From 10 pm last night I had to listen to Radio Suffolk to find out what was going on about the storm surge, otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue !
Oh wow. In years to come when we all tell tales of the Great Floods of 2013, you can say "I had to listen to Radio Suffolk". I'm sure you'll get over the experience.
That's precisely what local radio is for. If the national news could have done anything more it should have been to direct people to their local station.
I don't know who hires the Editors in newsrooms these days but this has been a week of poor decisions. The Nigella thing was bonkers too. Why was that headline news?!! She bakes cakes and likes a bit of showbiz sherbert - so what? How does that affect the average family in Dorking?
Now Mandelas death of course is newsworthy, apparently moreso than the plight of masses of Britons who tonight are in rescue centres wondering if they'll have a home to go back to after the worst tidal surge in 60 years.
The fact the BBC has 6 channels and couldn't muster the wherewithall to cover both stories, is a worrying indictment on the state of our public broadcaster.
I have always been pro-beeb, and don't mind paying the licence fee, but sometimes they really do give the impression that they live in a bubble and are indifferent to the concept of serving the public - the whole raison d'etre of the BBC.
Well said. Coverage by all means, but please not wall-to-wall, and as an earlier poster said, Mandella will still be dead tomorrow. We have genuinely urgent matters to deal with.
Why was my comment ignorant? It was covered, I watched the news last night and the storms were covered after they covered the death of Nelson Mandela a significant figure in the modern world. We have storms every year in this country sorry if I can't get excited about yet another one. Oh and by the way when the storms were hitting London and the South East recently many people complained because of all the focus on the South East and London so they can't have it both ways.
Elliecat
The fact you think the story is about the storms says it all. Damaging as they were, they were mostly in the day. The real danger was the tidal surge. This one is the worst since 1953, which killed 326 people in Britain alone (don't forget this affects the Netherlands and Belgium too). Last night around 10pm a Tidal surge was due to be hitting the East coast of the UK. Just as people wanted to hear the plight of the thousands of evacuees and their homes, our TV news channels dropped the story like a child gets bored of a toy.
This is why people are angry with the TV News Channels. If they cannot cope with 2 significant news stories simultaneously then one wonders who is running our channels.
I didn't see a lot of the coverage as I was in bed.
It's a difficult one. Did local people have updates on the radio regarding the situation???? I do think BBC if they was not covering at local level then it was wrong.
As for the Nelson Mandela coverage. Of course it's going to get a lot of media time. To many he has been one of most significant people in the world whether one likes him or not. It doesn't matter if he died as an old man or not. As people remember Kennedy, Churchill and Martin Luther King in 60 years and more many will talk about Mandela. If the people mentioned above had passed away yesterday with the 24hr news we now have they would have got the same coverage.
I don't think anything cynical was going on or a delibrate attempt to ignore the floods, two big stories occurred at the sametime (probably rare on this scale) and there has been errors perhaps misjudgement but that is all.
I didn't see a lot of the coverage as I was in bed.
It's a difficult one. Did local people have updates on the radio regarding the situation???? I do think BBC if they was not covering at local level then it was wrong.
As for the Nelson Mandela coverage. Of course it's going to get a lot of media time. To many he has been one of most significant people in the world whether one likes him or not. It doesn't matter if he died as an old man or not. As people remember Kennedy, Churchill and Martin Luther King in 60 years and more many will talk about Mandela. If the people mentioned above had passed away yesterday with the 24hr news we now have they would have got the same coverage.
I don't think anything cynical was going on or a delibrate attempt to ignore the floods, two big stories occurred at the sametime (probably rare on this scale) and there has been errors perhaps misjudgement but that is all.
The significance of Mandela is not in question - it's the response of our News Channels and their seeming inability to multitask 2 news stories. Yes, local radio is of course key, but there are those who are not in the areas affected and don't have access to local radio but need to know the plight of relatives, property etc. These 9000 evacuees I presume aren't all spinsters cut off from the world but have friends families and interests that stretch beyond the East coast.
The dichotomy between coverage of Mandela and the Tidal Surge is false - they could have covered both - but our broadcasters misjudged it.
The significance of Mandela is not in question - it's the response of our News Channels and their seeming inability to multitask 2 news stories. Yes, local radio is of course key, but there are those who are not in the areas affected and don't have access to local radio but need to know the plight of relatives, property etc. These 9000 evacuees I presume aren't all spinsters cut off from the world but have friends families and interests that stretch beyond the East coast.
The dichotomy between coverage of Mandela and the Tidal Surge is false - they could have covered both - but our broadcasters misjudged it.
Yeah, BBC 1 and News gave us an hour of Nelson Mandela at 10 PM last night - they clearly went for the quantity over quality approach though, as they were mostly repeating themselves. Then the London news came on and its was a further 10 minutes of Nelson Mandela.
