BBC News thread

Well I would see News 24 not being restored to normal service until 4 PM as "the best part of the day", especially the business one at least.

But your original comment said that they'd included "prerecorded and repeated" material for the best part of the day. They didn't, they still produced a rolling news channel for 7 out of the 8 hours during which TVC was badly affected by the power cut

Yes, I have corrected myself, mean't a reduced service for best part of day, repeated material for a short time.

And that's another annoying thing - when people spark a debate, then go back a couple of hours later and change what they'd written. The discussion will now seem very bizarre to anyone who's been out all day, and tries to catch up on the forum this evening. They'll all be wondering why people were criticising you for something it now appears you never said. Far better surely just to post a clarification later on.

Right.

Got it.

Thanks for explaining that.

But there was no such 'lack of enthusiasm to keep the news rolling'. Your comment implies that N24 fell off air, and the team simply thought "i can't be bothered with this, let's stick HARDtalk on". A power outage, and failure of back-up plans, does not constitute a lethargic attitude to keeping News 24 on air. The people who make the decisions for contingency plans in power loss situations will have nothing whatsoever to do with news production and broadcast, so it's impossible to draw a line, even a wiggly one, between the half-baked power back-ups and the desire to keep the news rolling.



But this wasn't borne out in the article. It was simply presented as the BBC making an editorial decision to screen pre-recorded programming over rolling news during the day, when in fact the circumstances at the time she isolated were extraordinary. She made no mention of the power outage, she didn't say "it is a travesty that the BBC failed to provide adequate back-up plans, especially after promising to learn lessons since the last power outage, and was therefore reduced to showing a pre-recorded programme when it should (and normally would) have been showing rolling news". She simply presented the screening of HARDtalk at that hour as the norm; whether or not it was just a cheap shot, a recognised omission, or a result of poor research is not something that we can ascertain.



None of these points was even hinted at in the article; you're dragging a hell of a lot more out of her words than is written there. I understand your point entirely, but it is YOUR point and not hers; the words in her article say nothing, and imply nothing, close to what you have suggested above.

I'm not quite sure why everyone is mentioning the power outage as being relevant to the article - the very fact that it wasn't even mentioned in the article is surely indicative of the fact that - deliberately or incidentally -the power outage, subsequent failure of contingencies, and internal cultural reasons for that failure, are not central, or indeed peripheral, parts of the point she was making.

Ah, selective quoting - the natural progression when reasoned debate and discussion fails you.

It was a minor error of wording, the general theme of my argument is that the service they supplied wasn't up to the normal standard, whether reduced or full of repeats... but I agree with the clarification, will do that in future.

Not really selective quoting at all, I just genuinely have no interest in repeating your entire post, and I suspect strongly that the vast majority of members really have no interest in reading it.

And I do believe the size of your overinflated ego may have overshot Asa's bandwidth limits.

My point - made a number of hours ago - remains: it is a wonder that anyone gives a sh-t.

Well, indeed - if you do ever find anyone that gives a sh-t about one of your points, please don't hesitate to keep it to yourself.

The Guardian and mistakes go together like Sky News and Soham. What slightly surprises me about this woman's article is how shockingly poor it is. Huge sections of it are cut-and-paste jobs from online Media Guardian articles from the last week, yet she misses two crucial points from those articles she borrowed:

a) the exceptional nature of Friday's power cut
b) the fact that the said power cut has delayed the News 24 relaunch by a week. Her opening words: "This week the BBC unveils its "new look" News 24" It's next week dear; your article is a week early.

Frankly the only conclusion is that this so-called media editor appears to know nothing about a major power cut at the national broadcaster that knocked out 2 live TV channels and 2 live radio stations, affecting viewers and listeners across the UK and the globe.

But then again the Guardian and quality go together like chalk and cheese.

Yea, I suppose... taken literally, her article does imply that the HARDtalk show is a norm al occurance...

I am reading more into it, but knowing the problems News 24 have had with their branding (not just aesthetic), direction etc, perhaps it could be perceived that by allowing the power problems (although we know that that they are totally undesired) to happen by not having such as water-tight back up system, and hence, having its live output affected by repeats and a reduced, weak service that quote:

"Sky has understood that even those sceptical of its presentation and news values will still turn to it first because it relishes the role of rolling news while the BBC has always seemed confounded by it."

I suppose I am using my, and our greater knowledge of the real state of News 24 to substantiate her argument, although misleading (based on the facts she provided alone in the article).