The Paris attacks, breaking news and the need for firmer editorial hands
The tragic events in Paris over the last week bring to light important questions about the way news is covered, writes Raymond Snoddy.
It has been the best of times for the British media covering the tragedy unfolding in Paris – and just occasionally the worst.
A story of such significance proves once again, if any proof were needed, that 24-hour news channels are absolutely essential.
They may cost around £50 – £60 million a year and can be terribly thin on quiet days, but when the balloon goes up that is where we, the audience, want to be.
The argument that their days have gone, supplanted by online and the delights of Twitter, seem just plain wrong.
The “breaking news” may most often happen these days on Twitter and Facebook simply because they have so many millions of “reporters.”
Social media does indeed provide the alerts, the trip wires of rapidly moving events, but then the audience is handed on to the non-stop television stations to show what is happening, at least in cities.
Even in the internet age it is television news that provides the shop window for the additional online offerings of the broadcasters.
It might be nice if you could have 24-hour television channels only when big stories are running – pop-up news channels – but that is hardly practical.
Then when you have seen all there is to see, or can be filmed, it becomes the turn of the newspapers to fix the final images, express the outrage and, at their best, explain what it all means.
That at least is the theory, if not always matched by the reality.
There is still a mantra in rolling television newsrooms that “live” is good, even if there is actually very little news to show.
One can only admire the ability of presenters and reporters to keep talking when they know little and have even less of substance to say.
There was Eamonn Holmes on Sky looking at French cops in the St-Denis district admitting that things were a bit “sketchy” at the moment as the number of arrests and dead varied by the minute.
The raid is still on-going, we were told, even though the pictures showed no such thing from behind the police cordon 400 metres away from whatever action that may, or may not be taking place.
There was even time to turn the cameras round on the massed observers all the same distance away and with the same state of knowledge.
Meanwhile the only real news was coming out of the French prosecutor’s office, presumably by phone or email.
The need to fill the void over the weekend led to Sky’s Kate Burley’s infamous sad dog moment and the desperation to get news on the initial attacks led to insensitivity, this time by the BBC, as a survivor was apparently asked to count the number of bodies around them.
Sadness in his eyes #parisattacks pic.twitter.com/zzPxLHm1EP
— Kay Burley (@KayBurley) November 15, 2015
Reporters who blub may be commendably human but don’t offer the best service to their viewers.
Meanwhile Matt Frei of Channel 4 News on Sunday was both brave and professional, and live naturally, as he continued reporting as hordes ran past him in the belief that another terrorist attack was under way.
Alas the perils of live again. It was a false alarm and only managed to demonstrate, understandably, how edgy Parisians were following the mass murder.
Perhaps not much can be done about the messy nature of breaking news on live television. But it would help if firmer editorial hands took control rather than lingering endlessly on live pictures of a nearby scene when nothing new has happened for an hour or more in either of the split screens.
More explanation would surely be better and that can be often be provided by studio presenters and specialists than by live journalists in the street largely cut off from any possibility of doing real reporting.
If nothing new is actually happening, after a summary of the latest state of play, would it be sacrilegious to actually cover some other stories?
There is the remaining problem of choice of language in some parts of the BBC. The Radio 4 news is still referring to “Islamist militants” as if it were a worthy career choice.
If editors can’t bear to use the word “terrorists” and the BBC always insists it is not a banned term, then possibly jihadists might be more precise.
As for the newspapers most expressed what almost certainly would be the majority public view that the time has come to take military action against IS in Syria. To that extent the papers have been playing their traditional megaphone role trying to bounce politicians into action, whether wise in the long term or not.
There were also less bloodthirsty contributions. On the back page of Tuesday’s Sun there were the words of the Marseillaise to sing at Wembley with a helpful translation on Page 58 under the headline Sing For France.
And that is exactly what the England fans did. As Didier Deschamps the French manager said: “Sport is symbolism.”
The Sun has the best headline of the match: Liberté, égalité, fraternité SOLIDARITÉ.
The papers, The Sun included, also highlighted the fact that Islamic State was a version of Islam but that Islam now needed the reformation it has never had.
The story of the latest developments in Islam was best told in The Times by Usama Hasan, an imam and researcher in Islamic studies.
Reform actually goes back to Ottoman decrees of 1839 and 1858 which abolished poll taxes on non-Muslims and gave equal citizenship rights to Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Isis follows a fundamentalist and selective reading of scripture which is both ahistorical and heretical.
“They are linked to Islam and the Koran in the way the Ku Klux Klan and Anders Breivik are linked to Christianity and the Bible,” argues Hasan, who cites many reform groups already at work around the Muslin world.
If there have been such insights on 24-news television news they were difficult to spot.
Sorry, must go now to check out live TV and see if things have moved on.
Nothing new except that there is now a line of fire engines – though no sign of a fire – as well as all the police milling about doing nothing on the dual screens.
Then things stir and we have the true value of rolling news – an impromptu press conference with the French Interior Minster and public prosecutor. But it was a long wait.