A quick ten minutes of "in other news" would hardly have killed them.
Peddling grief porn is far more important to our media than reporting the news. I suspect we will have another Diana situation here if the media get their way. Elton John will be hastily rewriting Candle In the Wind again as we speak.
Theres only so much you need to know about someones death, theres no need to repeat it over and over again until your ears bleed.
I had no idea about the severity of the storm until i looked at the paper thismorning and scrolled all the way down. Finally found some pages about it at the bottom about people losing their houses and people dying in the storm. Wouldn't have even seen it if i didnt thoroughly read the paper.
Surely it's the job of the news to cover more than one story, especially as the UK is going through one of the worse storms, a lot of pensioners rely on tv for news as they don't have internet.
To be fair those in most urgent need of news had already been evacuated or told they should evacuate much earlier in the day
Peddling grief porn is far more important to our media than reporting the news. I suspect we will have another Diana situation here if the media get their way. Elton John will be hastily rewriting Candle In the Wind again as we speak.
I think there's a bit of a difference between t Nelson Mandela and Princess Diana.
There was no need at all for the BBC to show that documentary at such a late hour and cancel 'This Week'. They could have kept it for a more appropriate time. They could have simply made it their main story on the 24 hour News Channel and covered the storms as the second.
On Twitter there is nothing but media people boasting that they have more coverage of the Mandela story than their rivals and politicians producing endless tributes, all trying to out do each other in how much they were moved and inspired by Mandela.
I liked Mandela and was impressed by his forgiveness, but he was a foreign leader and this seems to me like people exploiting his legacy for their own means. A simple announcement would suffice, this is not an evolving story. Instead with no extra news to report they are desperately trying to find any one who had any connection for an interview.
I just switched off, the media will end up talking to themselves. Any one know how many days have to go by before its safe to switch on again?
I appreciate that the death Mandela is huge story, but please let's get this in perspective. He was a very elderly man, one who has been poor health for years. His death is very sad but not at all unexpected,
I'm quite appalled therefore that the UK news channels have decided to provide us with wall to wall coverage of this story and totally ignore the storms battering out Coast right now. People are being evacuated from their homes, it's the worst storm for sixty odd years and there is likely to be a great deal of devastation a few weeks before Christmas. Many people will be watching for updates, either for themselves or family.
I've had to switch the news channels off. It's made really angry for some strange reason, by all means report on Mandela's death but god don't ignore what's happening here right now.
I totally agree with this , Parts of my home City were under 4ft of water last night, Power outages all over, Homes flooded, and people cut off, It was total ****ing Kaos in Hull.
It's ****ing disgraceful that it was only mentioned as a bit of "localised Flooding" on the news as a side story , then it was back to the Mandela tributes by Cameron and other world leaders, Had to turn the news off in the end, I just got sick of all the sycophantic knob swallowing tributes being paid to a dead guy, Life goes on
Edit, We have a Tidal barrier that was lowered across the River Hull at teatime, it made no difference whatsoever.
We were not told to prepare or evacuate or anything like that, The city and the emergency services were caught with their pants down, I received a phone call from a friend who lives closer to the Humber than i do , His exact words to me were the water is coming your way and its deep, Get everything upstairs stay safe.
To see a river flowing past your home is frightening, We were very lucky we live on an incline, Homes 50 yards away were flooded 2ft deep. they lost everything sadly.
No disrespect to Nelson Mandela, but I was a bit surprised when his death was the ONLY news story to be reported on the ten o'clock news when there are floods and evacuees in part of Britain. And then when they went to the local news in NI, he was the only story on our news too!
There are other stories to cover.
Same here I kept waiting for the next bits - especially about the storm and the flooding - no mention.
This is just an extreme example of the complete and total lack of judgement that happens all the time by BBC editors. They're like little kids - a significant story breaks and they wet themselves and go into total overkill. The Glasgow helicopter crash was typical - of course it was a big story, though you would have thought nothing else was happening in the world on that day if you watched the News channel. Desperately trying to fill virtually the entire time, although nothing was actually happening. And that just as many people will gave been killed on UK roads that day.
The storm situation (and other domestic news) was shamefully neglected last evening. The idiots in the newsrooms have absolutely no idea whatsoever of perspective.
I complained to the BBC this morning via their website, and I hope thousands have done likewise.
Comments
Well at least she's OUR queen!
Oh wow. In years to come when we all tell tales of the Great Floods of 2013, you can say "I had to listen to Radio Suffolk". I'm sure you'll get over the experience.
That's precisely what local radio is for. If the national news could have done anything more it should have been to direct people to their local station.
Well said. Coverage by all means, but please not wall-to-wall, and as an earlier poster said, Mandella will still be dead tomorrow. We have genuinely urgent matters to deal with.
