News Coverage UK Prime Minister & Government Resignations

[bkman1990]

When I saw Tim Willcox earlier on the BBC News Channel. He was so good keeping the show on the road when he presented the first hour from 7pm on his own. He really is a great asset to have when there is very difficult circumstances going on with all of the mooted cuts going on with BBC News in the future.

[Inspector Sands]

https://twitter.com/whats_above_se1/stat...NvmuY8X3Yw

Arena Aviation? 

[valley]

https://twitter.com/whats_above_se1/stat...NvmuY8X3Yw

Arena Aviation? 

I’ve no idea what database feeds the flight tracker systems (as changes seem to apply to most of them) but it does need updating now that A2B own these units.

[NewsGuy]

When I saw Tim Willcox earlier on the BBC News Channel. He was so good keeping the show on the road when he presented the first hour from 7pm on his own. He really is a great asset to have when there is very difficult circumstances going on with  all of the mooted cuts going on with BBC News in the future.

Indeed it was lucky it was someone with his level of experience presenting tonight. Far from the first time Tim has covered live breaking news solo, he's one of the best at it!

[Worzel]

We were so close to ending the day without some vox pops but of course they had to get some in.

Who cares what people in Harrogate think

It's part of the BBC being a public service broadcaster after all.

[DTV]

We were so close to ending the day without some vox pops but of course they had to get some in.

Who cares what people in Harrogate think

It's part of the BBC being a public service broadcaster after all.

But it would be a greater public service not to broadcast vox pops. I mean is there anybody who isn't a journalist who thinks that vox pops actually add anything to news coverage, whenever I've seen anybody discuss them it has always been in negative terms - especially from those who work in public opinion who utterly despise them.

[TJTSW]

GMB in the morning will go to town on this then? Susanna & Ed Balls tomorrow? I’m sure they will have a countdown clock or number card on the desk for when Boris either resigns (which he won’t) or is made to step down as PM by other means… just like when they counted how many days the government ignored GMB interview requests…

[Worzel]

It's part of the BBC being a public service broadcaster after all.

But it would be a greater public service not to broadcast vox pops. I mean is there anybody who isn't a journalist who thinks that vox pops actually add anything to news coverage, whenever I've seen anybody discuss them it has always been in negative terms - especially from those who work in public opinion who utterly despise them.

Sometimes they're bad...

https://youtu.be/5RfK8sgWBms

But sometimes, they actually stumble across a gem...

https://youtu.be/0U_PUbQGA4U

[News48]

Well the coverage of this is so big the 11:00pm hour of Newsday was cancelled.

[Andrew]

GMB in the morning will go to town on this then? Susanna & Ed Balls tomorrow? I’m sure they will have a countdown clock or number card on the desk for when Boris either resigns (which he won’t) or is made to step down as PM by other means… just like when they counted how many days the government ignored GMB interview requests…

I’m guessing a minister won’t be made available so they’ll spend half the morning showing an empty contribution studio and make out how it’s a disgrace they aren’t addressing the all important GMB audience (in reality annoyed as it prevents them for getting a good juicy clip to go viral on the socials)

[scottishtv]

But it would be a greater public service not to broadcast vox pops.

As Brekkie says, they can sometimes be funny. Hopefully I'm not going too off topic but this radio one still tickles me (it's safe for work):

https://radiofail.wordpress.com/2011/08/...-pop-fail/

[Ash101]

https://twitter.com/scottygb/status/1544610532929507331

[DTV]

But it would be a greater public service not to broadcast vox pops.

As Brekkie says, they can sometimes be funny.

But while they occasionally produce a funny clip and might be alright for light-hearted stories, using them for political or issue-based stories is fundamentally wrong and should, in my view, be banned outright. I wasn't entirely being unserious when I suggested that it would be a greater public service not to use them.

Vox pops purport to be representations of public opinion when they really aren't. Firstly, they aren't demographically representative and there is a huge amount of selection bias involved in their creation. Being filmed in town centres during the middle of the day skews the participants significantly towards older people - an unrepresentative sample is bad enough, but worse when it doesn't even include the median voter. Secondly, the final vox pops used in the finished report are often not even representative of the entire lot filmed. Due to a misguided desire for balance, journalists will often pick an equal number from each side of the argument - even when opinion polls show the matter is one-sided. This gives viewers a distorted view of what the public thinks, which just shouldn't be allowed.

Results from weighted, nationally representative opinion polls are the only thing that should be reported as a representation of public opinion. While I will grant broadcasters that polls historically took days to produce, that just isn't true anymore - thanks to internet panels, pollsters can produce representative, large sample polls in a matter of hours. Yesterday, YouGov had a snap poll (s=3009) out before the News at Ten. There is just no excuse for favouring such a distortive method of gauging public opinion, when better methods are available. A few months ago, the BBC was rightly censured for using the results of a Twitter poll as data in an article. Vox pops should be in that same category when used on political/contentious issues.

[Brekkie]

Is just no competition when a real news story breaks.

[jaykhan24]

Politics live from BBC TWO now on BBC News channel on a major breaking news day.