The Death of Saddam Hussein

It must have been quite the editorial dilemma - do you show it live if it's available? How much footage should be shown? Is continuing coverage as a countdown to the hanging quite ghoulish or acceptable?

BBC - Good coverage considering it was so late at night. Good range of in-studio guests. For some strange reason though there was no contact with their Baghdad correspondent Richard Gatiss (sp?) between 2am-6am IIRC. Could have been due to powercuts/brown outs which are common in the capital, but surely they have generators? Good to see John Simpson and Clive Myrie reporting from Baghdad. Alistair Yates did a superd job. Ironic that he was the sole presenter when the Iraq invasion started at 02.30GMT 20-March-03 and the first images of the attacks were shown.

Sky News - Coverage was OK. I noticed they were very quick to show the pre and post execution footage, more so than others.

AJE - This is the first time they have been on air for a continuous 24hr period. Washington stayed on for an extra four hours with Doha taking over at 03.00GMT. They were the last to report that he had been executed.

France 24 - Mark Owen was brought on air at 04.00CET. He did an good job all things considered.

CNNi - Thank God Anderson Cooper was on air - he is the only newsreader on CNN Domestic that could carry the unravelling coverage with a cool, steady hand. His intelligence shone through.

Fox News - Not as bad as one would expect, but IMO there was still some elements of gloating.

I noticed Sky and the BBC seemed to take shots from Baghdad at around the same time so I presume there was some kind of power outage.

Yeah, I believe around 4.40(ish) Richard Gatiss popped up in Baghdad with some live shots thrown in, mainly repeating what had already been said, Odd that John was ready sooner (he appeared around 5ish). John did lend a whole different length of gravitas to the situation. The BBC does seem to have sent quite a few out to Baghdad (Myrie, Simpson etc) and it really seemed to play off.

I noticed the TOTH sequence was abandoned as the news broke. The opts seem to have stayed, but straight to a live shot/ Alaistar at the top of the hour and into the news.

Adam Brookes was fantastic from Washington breaking the news that a US court had rejected an appeal and providing analysis from Washington.

Paul Wood seemed slightly dazed at the whole set-up, the news correspondent who read the wires for the first few hours seemed far more suited. Although, Paul was very quick to pick up on the news that it was only Saddam who'd been hanged.

One very noticed feature, for me, was having one of Saddam's lawyers with News 24.

BBC News 24 are still calling Saddam's death breaking news.

It's only been about 12 hours since the story broke!

[quote="Matrix]Paul Wood seemed slightly dazed at the whole set-up.[/quote]

I noticed that! He seemed especially pale too. You could tell there were early starts for many on air. Paul Wood, Shiulie Ghosh and Tim Marshall kept coughing on thier respective channels.

Not to be woken - at 9pm at night at the latest!

For the first time in my life i'm speechless. Not sure what to make of it all.

I was half-asleep at the time, but was the strap covering the signer up?

On News 24 this afternoon, the unusual pairing of Ben Brown and Peter Sissons.

17.00 TOTH simulcast presented by Clive Myrie in Baghdad

Only when the signer(s) moved their hands low, surprising really it wasn't a small strap by any means.

Breaking Neck News, surely?

Scoured the net, even Fark, Ogrish and Rotten haven't got the images of Saddam swinging yet, so they haven't been released yet. Guess Bush wants them for his personal video collection.

This was France 24's first big breaking news story and they did pretty well i thought. They used their red 'breaking news' ident a couple of times which is a much punchier version of 'the news' one. Bulletins were handled mainly by Catherine Galloway - who is a great presenter (and extravagant curly hair!). They sometimes had a second presenter in giving updates.

In the 9 or 10 o clock hour (cant remember which) they had a France24 debate which lasted an impressive 45 minutes with about 6 studio guests. Andrea Sanke was brought in the the occasion. The channel really does do debates well. The only wierd thing was that rather the taking breaks at natural points they seemed to just break into the debate. It was as though Andrea hadn't been told they were happening.

It's on Sky News's website in video. It cuts out a few seconds before the actual hanging. The Iraqi government haben't even released the full video. It's disturbing footage.

Moments leading up to execution in video - Sky News