Norway attacks

Sorry to hijack the thread so to speak, I am just wondering does anyone recall how the coverage and reaction to the Dunblane attack was on TV? Given the horror of that day, its not something that is ever talked about much or many videos online of news coverage.

All I recall, is a normal length Six O'Clock News on BBC One, followed by Reporting Scotland broadcast nationwide, then a shortened local bulletin.

GMTV sent Lorraine up there, of course, where she stayed for the next couple of days.

Did anyone see the NC Bulletin at 5pm with Jon Sopel, Slightly odd for them to have the World News opening and World News Logo. Or was it being simulcast at 5pm?

I seem to remember that Channel 4 were criticized in certain quarters for not breaking in to scheduled programming to report the news. They justified this at the time by saying that many schools would have been watching Channel 4 live as they were showing schools programmes at the time and they quite rightly didn't want children seeing the reports of some other children being shot.

This probably means that other channels did break in to their scheduled programming.

I remember that there was a lot of discussion as to whether there would be a regional news bulletin at 6.30, whether it would be shorter etc. Have a dim recollection that it was much shorter. It was a year or two before News 24 launched, so Sky would have been the only UK 24 hour TV news channel, and only on cable and analogue satellite.

Indeed. I think it was 15 minutes of Reporting Scotland at 6.30 (or was it half an hour?) and then just five or ten minutes from the regions.

I had a dim recollection of Reporting Scotland being networked for the first half of their programme - but couldn't be sure.

I think that's right too - I distinctly remember seeing the BBC Scotland logo as part of RS's titles on NC1's output and remarking on how odd it looked not to see Newsroom South East. I think RS got 15 minutes across the network then the regions got a further 10 minutes or so.

Reporting Scotland was definately shown nationwide for fifteen minutes from 6.30pm. Jackie Bird was on location at this time. Anne Mackenzie presented a special half an hour programme from QMD at 9pm as well.

Sorry for the thread creep.

But, the Dunblane coverage on Reporting Scotland was also shown live on BBC World at the time. Almost even eerier than the event itself was the sudden surprise of seeing Jackie Bird presenting on BBC World. I was living in India at the time and was out in the sticks in Gujarat, miles from anywhere. Our dish picked up BBC World, and Jackie, in a crystal clear manner. Will never forget it.

My memory may be playing tricks on me with this one, but did Shereen Nanjiani also appear on CNNI live from Dunblane?

Jon Sopel, meanwhile, continues to do a splendid job from Oslo, IMO. A bit more human than some other potential anchors who could have been sent out.

Jon Sopel was criticized on twitter sometime during the afternoon. Anyone knows what happened? I was busy at the time.

Got the impression that the BBC asked for an interview, not expecting it to be responded to positively. From the timeline it would seem that Sopel had barely an hour to get to the PM's temp office, set up and do the interview. Preparation time was obviously minimal. Some questions could have been phrased differently in the circumstances and the same answers obtained with a less pointed style.

Perhaps he shouldn't have approached the readiness for such attacks question with British hindsight and inferred that Norway had been naïve with their preparation.

Do a search on Twitter using his name to see the comments.

It also didn't help that the first time run included some of the preparation start of interview chat in error.