England shook tonight. I live in Lincoln — just south of the epicentre.
I was just about to go to bed when the plentiful beer cans on my desk began to shake. And then a few fell off. I grabbed my bed which wasn’t coping any better.
Naturally, I’ve legged it downstairs to my housemate. We both go outside to see what’s going on. People have come out of their houses to find what’s going on. Car alarms going off everywhere.
24-hour news is made for this. After we all went inside, we turned on our news channels.
Sky News were straight on it. Literally within fifteen minutes. They had Lisa Dowds, a reporter, on the phone from her home in Leicestershire. They were getting as much information as they could.
And what were the BBC doing? Well… feeling guilty for not turning a bit citizen journalist and filming everyone outside, I just filmed, er, the TV. Or rather, I filmed us waiting to see if the BBC would ever get their act together. The video is at the bottom of this post, and contains some strong language.
Now this may be a light-hearted ’students in a house taking the piss’ type video, but it has a bit of a serious meaning. The BBC were a full half an hour late on this story. And when they did finally pick it up, they continued to broadcast ABC’s World News Tonight. Dear me.
Meanwhile, Sky News have had callers from all over the country. They’ve told us the epicentre was in Lincoln (which, curiously, made us all cheer) and that more tremors could happen. Sure, there wasn’t anything else to add — the drama had happened — but at the end of the day, thousands of people have turned on their televisions to find out what the hell was going on.
4.7 on the Richter scale is nothing in the global perspective — but we were all terrified. Where was the BBC? Why didn’t they explain what was going on? Why did the newsroom go into complete meltdown? Why did they instead run three long adverts; one of which being one for how they’re always there with the breaking news?
Questions that need to be answered tomorrow. The BBC is our public service broadcaster. Yet, tonight, it failed to provide a public service.
Special shout-out to the Lincolnshire Echo. Not only did they post this story in double-quick time, but someone has clearly hit the social-networks to spread the link.
Facebook on top again: Is this the first video of the quake? On second viewing, clearly not.
My video can be viewed here!
The BBC may have been bad on the coverage on their TV news, but you can’t criticise radio coverage which was probably more effective in this situation.
I have to praise BBC Radio Five Live, they had the US geological Survey on the phone within half an hour of the earthquake, which seems to be the first source we knew of where the earthquake was coming from and how big it was. They also got through hundreds of comments and calls from listeners which was no doubt far more than they could have done on BBC News 24
Nice work Dave, shame about the Beeb. But I will always prefer that to Sky News.
We just checked out the video in class, me and my flatmates where doing exactly the same. After nearly dying we wanted some answers and the BBC (which I’m supposed to be paying for) failed to deliver. However, Sky News solved my worries and let me have peace of mind to go to sleep and know that I would survive another day, free from Earthquake terror.
I heard about the earthquake through facebook (like most people) and naturally went to the BBC to hear more about it, this was about 1:10 and they still hadn’t reported it, I googled ‘Earthquake England’ and some news site in Chicago had already reported like 5 mins after it happened, I was shocked that it took the BBC that long!
The video was funny man, the BBC ads just added to the comic value. Good stuff
http://julianobubo.blogspot.com/
Well its clear the BBC needs a bit of updating. At least the video you published was much more entertaining. I thought the video had a good running commentary it made me laugh several times. I liked how you compared it to Sky good reputation building for them the earthquake was awesome! Makes a change.
Hey! I’ve just seen your video as part of a class exercise and thought it was great. I didn’t know it had happened until the next day as i was asleep! I found out from facebook, how typical! You don’t need the tv anymore, facebook holds all the information you’ll ever need to know these days!
Joanne
I guess this is how you know you’ve made it as a journalistic blogger… when your posts are used in University lectures.
We just had a look at your earthquake post during a lecture of ours, which has no doubt been the highlight of my day so far. I was pretty much going through the same thing. After fighting the fear of leaving my bed (which I was convinced for a few minutes was going to collapse through my floor), I joined my flatmates in the ongoing argument with the TV (well, BBC) on when it was going to stop playing with us and start showing some up-to-date news.
I guess we can be thankful for Sky News, or facebook for that matter as even it updated faster than BBC. At least they finally got on the ball. Your video just represents what I think the majority were all thinking.
Hi Dave -
It was interesting to see your take on the BBC 24 coverage lagging behind Sky, and to see the great response to your video, but it was spoiled for me at least by the shouting of “stupid bitch” or is it “stupid bint”? at the TV news reader.
This is what happens when political correctness becomes more important than competence.
Well, you guys would have to start paying an earthquake licence fee if you wanted earthquake coverage. And do you really want that? So, has the Beeb blamed it on global warming yet?