Suffolk Killings - Discuss Coverage here.

I know this is an important news story, but I don't see the point of sending Huw Edwards and George Aligiah to Suffolk to co-present the news bulletins.

I'm sure these two people are capable journalists, but they haven't added anything to the report that someone from the East of England region couldn't have done. It really is an unneccesary waste of Licencepayers money to ferry the "celebrity presenters" around as if they will actually contribute some sort of extra zeal to the news.

It smacks of the same logic behind "Tonight With (30 seconds of..) Trevor McDonald"

Well the BBC were being a touch more reserved on this I've thought, holding back from jumping in to be first. I haven't been keeping up with all the TV news (no point, as living in Ipswich I cant fail to be up to date on it), however I did make a special effort after the second murder last week in Copdock, given that's the sleepy little part of Ipswich where I work. At that point there was obviously no official linking of them together, and as a result the BBC didn't even carry it on the national news as far as I noticed.

Someone who really is going a bit overboard on things is Town FM. Being a relatively new local station, this is obviously a pretty big thing for them to cover, but the snippets of dramaish incidental music, as well as top journalistic statements like 'a man was arrested today for a murder in Lincolnshire; police are not linking it to those in Suffolk' don't exactly work well.

As a random sidenote on things, I did notice Anglia at least have their satellite truck all branded up in the current look, rather than the old 4 squares. I wonder if this is the case for all regions (given they're not noted for replacing the signs in the actual studios)

There will be a BBC News Special at 11.00 till 11.30 on BBC1

Err, why. ? Just what is everybody who doesn't live in SE Suffolk supposed to do with all the rather thin information regurgitated ad nauseum ?

The killer has certainly gained exactly what he is probably after, notoriety.

I'm afraid the broadcast media's treatment of this horror, is no better than that of the newspapers. Best that relevant and essential information is only broadcast on Ipswich's local media, there's no value in anything beyond that.

Fiona Bruce is there now too.

Is she doing the Ten tonight??

I think you underestimate both the public hunger for news and the enormity of this story. Think back to any serial killings in the past - they are always huge news stories and you can't expect the media to restrict information to the local region only. As I understand it, this is also an unprecedented situation in the UK with regard to the number of murders (apparently by the same person/persons) within the timeframe.


You could apply that criticism to virtually every news story on any day of the week! We don't watch news because we can do something about it , we watch it because it is news - it informs!

Look out for a special Sky News "incident room", which is being set up now, and will probably be in use soon...

As bad as the ITV News Bird Flu Incident Room

I blame TV drama - this is exactly the sort of thing viewers expect now. Wonder how much Jacqui Hames is getting for this, or indeed if its frowned upon or not by current serving police officers (saw her doing a package yesterday, not sure if they've used her in the past).

It is all getting *a little* hysterical now - if you watched the press conference you wouldn't have helped noticing how many big names - Fiona Bruce, Kay Burley (who asked a really stupid question I thought), Peter Allen etc. - were there in person.

Also, if the story stalls for a while now and there's no significant news for the rest of the day, what do they all do then?

You've got to be careful however, we don't know how much all this coverage is fuelling the killer and their actions, that should be the prime consideration. 'Public hunger for news' is to an extent driven by what the media decide the news agenda to be, that's why we get disproportionate public reaction to quite trivial things, last year's whale that got stuck in the River Thames for example. The Diana 'week of mourning' is another interesting case to consider with regard to the media's relationship with the public.

Frankly Sky's 'incident room' mock up displays an utterly crass and irresponsible attitude to the entire issue. That is a disgrace in my view.

Of course that's true, but in these types of cases (save for petty speculation) the news agenda and details are driven almost entirely by press releases from the police. In fact the police blatantly use the media to inform the public, and 'speak' to the killer. This is a classic psychological tool used explicitly and implicitly in news conferences.


I haven't seen it yet but from the sounds of it, I couldn't agree more.

I'm back from my break. There has been good coverage of this story, ive mainly been watching either ITV News programmes or Sky News.

I was shocked when that news report poped up on Channel 4 yesterday. I guess a lot of people would have been watching Deal at the time, so justified i guess.

Whatever happed to that ex-Russian spy story