John Handelaar said at June 25th, 2007 at 10:51pm

What Sky’s doing has value. But Ethel with her floating ironing board can’t tell anybody in the area whether it’s going to rain again soon, how long the standing water’s likely to be there, or how much longer the fire pumps are going to take draining her street.

Or in other words, they’re both doing it wrong.

Adam Bowie said at June 25th, 2007 at 11:21pm

Ah, but what’s most interesting is not necessarily the same as what’s most newsworthy. There may only be a relatively small number of people still “trapped” (and I really mean temporarily inconvenienced), yet tens of thousands more are suffering from flooded homes, have had to abandon their cars, rescue their livestock or whatever.

No, I wouldn’t want to have to spend the night on the top floor of the building I work in (ahem), but the story is more than just those relatively few people. That’s not to say that Sky hasn’t got a scoop in getting an interview, just that the wider picture is as important, if not more so, than human interest pieces.

(Not having seen the report, I take all this back if turns out that a torrential flood was about to wash away the person on the other end of the phone.)

Joff said at June 26th, 2007 at 10:12am

Nice bit of Google Maps mashing-up going on:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/fixed_article/0,,30100-1272280,00.html