Now, usually, I do not criticise 24 hour news channels for their choices of stories. There are thousands of stories out there every day, and each channel has to decide how they are going to fill the airtime, and it's not an easy decision.
But I do have one big criticism to make here, and it involves the Celebrity Big Brother racism row, which I believe Channel 4 and Endemol manufactured, with the help of Jade Goody, in order to get ratings for a programme which otherwise was failing this year.
Some background first though. Every Saturday and Sunday afternoon from 2pm to 5pm, Sky News do a rolling news format of news, sport and weather every 15 minutes, in much the same way the ITN News Channel used to.
For the 4.45pm segment of News, Sport and Weather, as it is labelled on the EPG, Sky went through the main top stories of the day in the first two and a half minutes, all except for one story, which they then spent the next five minutes on. Now this was the lowest ranked of the top stories. They then spent two and half minutes on Sport before going to ads. Which one story justified half the airtime in a 10 minute segment? Jade Goody breaking down in tears to a News Of The World reporter, on video.
The other stories, Changes at the Home Office, dangerous chemicals washing ashore in Devon, British soldier killed in Iraq and the amazing video of marines attempting to rescue a dying colleague, all those only merited 2.5 minutes, whilst Jade Goody merited 5 minutes? I think not.
