ITV News - Basic Mistakes

ITV News have been showing an interview with a police Superintendent involved in today's tragic incident where a 5 year old has been killed by a family dog in St Helens.

The police officer in question was attributed to be part of Lancashire Police however St Helens is in the county of Merseyside and hence part of the Merseyside Police area.

Surely, the 'highly trained' ITN journalists should be able to get such a simple detail correct. Whilst it may be a fairly insignificant detail, it does lead me to question their journalistic abilities and attention to detail.

Pretty daft, considering St Helens is one of the (metropolitan) boroughs that forms Merseyside!

They do seem to have problems with Merseyside on ITV News. A few months ago, they said Ellesmere Port was on Merseyside.... it's in Cheshire if they bothered to look in an atlas!

And when will people realise that Cleveland and Humberside were dispensed with in 1996

These may seem like trivial things, but it does get up people's noses. It also makes you wonder what else is inaccurate, when they can't be bothered to get basic geography right?

As a side note.... when news outlets refer to locations in N.Ireland, England or Scotland, they place the location in the relevant geographical county for those countries.

However when it is a report from Wales, they never use the current Welsh counties-- they always say South/Mid/North Wales instead?! On the rare occasions they use county in reference to Wales, they always to seem to use the preserved counties of Wales-- what's wrong with the current ones? How do ITV Wales/BBC Wales News refer to locations within Wales?

Whilst you cannot forgive ITV News for getting the name of the constabulary wrong (after all, it's written on the badge), the question of counties etc is very difficult.

You can either be politically accurate (ie the true administrative district) or refer to the postal area (which is sometimes different). For example I used to live in Stockport, which is part of Greater Manchester, but the postal address is still Cheshire. I also lived in Stockton-on-Tees, which was part of Cleveland, until 1996, but is now a unitary authority with a postal address of County Durham.

It's not always clear, so you can forgive some errors unless you make it clear for the start which descriptor is going to used (which isn't always necessary when explaining such an awful tragedy).

Another round of have a go at ITV!


At least he was a police constable - not a taxi driver!

The above is true... however we have "geographical counties" for general use, which includes use by the media. In Northern Ireland the geographic counties are "the six counties". In Wales and Scotland the geographical counties are the current unitary authorities in those nations.

In England the geographical counties are also the ceremonial ones (since 1996). All unitary authorities in England are assigned to a geographical county, except for the following UAs that are counties in their own right: Rutland, Herefordshire, Isle of Wight, City of London and City of Bristol.

It is funny that you should mention Stockton-on-Tees ^. It is the only authority in England that is split between two counties. North of the Tees it belongs to belongs Co Durham, south of the Tees it belongs to North Yorkshire.

Stockport has been in the county of Greater Manchester since 1974 geographically and administratively. As for postal counties, they were dropped in 1996, see here: Postal counties . So it is safe to put Gtr Manc on post to Stockport now

ITV can get it right when it comes to geographic counties in the UK.... in the last series of Central's Sky High , the intro always showed a map of the UK-- with the correct geographic counties marked on!

It doesn't help that atlases and maps are inconsistent though. Some atlases show metropolitan counties in full, others show treat those counties' metropolitan boroughs as UAs, for instance. The AA used geographic counties until a few years ago, and now they use the administrative county/UA boundaries set-up.

Also some maps show NI's geographic counties, others divide NI into the government UAs there. Thankfully the geographic counties in Scotland and Wales are the same as the administrative ones, so atlases are consistent with those two nations at least!.

NB: For a county to be regarded as a geographical county in England, it must have a Lord Lieutenant. See here for more detail: Geographic counties of England

Brekkie Boy, my sentiments exactly.

Since you were quite specific in mentioning a taxi driver there, I'm going to assume that you are referring to Guy Goma, who was of course erroneously featured on News 24 much to the embarrassment of all. However, it's worth remembering that the BBC paid for that mistake with a great deal of ridicule in the following days, in the wider press, online and of course here on TV Forum. I don't quite see why it's justifiable to be content to mock one outlet for its stupidity but not another.

