Coronavirus | Television News Coverage

If the PM's speech had been at say 3pm I wonder if ITV would have interrupted programming to go live to ITV News? I ask this because ITV don't seem to be putting in as much effort as BBC in providing news coverage, just their usual bulletins.

They would probably have done a news report at the next available ad break.

Probably depends on the timing. 2pm or 3pm yes, 5pm instead of The Chase when the BBC have now established they're in that slot, absolutely no.

I think ITV have got it spot on really - non-news programming is as important as news programming at the moment and This Morning is one of the only shows dealing with the issues of the lockdown, rather than the pandemic specifically, and generally just makes you feel a bit better rather than the anxiety watching too much news creates.

First time I’ve seen Sky News bring up a strap to indicate the name of the journalists asking questions at today’s press conference - only noticed it from Dan Wooton (I know 🙄) onwards so not sure if Kuenssberg and Peston got the same.

Yes, Kuenssberg and Peston got credited also

Today’s briefing had an entirely different feel to it. Not sure why. Appeared much more civilized and I felt that most of the journalists asked good questions that - in most cases - yielded useful responses.

Kate Silverton and Chris Mason were a good team.

I'm guessing the senior hacks who usually ask the same thing day after day aren't asking the questions on Saturdays.

I don’t think there have been many.

In fact, checking Wikipedia, there haven’t been.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deputy_Prime_Minister_of_the_United_Kingdom

The office of the Deputy Prime Minister is not a permanent position, existing only at the discretion of the Prime Minister. Apparently only dates from 1942, and Thatcher didn't have a deputy PM until 1989 and the last 18 months or so she was in office.


(image from Wikipedia)

The role of "First Secretary Of State" has a similarly ad-hoc history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Secretary_of_State

At the end of Brexit (remember that?) I started a thread about how the constitutional questions surrounding the situation in Parliament before Dec 2019 and how it may be necessary to start a constitutional affairs unit within the news media. I have to ask myself whether given Johnson's recent incapacity the role of Deputy PM should be made official.

Not having an official Deputy PM means the cabinet are able to choose who steps up if the PM is incapacitated (and whoever that is may depend on the circumstances) - if they made it an official role, they presumably wouldn’t have that choice, and I would think there may be scenarios that wouldn’t be ideal.

And they chose Raab!

Honestly do think Raab is one of the stupidest politicians of recent times but actually do think he did a pretty good job standing in.


Back to the briefings though and notice this week they've had a couple of "viewer" questions. Have these come through news organisations?