The stories and transcripts that follow (from television, radio, a newspaper and an online site) reveal evidence of many of the matters already discussed in this book – forms of attribution, use of tenses and the significance of house style, to mention just a few. But they also say a great deal about the business of journalism itself.

The most obvious point is how different the coverage revealed in the stories and transcripts is between the outlets. All of them covered the same event, but they all made different choices in delivering their stories. Even when they used the same bits of information, they placed them in different spots, and in different contexts, in their coverage. These observations are quite central to the issue of what is involved in the business of journalism and are illustrated in the material that follows.