Pope's Death

: What is Sky's deffinition of 'Breaking News' and how many hours will it be before the breaking news of the Pope's death becomes news?
They still have Breaking News, Vatican Confirms Pope... they had the same strap at 9!

Sombre Bounce into News 24 on BBC2 just now and a generic "handing over to News 24" announcement. Nothing too unusual there.

I agree, it would be okay to maybe have Pope John Paul II has died. But the breaking news strap and the 'POPE DEATH' is a little bit too much now.

BTW, IIRC news channels used to think it rather insensitive to have LIVE graphics plastered all over reports when someone important had died, did they not?

Whatever happened to that?

I don't get some of the hysteria here. Yes, any death is sad, but personally I didn't have much time for the Pope or many of his views. And he is not head of state for this country. As much as I'm not a great fan of the royal family either, the Queen is head of state and technically above Tony Blair, so therefore will gather extra coverage. The Pope is head of a major religion - so it deserves serious and extensive coverage, but it doesn't need all programmes to be rescheduled, or newsflashes, or anything along those lines. That would be insulting to the majority of the country who are not catholics.

Also I believe the coverage should be more balanced - at the moment everyone is going on about how wonderful this man was. It has to be balanced. He was quite conservative, and had what I consider extreme views of matters such as homosexuality. There's nothing wrong with providing a balanced portrait of his life (he was great with this, he had controversial views on that, and so forth).

And what the heck is wrong with Pope Death anyway?

I agree completely, the way the news was editorialized tonight was abominable, you wouldn't think any sane person could possibly ever be a communist! Communism! How awful! Some of the greatest minds have been Communards. The man himself cut down progressives all his life and paid lipservice to some of the most awful despotic dictatorships on the face of the planet. To me its a duh story... Old sick man dies - duh. Sorry it had to be said.

Actually, the sad thing is, it didn't. Not yet anyway. The news did report on his contoversial views, and I don't believe that the news reports have been unbalanced. The terrestrial channels didn't interrupt their schedule for the news. BBC One had an extended BBC News which menat that Outtake TV was not aired, but this was a repeat. All other programming was as usual, as was all the other terrestrial channels. and there was nothing wrong with having extended news, to report this news to the majority of people who cared. You may like to know that he was respected by many other religions and I believe that most people of other faiths would respect the Pope's Death. I also applaud the 24 hour news channels who have reported the news, though some have been a little heavy on his death, thankfully, others have looked over his life. So I disagree that the News Coverage is too much.

I don't think the channels have overdone their coverage - I don't think you can argue against bulletins on the terrestrial channels, the withdrawal of a repeat on BBC1, and continuous coverage on the news channels (especially at the weekends, when things are normally quiet anyway). What I'm not sure about is the balance of the coverage, where the broadcasters seem to have decided the man is God himself, quite ironically. I suppose it's not an easy balance to strike - if your point out any controversy you'll get complaints from people who seem to believe he is beyond criticism, and if you don't you'll get people like me whining. They've not done too badly I suppose, aside from CNN, which may as well be the GOD channel, and Fox News, but that's no real surprise now, is it?

Yeah RIP - the biggoted, intolerant, homophobic, racist, sexist old b*****d! Rose-tinted glasses or what??

Charming

I agree that the coverage has been balanced - though I appreciate that coverage of the more contorversial aspects of his papacy have yet to be fully aired, but this is appropriate after his death, not before it.

I agree that there has been an element of 'what a wonderful man' etc etc, but this has been entiely derived from interviews and vox-pops with ordinary Catholics - this is to be expected, but it must be pointed out that journalists and presenters themselves have been very balanced on the three main news outlets in the UK.

If I may just answer a question raised by Uncle Bruce earlier on - what I meant by calling some elements of UK coverage as being at times patronising was in reference to the smalltalk between presenters and reporters on location - the presenters in London asking 'what are Catholics feeling in Liverpool today', 'what's it like to be an Irish Catholic at the moment' etc etc. It just came across as a tad contrived given that both persons speaking were more than likely Protestant.
I appreciate that has absolutely no bearing on anything other than just the feeling I personally got - that is to say, it came across as just weird.

It had a slight feeling of 'what of these strange church-going people - lets have a look at them going into this curious thing they call mass' etc. It's something you always get in soaps too of all places, especially Cornonation St; church, or indeed religion is regarded as something incredibly strange - reserved for the elderly or insane.
I mean this in absolutely no offensive fashion all, and please don't construe it as such - just there's an element of external observance in UK coverage which is different to Ireland - and by all accounts it can be quite refreshing at times from what we have here.

It's just that by contrast, the coverage in Ireland has a much greater 'crediblity' to it if you will. Covering religion is a tricky business - but with 90% of so of the population Catholic over here, almost by definition, there's a greater sense of 'togetherness' and connection between presenters & journalists and the audience. Can't quite put my finger on it - it's just the culture we've all been brought up in I suppose.

In the UK, there's an external 'looking in' feel to the coverage, whereas here it's almost taken for granted that everyone watching is Catholic.
There's less of a 'media frenzy' feel to the coverage - but that could also be down to our lack of a 24 hour news channel thus far...
It is this that I find 'interesting to note' as said earlier.
By all accounts it is to be expected - not least considering the fact that Iriah television in general has something of a parochial/community feel to it.


Brian Hanrahan was by far the best of all presenters that I've seen covering this story - so impressively dignified.
The BBC News Special graphic and music is also superb - elegant and muted in vision and sound.
And agreed with what w12 said earlier about long still shots of St. Peter's Square - these should be used occassionally with just atmos sound - it would've worked so well just after the titles on the BBC News Special on BBC 1 - dissolving into the image and leaving nothing but silence for 10 seconds.

As for the man himself - may He rest in peace.

Twelve hours after the fact and it's still 'breaking' on Sky, it would seem.


Where to begin? Firstly it's completely and utterly undignified (would you expect to see 'Queen Death' or indeed 'Reagan Death'?), and secondly it doesn't make any grammatical sense (last time I checked, he was known as Pope John Paul II, not Pope Death). And it's also just plain wrong . I think that covers it.

I'm pretty sure that the Prime Minister must go to the Queen and seek a dissolution of Parliament on either Monday or Tuesday 4th or 5th in order for the election to be May 5th.