THE ATTACKS ON LEBANON: STATE INTERFERENCE IN TODAY'S ITN LUNCHTIME BROADCAST?

Portland Bill | 23.07.2006 11:57 | Lebanon War 2006 | Anti-militarism | World

ITN lunchtime broadcast knocked off air at beginning of lead story.

Today's lunchtime broadcast at 1155am was unceremoniously knocked off air for it's entire duration of 5 minutes without explanation, just as the bulletin opened with the newsreaders lead story that the UN's humanitarian chief Jan Egeland, who has been touring bomb ravaged Beirut, lambasted Israel's attacks on Lebanon as "a violation of humanitarian law".

The only alternative lunchtime broadcast on terrestrial television was on BBC1 at 12pm, which was broadcast without interruption, but led with a much watered down version of the Lebanon crisis, with the UN humanitarian chiefs comments reduced to a footnote.

Portland Bill

Comments

Hide the following 9 comments

dont be so bloody stupid

23.07.2006 15:45

do be so idiotic. how orwellian a culture do u think we live in. suppose you have not heard of BBC 24 then. The coverage at 16:00 had at least a 3 minute report on the UN's Humanitarian Advisor with significan comment afterwards by Ben Brown the BBC's lead in Beirut and Lebanon. The interruptions on ITV were probably no more than simple technical difficulties that occurr frequently during reports from conflict zones and remote regions.

I think some of you have too much time on your hands and should perhaps re-direct your energies into bettering society pro-actively instead of inflicting your drivvel on the rest of us.

voice of reason

Oh we are so grateful!

23.07.2006 19:50

Thank you "voice of reason". Glad you yourself had enough" time on your hands" to offer such pointless criticism.

no cut out during conflict zone report

23.07.2006 21:34

voice of reason also seems to have missed the fact that the ENTIRE show was knocked off the air. I saw it personally. the newsreader was cut off mid-flow, seconds into the show, the picture cutting to a blank screen and a holding page for the entire show. most unusual. no explanation was given for the loss of broadcast.

the programme wasn't in the middle of a report from a conflict zone when that happened!

her indoors

censorship

23.07.2006 22:46

BBC broadcasting center at white-city has an MI5 office,
it was put in during ww2 to censor all news output - it's still there.
they claim it's empty, but why is it not used for something else if that is the case?

also,
no damned mention of the lebanon protests this weekend on any u.k. tv that i have seen - only on cnn in the middle of the night!

all the web-linked cctv camera's at radio-london have been disabled this weekend too.
they must really be scared about this subject.
the last time that was done was when they blew the underground up.
interestingly, on that day they disabled all the cams at 7:30am.

dave

website was offline too

23.07.2006 23:34

When I read the intial article, my instict was to try the ITN website. My attempt failed. Does this not suggest a technical problem rather than censorship?

mad scotsman

Technical problems with both offsite web server AND onsite broadcast equipment?

24.07.2006 09:36

At the same time? That's a pretty wide ranging technical problem.

hmm

ITN employee speculates loss of show could be due to a "power surge"

24.07.2006 11:41

it's interesting that the 1155 show went off air, coz it meant lunchtime viewers were reliant on the bbc coverage of the UN statement, which was much watered down, although they did it elevate it to headline news in their evening edition

an ITN employee has speculated the loss of the show could be due to a "power surge", although it's puzzling that no public statement has been issued

taciturn

Broadcast Jamming

25.07.2006 08:51

The jamming was probably organised by Mossad. In all likelyhood they carried out this operation via their shadow operations, MI5 and MI6.

John324

they're all after me

26.07.2006 12:16

Paranoia

1. A psychotic disorder characterized by delusions of persecution with or without grandeur, often strenuously defended with apparent logic and reason.

them