More comparisons

My Twitter feed alerted me early to the news today that former Scottish Labour MP turned Labour councillor Jim Sheridan had apparently been caught red-handed posting on Facebook "For almost all my adult life I have had the utmost respect and empathy for the Jewish community and their historic suffering. No longer due to what they and their Blairite plotters are doing to my party and the long suffering people of Britain who need a radical Labour government." Later in the day Labour suspended him. 

I've been watching how it's been reported. 

The BBC News website, along with Sky News and ITV News, reported the story. Oddly though, for three hours after first publishing its report on the story, the BBC failed to give its readers the gist of Mr Sheridan's post  - unlike Sky, who quoted it in full, and ITV, who gave a summary of it. 

The short BBC report simply confined itself to alluding somewhat cryptically to "posts [Mr Sheridan] was alleged to have been responsible for on social media regarding the party and the Jewish community" and then gave the final three of its six short paragraphs to a Labour statement. 

After those three hours a summary was added.

Even now the article is just seven paragraphs long and is just the same piece with that brief added summary. 

The respective headlines of the three broadcasters (on their news home pages) also speaks of the BBC's more tight-lipped approach to this story:

SKY: Labour suspends councillor after anti-Semitism rant
ITV: Labour suspends former MP over comments on Jewish community
BBC: Labour Party suspends former MP

As for TV (and using TV Eyes to track the coverage), it's interesting to see that Sky began reporting the story as early as 10.19 this morning and has reported it hourly thereafter. The BBC News Channel followed suit at 13:21 (three hours later) but has been more fitful since. 

And checking the main TV bulletins, neither BBC One's lunchtime or evening bulletins reported the story while ITV's lunchtime and evening bulletins both did. 

Wonder what the Corbynistas will make of this? Will they be happy with the BBC?