It got there first, it did it best, and now it’s on a roll (Independent)

Nick Pollard explains far more eloquently than I the reasons why I prefer BBC News 24 over Sky News:

[Sky News] is deliberately more concerned with the human interest angle of stories than the BBC: a report about the first baby born in tsunami-hit Sri Lanka in 2005 was unlikely to have made it on to News 24; even if it had done so, such an item would not have ended with a mawkish coda from the reporter “… and she’s beautiful.”

The channel is also over-branded, say some: if viewers are not watching the Sky News Weather or the Sky News Money slot, they are being asked to press the red button for Sky News Active. Meanwhile, the word “Sky” – in brash red, white and blue – is sometimes on screen in three places.

Pollard is unabashed. “You have to stand out. And, in a way, you have to shout to your viewers.”

I don’t want mawkish human interest stories, I want stories that explain the true global impact of events, and analyse them in this light. Why on Earth is the first child born following the tsunami in any way newsworthy?

I don’t want news channels to shout at me, and I certainly do not want to watch a news channel with so little taste that it’s head can say something as frankly disgusting as this:

Sky has had “a good tsunami”. Such a feeling is certainly evident inside the company’s HQ

If someone from the Beeb had said this, there would be resignations.