If ITV News made a glaring error, what's the problem in pointing this out? Why is it okay to point the finger at the BBC, but when someone mentions another stupid mistake from ITV, it's suddenly "another round of have a go at ITV"? The scale of ITV's error was obviously far less spectacular than that of N24's enormous cock-up, but I don't understand why one is more fair game than the other.

And while we're on the subject of accuracy, I think it's worth pointing out that Guy Goma wasn't actually a taxi driver - he was incorrectly reported as being one by the press. Strangely enough, it was the BBC that actually pointed this inaccuracy out when they ran the story of their own humiliation later.

Sorry, I forgot!

BBC good
ITV bad
BBC good
ITV bad
BBC good
ITV bad
BBC good
ITV bad


It was one, probably honest mistake, to an aston!

It won't be the first and it won't be the last - over the years several mistakes will be made, from simple spelling mistake to complete inaccuracies - and even showing the wrong aston at the wrong time (which I've seen every channel do at some point!).


Honestly, sometimes I think I'd be better off going to Zimbabwe and challenging Mugabe than criticising the BBC around here!

Oh shut up you melodramatic old tart.

In your haste to create propagate a myth of exclusively anti-ITV, pro-BBC attitudes on this forum, you appear to have completely ignored the points that were being made.

The simple point is that if you're going to criticise one, you have to allow for criticism of the other. I referred to the BBC's own "stupidity" in my post just as I did to ITV's, and also mentioned "N24's enormous cock-up", so to then proffer a reply that implies that my post intended to silence BBC criticism ignores the fact that I was open in my criticism of the BBC as well.

Crying and making a fuss when people make a criticism against ITV is no better than what you accuse everyone else of in allegedly insisting that the BBC is beyond reproach.

Criticism and comment should be made freely and equally about the BBC, ITV and Sky, and any other broadcasters. It is as unhelpful as it is tedious to read comments from those who get their knickers in a twist because someone has said something against ITV and rather than responding to it maturely, implying that everyone who agrees with the comments made believes that the BBC can do no wrong and is just attacking ITV out of sheer bitterness.

Criticise the BBC if it's justified, and lay into ITV if they've done something wrong, and castigate Sky for their errors, but we should all be balanced in our comments rather than picking on one for the sake of it, or defending one blindly.

Just don't be a petulant little girl, crying when someone dares to say something against your favourite broadcaster. If you can't form a cogent argument against something of which you disapprove or with which you disagree, then just shut the hell up, because no-one wants to hear mindless immature whining.



Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't - but a spelling mistake is very different to attributing a person to the wrong organisation. When the BBC did that, everyone laughed and mocked (quite rightly - it was as unbelievably stupid as it was amusing) - yet when ITV makes a mistake, we are apparently to stay silent, lest we all be accused of having a go at ITV for the hell of it?

And on the subject of astons appearing at the wrong times, BBC News 24 is by far the worst offender for graphics appearing all over the place - it happens all the frickin' time, and it is intensely irritating - and for that the BBC should be rightly criticised.



It's genuinely sad that you should make such a staggeringly unintelligent comment like that, when the solution to the situation that you have manufactured and are continuing to try to fuel with your inflammatory comments implying that there is a "BBC good, ITV evil" ethos here is for you and everybody else to simply participate in a more balanced way rather than picking one side, and sticking to and defending it regardless of logic or reason.

It's a shame that you should feel that it is more worthy to try to widen the divisions between those parties who feel the need to pick a side by trying to make a fairly weak point and creating tension through stupid juvenile comments, rather than encourage a more friendly and enjoyable approach to participating, and that in so doing you are actually making TV Forum a less pleasant website to visit. It's that kind of selfishness that ruins it for the rest of us.

And you'd never have a go at ITV would you Brekkie?

This thread isnt really needed, couldnt it have gone in the ITV News thread?

You're not needed Jez.

Having invested in a spanking new DAB Digital Radio (i needed a new alarm clock) I've discovered the joys of Capital Lie and their wonderful news service.

Three gems from last night
Gerald Ford's coffin was draped in the "Star-Spangled Banner"
The newsreader telling us that Iraqis were protesting about something, and then playing 30 seconds of arabic shouting for no reason.
and of course the top headline "The parents of a girl mauled to death by a dog have cried at her grave". *YOU DON'T SAY*