Elliecat
The fact you think the story is about the storms says it all. Damaging as they were, they were mostly in the day. The real danger was the tidal surge. This one is the worst since 1953, which killed 326 people in Britain alone (don't forget this affects the Netherlands and Belgium too). Last night around 10pm a Tidal surge was due to be hitting the East coast of the UK. Just as people wanted to hear the plight of the thousands of evacuees and their homes, our TV news channels dropped the story like a child gets bored of a toy.
This is why people are angry with the TV News Channels. If they cannot cope with 2 significant news stories simultaneously then one wonders who is running our channels.
It's a difficult one. Did local people have updates on the radio regarding the situation???? I do think BBC if they was not covering at local level then it was wrong.
As for the Nelson Mandela coverage. Of course it's going to get a lot of media time. To many he has been one of most significant people in the world whether one likes him or not. It doesn't matter if he died as an old man or not. As people remember Kennedy, Churchill and Martin Luther King in 60 years and more many will talk about Mandela. If the people mentioned above had passed away yesterday with the 24hr news we now have they would have got the same coverage.
I don't think anything cynical was going on or a delibrate attempt to ignore the floods, two big stories occurred at the sametime (probably rare on this scale) and there has been errors perhaps misjudgement but that is all.
The significance of Mandela is not in question - it's the response of our News Channels and their seeming inability to multitask 2 news stories. Yes, local radio is of course key, but there are those who are not in the areas affected and don't have access to local radio but need to know the plight of relatives, property etc. These 9000 evacuees I presume aren't all spinsters cut off from the world but have friends families and interests that stretch beyond the East coast.
The dichotomy between coverage of Mandela and the Tidal Surge is false - they could have covered both - but our broadcasters misjudged it.
The sad thing is, I can't tell if you're joking.
Anyway, I quite like The Onion's summation of Mandela's death: Nelson Mandela Becomes First Politician To Be Missed
Yeah, BBC 1 and News gave us an hour of Nelson Mandela at 10 PM last night - they clearly went for the quantity over quality approach though, as they were mostly repeating themselves. Then the London news came on and its was a further 10 minutes of Nelson Mandela.
A quick ten minutes of "in other news" would hardly have killed them.
An HGV driver died yesterday in Bathgate when his lorry was blown over! That wasn't exactly like a lawn chair being blown over!
RIP Nelson Mandela and all the victims of the latest storm.
There really was a thread complaining it hadn't been on the news. I don't think EVERYONE in it was joking, alarmingly.
I had no idea about the severity of the storm until i looked at the paper thismorning and scrolled all the way down. Finally found some pages about it at the bottom about people losing their houses and people dying in the storm. Wouldn't have even seen it if i didnt thoroughly read the paper.
To be fair those in most urgent need of news had already been evacuated or told they should evacuate much earlier in the day
I think there's a bit of a difference between t Nelson Mandela and Princess Diana.
Sorry but that's inaccurate its front page news all over as can be seen by just these few
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-weather-live-storm-updates-2891744
http://news.sky.com/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk/
http://www.itv.com/news/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
On Twitter there is nothing but media people boasting that they have more coverage of the Mandela story than their rivals and politicians producing endless tributes, all trying to out do each other in how much they were moved and inspired by Mandela.
I liked Mandela and was impressed by his forgiveness, but he was a foreign leader and this seems to me like people exploiting his legacy for their own means. A simple announcement would suffice, this is not an evolving story. Instead with no extra news to report they are desperately trying to find any one who had any connection for an interview.
I just switched off, the media will end up talking to themselves. Any one know how many days have to go by before its safe to switch on again?
As opposed to the conservative left.
I totally agree with this , Parts of my home City were under 4ft of water last night, Power outages all over, Homes flooded, and people cut off, It was total ****ing Kaos in Hull.
It's ****ing disgraceful that it was only mentioned as a bit of "localised Flooding" on the news as a side story , then it was back to the Mandela tributes by Cameron and other world leaders, Had to turn the news off in the end, I just got sick of all the sycophantic knob swallowing tributes being paid to a dead guy, Life goes on
Edit, We have a Tidal barrier that was lowered across the River Hull at teatime, it made no difference whatsoever.
We were not told to prepare or evacuate or anything like that, The city and the emergency services were caught with their pants down, I received a phone call from a friend who lives closer to the Humber than i do , His exact words to me were the water is coming your way and its deep, Get everything upstairs stay safe.
To see a river flowing past your home is frightening, We were very lucky we live on an incline, Homes 50 yards away were flooded 2ft deep. they lost everything sadly.
Same here I kept waiting for the next bits - especially about the storm and the flooding - no mention.
The storm situation (and other domestic news) was shamefully neglected last evening. The idiots in the newsrooms have absolutely no idea whatsoever of perspective.
I complained to the BBC this morning via their website, and I hope thousands have done likewise.
You couldn't make it up.