News Channels and Crisis Reporting

Whether big cities like New York, London and Madrid are equipped to handle such emergencies like the recent bombings or not, the news channels (BBC & CNN) seem to be well equipped to handle marathon coverage like the one we saw last week. I am told that they also sacrifice some ad spots to cover the Breaking News.

Beeb is not in the best of financial health and we hear about layoffs quite regularly. It would be interesting to see how Al Jazeera TV can make an impact in this space. Riz Khan has been one of the high profile guys who have joined AlJazeera. AlJazeera has deep pockets (the exact capital investment is not known) and hence they are confident that they can compete with the biggies like BBC and CNN. To succeed in the news channel space, AlJazeera needs to build credibility and trust, especially in the Western world. If they are truly impartial (that’s what they claim), we’ll have more choice. To some extent, BBC and CNN have become a bit predictable and dish out the same stuff. If I switch from BBC to CNN, I get to hear the same story read out by a different news anchor. The priority, which each channel gives to the various news, also seems to be quite similar.