Sky and ITV claim draw on breaking story

net1

Sky News and ITV were both claiming today to have been the first to break the news of American air attacks on Baghdad last night, which heralded the start of the second Gulf war.

Sky News declared victory by claiming it had beaten ITV by a wafer-thin 30 seconds.

But its claims were immediately knocked down by the ITV news editor, David Mannion, who said one of its Baghdad correspondents was live on air on the phone when the missile attack started.

"What Sky is claiming isn't true. How could it be anything else when we were on air when the story broke," he said.

The cable and satellite channel carried a news flash at 2.32am reporting that air raid sirens were being sounded in the Iraqi capital, according to a Sky News spokeswoman.

She claimed Sky News beat ITV News Channel - which was simulcast on ITV1 throughout the night - to get the first report of the Baghdad attacks by 30 seconds, and also scooped the BBC by 10 minutes.

But an ITN spokeswoman countered Sky's claim, saying ITV News Channel reported the breaking news of the start of the war "alongside" Sky News, just after 2.30am.

"Neil Connery, one of our reporters in Baghdad, was on the phone to London studio presenter Helen McCarthy when the attacks started. He heard explosions in the background from cruise missile attacks," she said.

BBC TV carried its first story about the Baghdad raids just after 2.40am on News 24 according to a spokeswoman. It didn't break on BBC1 until 2.50am, she confirmed, when News 24 was simulcast on both channels until Breakfast News at 6.00am.

Sky News had correspondent David Chater on the phone live from Baghdad at 2.34am, with live in-vision reports following later.

In the US, NBC claimed to be the first broadcaster with news of the attacks.

The network's veteran news anchor, Tom Brokaw, broke into scheduled prime time programming on NBC at 9.32pm on the east coast of America (2.32am GMT), with reports of the first explosions.

News channel CNN, the only US broadcaster that still has reporters in Baghdad, carried a first report at 9.36pm (2.36am GMT), with arch-rival Fox News following three minutes later.

Shortly afterwards CNN's Nic Robertson reported live from Baghdad that anti-aircraft fire could be seen in the sky above the city, though he said he had not heard any explosions.

The American networks also carried President George Bush's four-minute speech to the nation declaring the country was at war, which began at 10.15pm, eastern standard time.

As it became clear that the first air raids were not a full-scale attack, CBS, ABC and Fox stations on the west coast of America - three hours behind the eastern seaboard - went back to regular scheduled programming for the start of prime time at 8pm.

But NBC's war coverage, anchored by Brokaw, continued until just before 1am eastern standard time.

On the first day of the war, China allowed what appeared to be balanced reporting by its state controlled media.

In a rare move, state television broadcast live, with simultaneous translation, the address by U.S. President George W. Bush on the start of the war.

Other official news outlets ran the text of Bush's brief speech on their Web sites in both Chinese and English.

State television also carried a later live broadcast from Baghdad by Saddam, also with simultaneous translation.

2old4this

I've tried and failed to remember ever reading such a load of codswallop. So it's come down to claiming "first news" on the strength of a 30-second advantage..??!

It takes my brain longer than that to locate any news at all in amongst the growing clutter of extraneous banners and chaff littered pointlessly across every damned news channel these days. If whatever small children or gerbils are apparently responsible for this visual aberration did not dedicate their resources quite to enthusiastically to the task of making every transmission look like my six year old nephew's homepage, we'd probably get the actual news a full half-day earlier.

There. I feel a whole lot better now.
2old