On Friday I spent the morning at the BBC to watch the News at One go out. This was an amazing opportunity and I couldn't believe my luck to be there.
At 8:52 I was collected from the BBC Television Centre lobby in White City, London. I was then shuffled into the morning meeting which takes place everyday promptly at 9:00a.m. The producers and the heads of every department attend this meeting to discuss what news will be delivered and how it will be delivered.
The undisputed news of the day on Friday was that Prime Minister David Cameron had refused to sign a treaty at the European Union summit in Brussels. Essentially, Cameron said the treaty did not include provisions to safeguard The City, the UK's financial sector, and therefore it was "not in the national interest." By refusing to sign this deal the UK has isolated itself from future Eurozone talks, and many feel this was too drastic a step. The implications of this refusal are yet to be determined, but undeniably it marks a change in UK-Euro relations. French President Nicholas Sarkozy said: "There are now clearly two Europes."
In the newsroom that day they asked: What is the story? Is it that Cameron did not sign the treaty, or is it that all (most) other EU members supported the draft treaty? Depending on the audience, national or international, the different departements chose to go with different angles. In the various discussions that took place in this meeting I was surprised how much the debate centred around the public. What does the public need to know? What questions do we need to have answered so that the public understands? Who will the public want to hear from? What is the best way to present this to the public?
I know this is what a news organisation is supposed to do, but to be honest, I think the public can feel quite isolated at times— especially when reporters use industry jargon and PR-speak. Sometimes you have to wonder, is the reporter simply repeating verbatim what someone has told him/her or does he/she actually have a full understanding of the issue.
In this meeting it was clear that the producers were careful to not overstate what their reporters knew about the treaty deal. They didn't know exactly what provisions were so bad in the treaty that the UK was better off being isolated from the rest of Europe than approving the treating. This became the point that they would try to pin down in the rest of the day's broadcasts.
The meeting broke and the producers went back to their teams to start working on the day's stories. The team I followed, Team One, produced the 13:00 news. By 15:00 the BBC had this exclusive interview with Cameron that sought to answer those very questions.
