Election 2014

I think it's because the BBC is a UK broadcaster so their correspondents across Europe must abide by British law and it's being reported on British television.

France 24 (as the name suggests) is French so aren't covered by the same laws as the BBC because of where they are being broadcast from.

But those are French exit polls. Surely UK law doesn't embargo foreign countries' exit polls if they are not even embargoed in their countries?

So UK law requires foreign exit polls to be embargoed?

We won't have an exit poll as the majority of counting has already taken place so results will come soon after 10pm.

The point of the law (however ridiculous) is to prevent the reporting of polling data/exit polls where it might be seen by other voters who still have the opportunity to vote.

That story about the French National Front can be reported as it doesn't give any figures or indicate who is in last place but merely that the country's Prime Minister believes that having reviewed their own data that they will be in first place.

But that's what Dimbleby was referring to wasn't it? Didn't he mention Poland (?) had found a way around the law by talking about fruit? So is this an EU wide thing that the French just don't observe?

The impression I got was the exit polls they were talking about were in other countries that they couldn't report on. But even if they meant exit polls here, why should it matter now that polls are closed in this country?

I didn't watch on Thursday - was Emily doing double duty, doing interviews, then too?

This makes sense -- but are foreign exit polls embargoed in the UK as well? Surely a UK voter won't be influenced by how well the SPD performs in Germany, for instance.

They show the UK election coverage because the UK is an important world country. In 2010 CNNi and AJE had coverage as well, and also showed two of the debates (they couldn't show the ITV one as ITV didn't allow a UK simulcast)

BBC World/BBC News normally do French election specials as well for example (and maybe other European countries too). CNNi in recent years have done French, German, Greek and Russian election results coverage

No, exit poll data -- local and from third countries -- has been widely discussed on various European channels. In Slovenia, for instance, local exit poll data was made public the minute Slovenian polls closed earlier tonight (at 7 P.M. CET), and Dutch exit polls (but not UK ones) have been discussed since Thursday.

Well there we are, the exit polls they couldn't report were indeed the international exit polls. Seems utterly ludicrous to me, given that they couldn't effect a British voters choice! Though I suppose, in fairness, it's not a specific law for the EU elections, just elections in general.

Yuck the BBC News Breaking News aston looks ghastly. Why can't they just use the templates used at NBH? It can't be that difficult to replicate the same generic graphics set on a different Viz machine?

And BBC World News is now reporting FN's victory in France -- something that the rest of Europe has known for hours -- as "Breaking News."

This isn't the BBC's fault, of course, but I would argue that it's a certainly a case of overreach on the part of UK lawmakers. I've never heard of a country embargoing another country's exit poll.s

I was wrong in being fair! The law embargoing exit polls is specifically linked to the EU elections - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-eu-27535855 - how utterly ridiculous. As such, I suppose they keep that loophole that I mentioned earlier, about being able to report on other people talking about the results of exit polls, just not the polls themselves.