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Patel verdict first on Seven

Seven News Brisbane crossed live to the manslaughter verdict of surgeon Jayant Patel while Nine was in a commercial break.

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Seven New Brisbane beat Nine News to the punch on Tuesday with the verdict in the case of former Bundaberg surgeon Jayant Patel’s manslaughter case.

Seven crossed live to the verdict from Kim Skubris while Nine was in a commercial break. Nine is believed to have branded their report “First on Nine.”

This split screen photo shows Seven on the left reporting the news while Nine was keeping sponsors happy.

Patel, 60, was found guilty by a Brisbane Supreme Court jury on Tuesday of the manslaughter of Mervyn Morris, Gerardus Kemps and James Phillips as well as grievous bodily harm to Ian Vowles.

Patel is the first doctor in Queensland to be convicted for the manslaughter of a patient.

Updated: A Current Affair also covered the verdict while Today Tonight did not.

15 Responses

  1. This obsession with breaking the story first, at the expense of in-depth quality analysis, kind of sums up why none of the commercial FTA channels have news services or bulletins that are worth following.

    For real news on FTA (I don’t have pay), I prefer the ABC or SBS.

  2. There is a case of quality over quantity here, and Nine’s in my opinion were better quality, including the ACA cross.

    Tuesday night was the biggest reason in many years, why Seven shouldn’t have axed the QLD version of Today Tonight, as the East Coast edition had no mention of what was a big Queensland story, possibly the biggest this year, and gave Nine a free kick.

  3. Who cares who was first. If you were watching 7 news you saw it on there. If you were watching 9 it was on there also. Does it really matter if one station had it on 1min 27 secs earlier. It happens first on the station you are watching because you aren’t watching the other station.If its a big enough story it will be on the news no matter what.

  4. I need to correct myself. Technically 9 had the news ‘first on 9’ with breaking news at 3:58pm across the bottom of the screen during the P classified Hi 5

  6. I don’t think it warranted a cutting off from the ad break to ensure that the news broke first, it wasn’t a national emergency as such. However, it does damage the credibility of Nine News in Brisbane when they are claiming that they are the first for breaking the news.

  8. It’s hillarious to think that because 9 were in a commercial break that the 9 viewers are missing out. “what you heard it at 6.18pm? I din’t hear about it till after 6.20”
    I’m sure their viewers are much worse off for hearing the news maybe 2 minutes later. That said 9 shouldn’t have been reporting they had it first when they didn’t.

    I haven’t seen either reports but wouldn’t the important thing be as to who had the better reporting? Channel 7 have commercials too you know

  9. Is this for real??…..I was flicking between Seven and Nine to see who had it first. I noticed that the Seven reporter was saying that the judge wasnt in the court room yet and then a minute or two later on nine they were saying the Jury had given its verdict. Then flicked back to Seven and they came on and said that he had been found guilty…..oh well…I must have missed it on Seven first….or did I ??

  11. Yes I noticed that too. Seven were first by a good 3-4 minutes I’d say. And then the very next day I saw an ad for nine news saying that they were the first to break the news….a blatant lie!

  13. I found it quite low that Nine advertised that they were first to air the Patel verdict when they crossed well after Seven had finished their cross.

  15. Such a serious case and here we have 7&9 again fighting like children, both claiming to be the first with the news.

    I’m wondering, where was SkyNews in this?

    Thanks for the report David, hope Media Watch covers it next Monday.

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