In The 24 Hour Newsroom
By Neil Dodds
25 July, 2006
The Independent has a fascinating look at the dynamics of the BBC News 24 newsroom.
The feature is available here, but thanks to the Indie's archiving system you'll have to pay for it if you don't click quickly.
The newspaper visited the BBC on Thursday 20 July, the bloodiest day to date in the current Middle East crisis. The BBC, it reports, has responded to criticism following 2004's tsunami disaster that it didn't have its biggest names in place quickly enough: In this big story, it has heavyweight correspondents in Beirut and Tyre, and also in Cyprus, where British evacuees were being shipped.
At home, it's Britain's hottest July day on record, a story the newsroom is also expected to cover (and one which edged Lebanon from the front pages of the newspapers the next day).
The London newsroom is the BBC's news effort's nerve centre. Led by overnight editor Andrew Clark, the team watch the wires and televised feeds from Reuters and AP. Fans of user-generated content will be heartened to hear that part of their time is devoted to monitoring photographs and emails from viewers, and using them on the BBC's site if required. Reporters can't be everywhere, and as the scenes following last July's terrorist attacks on London's Underground system demonstrated, citizens with mobile phone cameras can provide on-the-spot images from the front lines.
The Indie reports that the internet's interactivity is used by viewers in other ways. The newsroom recieves regular complaints from viewers about bias, particularly over the Israel-Palestine crisis. Many of these emails seem to be generated by activist groups, who organise to "cut and paste" criticism in emails then sent to the newsroom. "There's quite a lot of people who write in regularly and complain that we are pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel," says Clark.
The editors are at pains to stress that they work hard to get the balance right. World news editor Jon Williams adds, "The whole story about Israel and Palestine is about two competing narratives. The challenge for us is giving the audience an insight into those competing narratives. We have been pretty careful to ensure that the assets we have deployed have been split between those on the Lebanese side of the border and those on the Israeli side."
The 24 hours that follow show how newsrooms have to respond to global issues with varying audience demands. There seems to be little of the "rolling news" that drew criticism during the Gulf War, when broadcasters seemed to report the same events on an endless loop, and were then pressurised to report on news events "as they happened" to break the monotony, sometimes leading to inaccurate stories. The BBC distanced itself from this kind of newsgathering following the attacks on London last year, when it argued it was better to be accurate than to be first.
Like other 24 hour broadcasters, the BBC works to a schedule of hourly bulletins, linked with in-depth reports, special programming and news roundups from partner channels (in the Beeb's case, this is ABC News in the US). Because of changing audience structures (Asian, European and American audiences peak at different times), it is possible to repeat some high-profile interviews or special reports. There is a constant shuffling of presenters and reporting personnel. The Independent reports that the BBC has succeeded in luring some of its top presenters to the news channel - including its early hours slots.
At 6.00AM GMT, the broadcast switches to the channel's two-hour lifestyle-ish morning programme, Breakfast.
While the Middle East crisis dominates, the night is punctuated with special interviews and reports. Sometimes these will be broadcastas they happen, but they'll be edited for use in the main bulletins later. Sometimes other stories break, such as reports of a rescue attempt to save people trapped in a collapsed building in Nigeria, which comes through at 2.40AM.
Programming the line-up of the day's news begins around 9.00AM, when senior editorial staff gather for conference. The previous day's coverage is examined for potential follow-ups, successes and criticism, though the Indie reports that yesterday's coverage met with much praise - the result, it seems, of the prescient decision to open a news bureau in Beirut in May 2006, following 15 years of absence from the city. The BBC now has 30 staff in Beirut.
"Having a permanent presence in the city means we can move people in and out because we know which buttons to push. The advantage we have over Sky and ITN is that they will be working out of a hotel room," says Williams. He adds that the BBC has close relations with the British foreign office and the ministry of defence.
The evacuation from Lebanon is said to be the biggest movement of British people since the evacuation from Dunkirk during the second world war. It's a big story for the broadcaster, which has posted teams on the boats and on the docks. Coverage comes as brief interviews with fleeing citizens, as well as interviews with major figures in the conflict. Some reporters have been covering the story for over 12 hours on the trot. The team judges Thursday to be another successful day in the life of the newsroom - but 24 hour newsrooms roll on.
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