Photo: Xerones @ Flickr, cc licenced

Watching the stories about the floods in Yorkshire, it’s been interesting to switch between Sky News and BBC News 24.

BBC News 24 is talking to journalists, rescue workers, firemen, policemen, etc. The questions from the studio are the standard “What’s the latest where you are?”.

Sky News - Anna Botting, who is live on-air - is talking directly to people who are trapped. People stuck upstairs, workmen who are ‘really quite cold now’ in their warehouses, people stuck in their cars. The journalist’s questions are sympathetic, interesting, warm.

Which do you think is the most interesting?

Clue: it’s not what the BBC is doing.

No, I’m not taking XFM’s advice: but I notice that Sky News’s Paul Bromley has been ill recently.

He posts…

I have been off sick for the last week.

So your comments, although submitted, have not been read, moderated or posted - apologies.

I will read all your remarks and add the relevant ones to the various posts.

If you only have one person doing a job, and don’t bother with any sickness cover, then it smacks of a company that doesn’t care. Would they do that with their sports news or business news? Of course not. So why do they feel that their website is any less important? A peculiar admission.