On balance I think I will go for the BBC not being willing to pay the Associated Press's licensing fee for the helicopter footage rather than a conspiracy to keep us in the dark about what is happening.
Other videos of events in Belfast at the moment that some people will be seeing on social media, can't simply be republished by a reputable news organisation - they need to be verified and appropriate permission has to be secured. This means the BBC in the early stages of trouble will have to get most of its material inhouse from a local news team which has probably been seriously reduced in size over previous years.
Talking to a friend of mine who did cover the area previously and lived there for a while, she says that the reporting on the recent events is far more extensive than that of the riots that took place in 2021 which were much bigger in scale. |