Manhunt in the North East

We really only have two in the UK. The others are all foreign-based or not-UK centric (CNN, Fox, EuroNews, France24, RT, PressTV, CNBC, Bloomberg, AlJazeera all serve the UK but are not solely for the UK.)

So yes, in a way we get the channels we deserve. We get to pick. Just like we get the newspapers we deserve, just like we get the magazines we deserve. You want lite bites of news and gossipy speculation? Read the red-tops or watch Sky. You want to know what's really happening? Watch BBC News and read Private Eye. It's a shame ITV News Channel isn't around any more to give us the integrity of ITN mixed with the celeb-centred world of ITV.



PS - Thankyou to everyone who commented on my piece above - it's nice to know that my degree wasn't TOTALLY wasted

You can't tell me the BBC were any better than Sky with this story. If anything, they out-Skyed Sky at some points, being the first to grab the woman whose mum was trapped in the crime scene, then asking her to get her on the phone. Correct decision, or too tabloid? You decide. I'll admit, from a sheer news point of view it was the correct decision. Was it the correct decision for the BBC? Tougher choice.

But we can't take a moral high ground on this. We were all watching, fascinated. We all seemed able to divide ourselves from the real life tragedy to watch this as a soap opera. So the idea many of us can take a high ground on this is nonsense.

End of the day, from sheer news values, someone shooting their girlfriend and her new partner, fleeing off into the woods and occasionally re-emerging into a quiet community is a huge story. No question. If we don't like it we have a clear option, but it seems - going by the ratings at least - we didn't turn away. Charlie Brooker - who I'm a huge fan of by the way - can complain all he wants, but he watched it as well. While we may not be as mental as the people on that Facebook group, we were still watching it like a car crash, and in some perverse way, enjoying it.

When you put it like that - well, I still stand by my original part. Criminal who doesn't like police commits crime and goes on run. That never happens, does it!

That's a bit of a crass and very vague description for what happened. Criminal who doesn't like police (name me one who does??) commits a crime (not just ANY crime - one murder + two attempted murders) and goes on run. (he didn't, he went to ground. Subtle difference. If he'd gone on the run he would have turned up in London.)

Pathologically and psychologically disturbed individuals commiting mass shootings don't occur that often in our society fortunately.

This story ended last Friday night as far as I was concerned. The media is really stretching this one out with these pointless and uniteresting interviews. Slow news week I think.

I've just returned from a holiday in Northumberland, we arrived there on the afternoon of that Friday. We were staying about 7 miles from Rothbury.

Went to the local pub at 19:00hrs, it was deserted, the landlord told us no one was coming out, and hadn't been since Tuesday.
Sky News was on a TV screen on the bar wall. Of course between 19:00hrs and 20:00hrs the whole thing kicked off, as soon as Sky reported that Moat had been found, the pub rapidly filled up with locals. They set about trying to spot friends and family on the TV, which by all accounts, everyone in the pub could spot at least one person on the screen that they knew in or near the media scrum.
They all seemed to accept anything that was said, or stated on Sky News as 'being gospel', which in itself is a worry.

We left the pub shortly after 20:00hrs, by which point there was singing and dancing going on.

We were woken at about 01:30hrs by horns blowing and general shouting and activity in the street outside, next morning we learnt that that was the time Moat had shot himself.

All rather bizarre, all last week BBC North East seemed obsessed by the story, and kept banging on how 'Rothbury were trying to return to normal'. Fat chance with them there every evening with their SNG van. We did drive through the village on Tuesday afternoon, no evidence at all of media presence (in so far as no SNGs trucks), but obviously BBC NE's would return evenings.

Depends where the definition of a "mass shooting" lies. I wouldn't say this was a mass shooting at all - it was two isolated incidents whilst the threat made was a very specific one.