Flooding coverage

A lot of the British news networks are extentively reporting this recent flooding which has been ongoing for the last few weeks near enough.

For example the BBC's 6 o clock news agenda had most of its reports on flooding, I quote:



Tonight's headlines for the six ^ George is reporting for the Six and N24.. he's having a long day - probally will do the Ten I bet too reporting.

Discuss your thoughts.

(I thought this warrants a thread as its an ongoing story with loads of coverage from various networks, BBC, ITV, Sky)

Well I live in sheffield, and I did an 18 hour work shift, bloody nightmare!!!!

Anyway I watched the river flow past our work premises. Strangly it had vehicles in it - oh wait sorry, it was our main road, I was only on it 40 minutes before hand!

Very Scary!



I

BBC One scheduled to have a special programme on the floods at 11am. Dunno if it will still go ahead...

I think that generic threads should be for regional news and nothing else. It seems to work much better for those.

National news should not have generic threads, if the losers want to talk rotas then fine, have it in a rota thread, but then pres changes should have their own threads. It's not as if we're drowning in topics on here, I only ever see green topics to about half way down - it used to be onto page two every time i checked.

News 24 had a relatively large tweak to their package not so long ago too, I also managed to miss that because it was burried inside "is Natasha having a baby today or is she down for the tea break on World?" drivvel.

The thing is we normally do have threads for major presentation changes and only the minor changes, or first mentions of possible changes are commented on in the generic threads because they don't warrant an individual thread worthy of several pages of discussion. However, I feel that when these changes become big they should have separate threads and applying that to this scenario, I believe there should have been a specific thread for the coverage of the floods bearing in mind the number of news specials, special graphics and live OBs from the scene.

I suppose the only way of making sure you don't miss events is by checking out the generic threads.

Perhaps Asa's home-grown forum software could address this issue by adding some means for trusted users (other than moderators and thread-starters) to edit the thread description to highlight the current topic of discussion?

I think the current system of generic threads works fine. All it needs is an improved mechanism for highlighting significant events to non-readers of those threads.

What was the special program about and why did they do that? Was it just to have like an anayalis on the events across the U.K? Noticed that on the BBC website under "coming up" on videos and audio.

The BBC are making the most of this Flood Story, which has been elevated to a MAJOR story at News online.

Huw, George, Kate, Chris ALL out and about on location.

Steve Scott is there for ITV News, though I am sure if Mark is back from his hols - he'll be there at 6.30.

Anyone been watching what Sky are doing?

For Sky News, Jeremy Thompson is in Gloucester, Kay Burley is in Abingdon, and Anna Jones is in Tewksbury. Martin Stanford has been in the studio just running through the main happenings with help from the newswall.
I found it intresting that BBC News put George Aligiah in the Helicopter, and not down on the streets.

For much of the day the various reporters have tried to be po faced and serious highlighting the gravitas of the situation, whilst many residents & their kids dick about in the background as if they were enjoying the whole thing.

Perhaps a little more insight into the reasons why this happened and where the water is going next (journalism) and less live from the village green and hello mum I'm on the telly opportunities (gossip and sensationalism)

BBC One has got a news special at 7.30pm.

I was down in Gloucester earlier and it was amazing how many people were down there (the general public). Nearly everything is closed and we have no running water. There were loads of TV crews as well with Jeremy Thompson being the main attraction on Sky News although George Alagiah, Dan Corbett, Jonathan Samuels and others were seen wandering around car parks...

Around the sky tent people kept shouting and trying to get into the tent that they had to tape it off.

Yeah I wondered this. He'll no doubt be doing the Six from the ground...or water