BBC News Channel General Discussion

He got some stick, because what he said about having no time to prepare before the 5pm obit broadcast, is incorrect.
You don't forget times and places when news like this broke, and I was producing radio coverage of a football game that day. The PA 'snap' embargo of the death of the QM came on the news wire screen in my studio at 4.16pm. IRN/ITN then confirmed at 4.20. By 4.30, full details of the network obit major story proccedure at 5pm and what to do and which IRN feed to route through the studio mixer.

For an expirenced journalist/broadcast of the calibre of Sisssons, to try a claim he had less than 20 mins from knowing, to being on air is, given the news wires were humming from 4.15 is utter twodge on a grand scale.

You still can't prepare for being told not to wear a black tie though...

AIUI there was some notice given to the main networks that an important statement was coming, but BBC Management did not pass this onto the Newsroom as they were afraid it would leak. Which is why, when it did break, the BBC Newsroom were so unprepared.

If as Hatton Cross says it was being reported by PA at 16:16 on the wires then surely BBC Management don't have the ability to suppress a story from the news wires. I'm assuming most of the newsroom would have had access to the wires in those days?

Given that IRN sent a further not for broadcast instruction out via their newsroom text service at 4.20 off the back of the 4.16 PA embargo report that the QM had died, the BBC's reaction is very curious, given they rehearse for occasions such as these.
Someone at TVC newsroom should be keeping an eye on the PA wire, but it was Easter Saturday afternoon so, maybe it could be put down to that.

The BBC didn't find out via PA, of that I'm pretty certain.

Is it that they are notified directly by the Palace of these events?

Why was it that IRN was the one notifying of the embargo? Were they the ones who first heard about the information by officials who asked that it be embargoed.

Also I can't help but laugh each time today I heard about the tennis story being referred to as a "joint investigation between the BBC and Buzzfeed." What's next listicles or videos that are just images and text? Oh wait the latter's already done daily.

That being said some of the actual articles BuzzFeed News publish are quite interesting but it's not bookmarked on my iPad.

IRN will inform all their subscribers just like the BBC will inform all their newsrooms


IRN did balls up the Queen Mother's death announcement too though

Thanks. Some of the posts here made me think that it was IRN who discovered the news and distributed to the wire service with an embargo attached.

It must've been from something I read or heard, but I seem to recall that Jennie Bond heard the news, fed the news back to the BBC but also told them there was an embargo. I could be terribly wrong about that.

Yes. I believe you are very wrong about it.