International broadcasters and major news events

Following the tragic plane crash involving the Polish President and his wife, I thought it would be interesting to see how some of the Polish broadcasters are handling the news and compare it with how British broadcasters would handle similar events, I am surprised as to how many Polish stations seem to be carrying on with normal broadcasting during a period of national mourning.

A few of the radio stations I scanned through last night seemed to be playing classical music, so it would seem they might be in "obit" mode - and I have managed to find some TV stations broadcasting online, and one in particular, called ITV (no relation to our ITV!) seems to be carrying on as normal, interestingly, I remember looking at this same station following the death of Pope John Paul II and they ceased programmes then, but at the moment they seem to be broadcasting normally with some sort of Psychic TV type programme.

The only real nod towards the news I've seen is some broadcasters adopting a black ribbon on their logos / websites.

I'm not sure which of the TVP channels it was I saw a bit of yesterday but it a black logo bug in the corner of the screen. Of course it could always be like that, I'm not a regular viewer!

PRL (Polish Radio London) is playing light pop music.... but again that might not differ from the norm

I'm sure most of the TV stations here would continue with regular programming in such circumstances.

TVN have also had a black dog in the corner which is unusal for them. I think it's a case of "carry on as normal but let people know we're in mourning".

TVP's website was all in Monochrome last evening.

On the subject of the crash, truly horrific, the list of Passengers covered not only the President by many other significant senior members of multiple strands of Polish society whom will be diifficult to replace.

I think though most British channels would do the same if our prime minister died in similar circumstances. They'd obviously be the breaking news for a couple of hours at least and continuous coverage on the news channels, and I'm sure an evening tribute programme - but I don't think even BBC1 would go into continuous mourning mode now.

As the President is the Head of State of Poland, it would be the equivalent of the death of the British monarch than the Prime Minister.

Also, if the nature of the death was sudden like the plane crash in Poland, or a car crash like Diana, I'd say coverage would be different than if the death was from natural causes.

The vast majority of channels here would continue as normal. The only differences you would see on some of the less cheaply produced channels (the UKTV's Sky, Discovery, Virgin channels for example) are schedule changes if there was a crass reference to the event or the people involved in a programme.

The big 5 would have course change schedules and cover the incident but the other 150 or so probably wouldn't

It's an incredible and huge story. It's one thing to have all those people flying together... but flying together on a 20 year old (almost) soviet era plane! There is protocol here and in other countries about having important people flying together - Princes Charles and William wouldn't neither would Obama and Biden.

It's seems inconceivable to think of the equivalent loss here

And still is today... http://www.tvp.pl/

Polsat (Sky's equivalent in Poland) is equally sombre:-

http://www.polsat.pl/

Brenda and Charlie don't even travel in the same car.