Sunday 14 November 2010

The Sound of silence

The release by Somali pirates of Paul & Rachel Chandler is very good news and it was Sky news who told me the breaking story this morning when I tuned in at about 7.30 am.

As is my way in the mornings I was flicking between Sky News and BBC News and was surprised, if not slightly annoyed, that the BBC had not one word of this happy ending to an horrible ordeal. In fact I thought "well done" Sky for being agile enough to change it's schedule of stories to give this the prominence that it deserved.

I now find that according to the BBC, a quite different  story was playing behind the scenes this morning. This is best explained here.

The BBC blog is a bit pompous, but my overall feeling is that they were spot on in obeying the law (to the letter), while others, decided to follow ratings rather than the wishes of the Chandler family via the injunction.

What happens next? Will the court hold Sky (and others?) in contempt of court, if they have ignored the injunction and who will report on this story? This is why the BBC is so important and the ownership of press and other media by one overall owner is a very bad idea.

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