The Newsroom

BBC News Channel General Discussion

(November 2013)

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WA
watchingtv
A different peice of audio has been played as Jane Hill was speaking on tonights News at Six. It was someone talking possibly part of a report, with just the visuals being used on screen.
DA
David
At roughly what time? What was the story? Was this on BBC One or the BBC News Channel?
WA
watchingtv
Something to do with flooding around 18:10, on BBC One, i had only switched on but Jane was talking over a flooding clip.

EDIT: after whatever George presented (lead) as I didnt know he was on location until the end of the bulletin.
DA
David
Are you sure? I thought George Alagiah covered the flooding. There was a video during the suspicious device story. It sounded like the audio was part of the video that Jane Hill was speaking over. They faded it down pretty quickly though. The voice said "It's a bit surreal standing here" or something similar.
WA
watchingtv
Yeah that would be it
DO
dosxuk
Interesting post here from Paul Hudson (BBC Yorkshire weather), about the levels of coverage of recent flooding.

Especially, for the people criticizing us for saying there should have been more coverage of the storm surge when Mandela died, he points out that only a hundred or so more houses have been flooded now than as a result of that flood which got zero coverage.

Then look back to 2007, when over 20,000 homes were flooded up north, yet this got a tiny fraction of the current wall-to-wall coverage. And some people wonder why the national news agenda is described as London centric...
AN
Andrew Founding member
He is right though, and its notable that 'big names' like George Alagiah, Julie Etchingham and Charlie Stayt have only started hosting programmes in wellies now the floods are in the thames valley. No programme was ever done like in Somerset I don't think. Particularly disgraceful for BBC Breakfast which isn't even based in London.

It's being discussed on Question Time tonight and the politicians and the media are both as bad as each other when it comes to London bias.
DA
DAN09690
He is right though, and its notable that 'big names' like George Alagiah, Julie Etchingham and Charlie Stayt have only started hosting programmes in wellies now the floods are in the thames valley. No programme was ever done like in Somerset I don't think. Particularly disgraceful for BBC Breakfast which isn't even based in London.

The BBC sent fairly senior presenters to Somerset over the weekend including Clive Myrie ,Chris Eakin and Ben Brown who spent the end of last week there. Most of these news organisations are based in London as are their most senior presenters which is why it is easy for them to cover a London story with more senior people.
NG
noggin Founding member
It's also a reflection of the "Westminster Bubble". When the floods approach London, Parliament starts to take them more seriously, which means they generate more news... As lots of news is basically reporting what the various flavours of politicians are saying about a subject and what they are saying about what each other are saying about a subject.

That said - the Thames Valley is a pretty significant wealth generating area in the UK - so although the number of homes flooded may be comparable, the costs to the country in lost earnings could be significantly greater?
MA
Magoo
He is right though, and its notable that 'big names' like George Alagiah, Julie Etchingham and Charlie Stayt have only started hosting programmes in wellies now the floods are in the thames valley. No programme was ever done like in Somerset I don't think. Particularly disgraceful for BBC Breakfast which isn't even based in London.

That's definitely the case with the main terrestrial bulletins - but worth noting that Sky News have had presenters in Somerset, Devon, etc for ages now.
DT
DTV
I don't get this whole Anti-London Bias thing. Of course the news will be biased towards London it's the main Economic Centre of the UK and more than 1/8 of the population lives there - if London were to get hit by a flood our Economy would be screwed. It's like the reason they won't build flood defences along the West Coast - it isn't economically worth it. For the news it is more justified to be covering Flooding in the Thames Valley near the Economic Power House of the UK than to cover less than 100 houses getting flooded in Somerset, and when the Dawlish Train line fell down they spent almost a whole day discussing that. It's like if there was a Tornado in Rural Yorkshire it would get less coverage than one in Central London.
EL
elmarko
Economics are not the only measure of something's worth.

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