strange to non-journalists and always seems weird to those of us who are journalists, but an adrenaline surge kicks in with stories like this). Problem is it could unnecessary panic people and it was getting picked up by the usual right-wing suspects on Twitter.

My only point in raising it is my logic beforehand would have been "why can't you just put the local ITV station on?" There's something to be said for making sure you've got the resources and cool heads on before you launch into a news show on TV. And the problem is that while you've got all these news teams across the country they're not used to dealing with breaking, rolling news and you don't know how individual staff members will react. I'll bet that guy is brilliant in every single other report.

In terms of ITV being a general entertainment channel - this is true, but there are expectations associated with the name ITV. It ain't Sky One. Had this happened in London I'll bet you the media correspondents would be having a field day.

If people really want to get pedantic about this, the NC effectively closes at 2315 weekdays when the pointless Newsnight repeat fills airtime to cut costs.

With regards to the news channel, having the Newsday presentation there for a bit wasn't ideal but the key point was getting the story out there, and they did that effectively. When it became clear they were dealing with an attack they switched to an appropriate studio. In a similar way Key 103, which is in charge of the Bauer network overnight, went into very local radio mode through the night, which sounded odd mixed with Clyde 1 jingles but was completely the right thing to do rather than somehow pretending to be dispassionate without output that could be coming from anywhere. Manchester needed its local station at that moment, the audience elsewhere would (as discussed elsewhere) be minimal and would understand what's going on.

Interesting example today, with the tragic event at the Cambridgeshire zoo. I heard a report on BBC Radio 2's 16:00hrs bulletin that 'something significant' had occurred, and was possibly still in progress. Site cleared of the public, and Air Ambulance present.
There was a clip of Andy Moore (possibly lifted from the News Channel ?) saying (paraphrasing) that there were lots of social media reports of a tiger on the loose. He had phoned the zoo, and they were unwilling to say what had happened, but they had said a tiger was not currently loose. From this he speculated a tiger could have been at large.

It seems now, that a zoo keeper was killed by a tiger (within its compound) at 11:15hrs, and there was no question that the public were, or had been in danger. So almost five hours after the event, news reports were far from clear or accurate.

Number 1 lesson, treat social media reports with a large pinch of salt.

Further reading

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-40087357

Panorama special on BBC1 at 2030 with Tina Daheley.