So it was bad. Many students dead in the Virginia Tech shootings and, like any true news junkie, I read about it first online and then rushed back to watch the rest on TV. Normally there would be no question about where to turn first: Sky News, home of the perpetually rolling disaster. Being a Virgin cable customer, I lost this channel several weeks ago (along with Sky One) and, for the most part, didn't miss it. However, that was before a real breaking news story. Now all I had was BBC News 24 and CNN.
Details came through on the BBC: 21 students dead and a grainy mobile video registering the sound of 27 gunshots. Over on CNN, they had cancelled the commercial breaks and dropped the World Business Report. They were reporting 23 deaths, but as three anchors competed for attention, I switched back to the Beeb.
What I really needed was Sky News - and it was the one station I couldn't get. So I missed Julie Etchingham prowling around the podium in her white suit, all legs and earnest interrogation. I missed Martin Stanford looking like one more shock would trigger a nervous breakdown. Most of all, I missed every snippet of speculation being broadcast as potential truth, every passing postal worker quizzed as to the killer's motivation. I missed the drama and madness of real chaos unfolding in real time. Naturally, I can only speculate on how Sky News covered the event. All I know is that as BBC News 24 was reporting 21 deaths, the Sky News website had "at least 30". Sky turned out to be right; so, in my book, the Virgin audience was being cheated of nine stories.
When to break the news, and how aggressively to do so, is a tough call for editors. The BBC clearly takes a measured approach, often waiting for more than one source where body counts are concerned. Sky, meanwhile, gets a rush of blood whenever rising or potential disaster is present. Last November, they had unbroken live coverage of a potential tsunami - experts were phoned, terrified locals were interviewed, Stanford and co went into overdrive. Two hours later, a wave of no more than 16 inches hit Japan. Sky saved face manfully enough, but it made you realise that the Beeb's more sedate (but still near-continuous) approach was the right one.
But when the black stuff really hits the fan, as it did yesterday, Sky feeds an unspoken public need to be appalled. If 32 students are killed in their classrooms, I need to feel something more than rising concern. And despite the Beeb's objectivity, that's exactly what I felt. Nobody does breaking news like Sky.
