Leading the bulletins
- 1 Mar 07, 04:15 PM
大象传媒 viewers - and listeners - led the way yesterday and helped shape our coverage as never before.
It all started with an unusually high number of calls mid-morning to 大象传媒 Cambridgeshire from people saying they were having big problems with their cars, which prompted our Cambridge TV producer to call some other local radio stations. They were getting similar calls. She tipped off News 24, and our reporter Nicola Pearson began to make her own inquiries. It was clear that the story was growing.
Around 2.30pm, we put out the first flash on the story and presenter Jon Sopel asked viewers to text us on 61124 if they'd had car trouble.
The next few minutes were extraordinary. Within seconds the first few messages were starting to come in and then as we began to read some out, there was an absolute torrent of texts - all reporting the same symptoms: spluttering engines; cars losing power; breaking down, etc.
It seemed as though the problem was affecting a much wider area than we'd thought. By now, our producers were ringing garages and experts - they confirmed that not only was there a serious problem, but that garages were running out of the parts needed to deal with it.
The texts were coming in faster than we'd ever seen before - we rang back some of our texters and put them on the air, which prompted yet more texts and e-mails. We started to throw out other news, and by 3.30 it was clear we had a major story which would lead the bulletins.
We asked the supermarkets for their response, phoned yet more experts to try and find out what the problem was, and how our viewers could fix it, and we put up a map showing the areas over Britain that viewers were texting us from.
For the first time, the top story on News 24 was genuinely 鈥淵our News" - so thanks!
PS. In the last 24 hours we've already received more than 4,000 e-mails on this.
Sue Nix is afternoon editor of 大象传媒 News
A few viewers complained that by detailing the fault we were handing crucial information to the enemy. Here's one complaint:
It is true that Paul Wood's report did give very detailed information - however, in no way did this endanger the lives of our troops. An official report into the death of 10 British servicemen in Iraq made clear what the problem was - this was widely reported in many media outlets (including the Ten O'Clock News) at the time. 
