Should News 24 change it's policy on Breaking News?

To repeat from the other thread on the York murders... I was very impressed with the Sky News coverage, News 24 was left wanting.

It's very easy for the BBC to say, "We're not playing that game, we want comfirmation first" but that isn't keeping the viewers informed, and is a cop-out.

I think the BBC should abandon their policy and go for all out getting breaking news first. Qualify it all they want, make it clear that they are just initial reports, not verified, but get us the news first.

At the end of the day, it's the failure of the reporters. Sky obviously did some donkey work, they had an interview with an eye witness really quickly because they were there - the BBC were at York Police HQ.

in theory, both the bbc and itn should win hands down over sky as far as breaking news and live coverage is concerned, but for some reason, neither company seems to use the resources of regional news teams to cover any stories at all.

does anybody know why this is?

It just seemed like Sky did some old fashioned journalism on Sunday and found out what had happened first.

Whether or not the BBC knew about what had happened or not I don't know (though I guess they'd heard about it on Sky like the rest of us and were hiding behind their policy) but it seemed stupid that you could turn over to Sky and get the news, but nothing was being said on News 24.

In respect to Breaking News, the BBC has a job, as a public service broadcaster to present news factually, it simply can't afford the luxurey of later corrections. However the B/News aston in my opinion is never left up long enough, the ticker should be used to greater effect.

So... why bother with a news channel featuring live rolling coverage, then?

Because its more than about breaking news first.

Its not as if News 24 never have better coverage than Sky, look art the Glasgow building collapse as one example. I mean, its fine to try and be quick, but if we are only talking a few minutes and not hours and hours, then really does it matter?

The fact is if the BBC broke news that was unconfirmed, especially on really serious issues and got it wrongm, there would be an out cry from politicians and the press.

As has been said in the other thread, the Guardian report was hardly unbias, was there a similair report when News 24 did much better in Glasgow - I don't remember there being anything of the sort.

The BBC should be offering a service that is distinctive and one way they do that is with the policy of having two sources before they report a story and if that means that they report it a few minutes after Sky then so be it., I doubt many people even notice or care.

I would rather have the facts a few minutes "late" than speculation and the over-dramatisation that concentrating on "breaking news" brings. The other day - I forget which channel but they are all guilty of it - an interviewer in the studio stopped short an interview with someone to go straight to the "breaking news" that the guy suspected of the double murders in Yorkshire was now leaving the hospital and getting into a police van. So what? This could have waited surely? And the way the media are treating this makes me question if its possible for this guy get a fair trial, we are heading faster and faster down the slippery slopes of American style news, and Sky is to blame.

I think that News 24 should be made more distinctive from ITN and Sky by having regular regional updates, the BBC should resource this more fully.

It's another case of 'damned if they do, damned if they don't for the BBC'. News 24 has indeed been caught out several times with Sky News getting their first through them requiring less confirmation of a story than the BBC.

If the BBC went down the same route and got things up on News 24 as quickly as Sky News do then they would indeed go up in the world - until they get it wrong. Then there would be cries of the BBC being our public service broadcaster and so they should always be right.

In the wider Sky News vs News 24 argument I've always leaned towards Sky News - not least of which because they are the only UK news channel to have broadcast a UK news service 24 hours a day, whilst News 24 effectively become a relay for BBC World overnight and ITV NC just repeats News at 10:30 over and over again.

People may argue in response to that that overnights don't matter as much, but I don't think that's ever been put to the test since Sky News' monopoly on UK rolling news channels was ended. If a big, serious, huge - but UK - story broke overnight it would doubtless be the case that Sky would be able to get it up on screen faster than anyone else because they truly run a 24 hour UK rolling news channel whilst the BBC and ITV both run '24 hour' channels which effectively close down during the wee small hours.

But don't Sky also prerecord and repeat the same bulletin overnight? Granted, they keep the presenter around just in case, but it puts them in a pretty similar position to both News 24 and ITV.

I think the point Chris was trying to make was that even if the bulletin is pre-recorded on Sky News as you say, the fact that the newsreader is still around means they could just cut to that presenter and make it look seamless. ITV NC doesn't do this, they make it look as if Trevor McDonald or whoever works overnight by virtue of running the same bulletin endlessly. News 24, which it would appear is tied up for a 30min bulletin at the top of the hour which goes out everywhere, has then got no way of getting back out of it to do some major breaking news without breaking the rest of the bulletin (although I dare say they'd worry about that when they come to it).

As with News 24, the Sky News overnight service works on a news bulletin for the first half hour, and then some other programme for the second half.

The half hour bulletin seems to vary greatly in the amount of live content it has. Sometimes only the headlines sequence is live, whilst sometimes the whole bulletin is. At other times, they seem to run a recorded report and then, as you say, seemlessly come out of the other end of it live. Having spent many an all nighter with Sky News on in the background, it certainly doesn't seem to be a simple case of the same bulletin being shown over and over again.

Since Sky News is able to so seemlessly switch between 'overnight mode' and 'normal mode', they do seem to do it much more frequently than the other two channels, which cannot resume normal operation without a highly visible change to the viewers. And even if something big enough happened to justify firing up all 3 channels fully in the middle of the night, that Sky is much more prepared to do it also doubtless means that they would be back first.

Interesting that nobody has pointed out that the charges for Mark Hobson were on News 24 a clear 30 seconds before Sky News.