Sydney Hostage-Taking on the Arabic News

On the English website of the BBC, the Sydney hostage-taking was the top story, of course, and they had a live video:

So I switched over the BBC Arabic's live television feed, and they were showing a re-run show. A lot of analysts were talking about either Palestine or Iraq.

This was when the hostage-taking was first starting.

A few minutes later, we reached the "top of the hour". The re-run on the BBC Arabic was over. An anchor came on the air, and the first headline she told of was Sydney:

At the exact same time, the English BBC was showing the live press conference of the Sydney police commissioner. The BBC Arabic didn't do that. Maybe they didn't have their translator ready. Instead, they gave a summary of the developments in the story, and then communicated with an Arabic-analyst who I think was on the ground in Sydney, via phone:

Half an hour later, I needed to go to sleep. Just at this time, the Sydney coverage ended on the English BBC, and we ended up with this confused-looking man giving us the weather in Britain:

After the weather, they switched to the business report:

So it was really time for me to go to sleep.

The next morning on the BBC Arabic, I waited for the top of the hour headlines. The Sydney hostage-taking was no longer the first story. It was like the fifth headline, and they didn't get to it until 14 minutes into the broadcast. All the stuff before was focused on Iraq, Syria, Palestine, etc.

Fourteen minutes into the broadcast

This is all while the hostage-taking was still on-going. I have pictures from when the siege broke on another computer, so I'll have another post about the BBC Arabic coverage soon!