Hutton Inquiry

Watching ITV News coverage of the Hutton Inquiry, I can't really take it seriously, as it seems to me that it is using the situation to attack the BBC subtely.

An example of this today is the computer experts who were being cross-examined. It was to determine when Andrew Gilligan had entered information about his meeting with David Kelly into his personal organiser, either during it, after it, or some time afterwards.

The headline ITV News used for this was something along the lines of "Andrew Gilligan accused of entering false information on his personal organiser". I can't recall that being said today directly, so why are ITV News saying it?

All the other ITN produced programmes seem to be reporting things more accurately, as does Sky News.

I've also noticed it on countless other occasions, where ITV News always reports the most negative aspect for the BBC that comes out of that days evidence. In my opinion, it's Sky News and even the BBC's outlets themselves that are reporting the inquiry fairly.

It’s been some time since I have taken ITV News seriously.

Totally agree with your comments, whenever there is a bad thing to say about the BBC actions (and there are a few) ITV seem to be shouting them the loudest.

At one point Sky seemed to be defending the BBC for than the BBC were defending themselves!

ITV News is diabolical. It really has sunk to the lowest.

Since it has been branded ITV News rather than the ITN News Channel a year ago, it has become a cheap and tacky service.

The ITN News Channel was launched three years ago as the worlds first multimedia news channel, with news updates on mobile phones, PDA's, email etc. Plus it was a very slick and polished looking service.

Now it's become like ITV News on ITV1, and the whole setup is dreadful, and reflects badly on ITN.

Very true - compare that to the glory days, five or so years ago now.

It is a much better all round service though since coming under the ITV News brand, although of course there is still sufficient scope for improvement. They have more lives, greater depth of coverage, more established faces on the channel more of a rolling service, wheras the ITN News Channel seemed to replay the same 15 minutes over and over.

I don't doubt that presentationally ITV News is crying out for a new look, it's been like this for too long now. The existing ITV News studio wasn't really created with rolling news in mind, so they need to go back to the drawing board on that one, and hopefully the new look will be launched early 2004.

The channel seems closer to a news channel than ITN used to but ITV News as a service has really gone downhill. It used to be so much better but since ITV slashed it's budget it has gotten worse and since they renamed it it's become dreadful. Luckily the quality of ITN can still be seen on 4 and 5.