Stuart Pinfold

Speed vs accuracy: Immediate reporting of the Lincolnshire earth tremor

So, Dave Lee got very annoyed by the fact that BBC News didn't switch to wall-to-wall coverage of the earthquake earth tremor that hit Market Rasen in Lincolnshire last week...

The 'speed vs accuracy' debate is always an important consideration for any story - and, in general, in TV rolling news, Sky News are first for stories - some of which turn out to be untrue or contain information which is just plain wrong - while the BBC holds back a bit on the accelerator to check and double-check facts. Of course, this doesn't always work and every newsroom (including newspapers and online newsrooms) gets information wrong. But the BBC must check and verify a story from two seperate trusted organisations - for example news agencies, BBC reporters, publicly-funded organisations, etc - before it is broadcast unless it goes via the lawyer.

In the case of the earth tremor, if you do a bit of research, the BBC was both first with the news and more accurate than Sky.

The first thing you have to understand is that Dave and his mates weren't watching BBC News 24 that night - but BBC News. In the early hours of the morning, News 24 and BBC World simulcast the same programme, under the banner 'BBC News'. Therefore, a potential audience of 233m people (2006/7 figures) would also have seen - in between news of Kofi Annan suspending peace talks in Kenya, a London terrorist being convicted for recruiting extremists and two hopefuls for running the world's most politically powerful country preparing for their last debate, viewers would also have heard about a small earth tremor which knocked down a single chimney in a rural English county.

The next thing you have to consider is that the BBC has more outlets than BBC News 24. Radio 5Live, the UK's rolling news and sport network, is only aimed at a domestic audience and only broadcast in the UK - and they did cover the earthquake. Much, much sooner than Sky did...

Broke = Time the outlet first mentioned the story (in any form).
Off = Time the outlet moved on to another story (excluding headlines).
Epicentre = Time the outlet broadcast the correct epicentre (see below).
Intv = Time the outlet first broadcast an interview with an expert.

From this table, we can see that while BBC News broke the story 21 minutes after Sky, 5Live broke the story 6.5 minutes before Sky. We can also see that 5Live broadcast the correct epicentre (see below) before Sky, and had the first interview with an earthquake expert - from the USGS - a whole hour and twenty minutes before Sky. The 5Live interview was then broadcast on News 24 37 minutes before the same contributor appeared on Sky.

So, what were Sky up to for the 57 minutes they spent rolling on what turned out to be a non-story (compared to the 23 seconds on News 24 and 1:15 on 5Live)? They spoke to one of their reporters who was at home in Birmingham, which was later repeated twice in the space of 6 minutes and contained the gem of a question "I know you're still in your own home, but do you know of any structural damage in Birmingham?".

They also spoke to a collection of members of public from around the country on the telephone, while all the time showing (at one point, non-stop for 6 minutes) a meaningless map of England pointing out the cities of Manchester and Birmingham (the two cities where they spoke to Sky reporters from), and the counties of Norfolk, Bedfordshire and Leicestershire, the caption of which was spread out from the west coast of Wales to Lincolnshire. Later, they changed the map to show North Yorkshire, Cheshire, Lincolnshire and Greater London - and, even after saying the epicentre was 15 miles north-east of Lincoln (approximately Market Rasen), showing a large caption pointing out Kingston-upon-Hull - 45 miles away from Lincoln.

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