Fire in North London - What should news channels do?

See poll

BBC News 24:
http://www.dl.34sp.com/grabs/tvforum/fire/bbc1.jpg?refresh=blahhttp://www.dl.34sp.com/grabs/tvforum/fire/bbc2.jpg?refresh=blahhttp://www.dl.34sp.com/grabs/tvforum/fire/bbc3.jpg?refresh=blah

Sky News:
http://www.dl.34sp.com/grabs/tvforum/fire/sky1.jpg?refresh=blahhttp://www.dl.34sp.com/grabs/tvforum/fire/sky2.jpg?refresh=blahhttp://www.dl.34sp.com/grabs/tvforum/fire/sky3.jpg?refresh=blah

Even CNN have had pictures:
http://www.dl.34sp.com/grabs/tvforum/fire/cnn1.jpg?refresh=blah

The stupid part of this is that the BBC started covering it and then went to Question Time for some reason. Who made that decision?

The BBC have certainly been slow to pick up on this. Only now have they put it on their ticker and gone split screen.

It's a fire - just because it's in London doesn't make it newsworthy.


A mention and then move on - asking people to go down and take pictures isn't doing anyone any favours.


Let the journalists do their jobs of finding out the facts behind the scenes and putting together a responsible report rather than needlessly speculating about what might be a rather un-newsworthy story for hours on end.

Quite smooth handling of the headlines on News 24 despite abandoning the weather.

Why is this being broadcast as major national news though?? I think BBC made the right call by sticking with Question Time. As Brekkie says, it's a complete non-story to 90%+ of the country.

A fire in London may not be any more newsworthy than a fire somewhere else but its a lot easier for the news channels to cover.


That would be fine if they were moving on to other breaking news or even rolling news but to go to a pre-recorded programme when a fire is happening in the same city as they are broadcasting from is the wrong decision. Its obvious that live pictures will soon be available.



I think you will find its already quite newsworthy if you live in Camden.

If this fire was anywhere other than London, it would NEVER have taken up as much news time! A mention from the BBC and maybe a live report would be enough - certainly no reason to stick with it for hours on end.

But that doesn't make it newsworthy.

Up here in Sheffield during the summer, we had the (world famous)Gatecrasher nightclub burn down at half five on a monday afternoon. It resulted in the closure of nearly 1/10 of the city centre, and is believed to be the most photographed event in the history of Sheffield. News coverage - one two minute report in the late edition of Look North.

As Brekkie says, if it was a fire in say Manchester, we would have to wait until tomorrow's North West Tonight to find out anything about it or there would be a 5 second mention on the national news

Repeating Question Time seems a bit lazy too, so in answer to poll neither channel is providing a full digest of today's news like they should be

To be fair, Manchester has a population of 450,000; London 7.5 million odd. I think people forget about proportion sometimes when they talk about this London favouritism.

EDIT: Sorry, wikipedia confused me. Greater Manchester has about 2.2 million, but Greater London still has far and away the largest population out of any of our cities.

In an ideal world we would have this level of coverage when a fire of this size breaks out anywhere in the UK but we know that isn't possible, that doesn't mean London shouldn't get the coverage either.

A gentleman on Sky News has just confirmed that the fire was caused by what sounded like a wanking fish.

I'm about a mile away and can definitely smell it.

Had a table booked for next Saturday at the Hawley Arms...

Looks like its being damped down at the moment.