[RhysJR]

Back to the news (or lack of it) - and what in hindsight seemed a pretty poor judgement call on ITV Wales' part last night.

The whole of Wales at Six was devoted to the 40th anniversary of the miners' strike - and no one can deny that quite a lot of effort had gone into it.

Unfortunately, it was a fairly heavy news day with Wales' chief medical officer appearing at the UK Covid inquiry (which is meeting in Cardiff at the moment - quite a lot of revelations have emerged from that) and the minister responsible for implementing the 20mph speed limit (former political editor Lee Waters) announcing he was to resign after the new First Minister is elected.

What was pretty telling for me was there was a live cross to Adrian Masters at the Senedd - and you could instinctively tell how frustrated he was that instead of reporting on these stories, he was throwing over to an interview with Michael Heseltine about the legacy of the strike.

Surely it would have been better to spin off into a separate peak-time programme?

www.itv.com 

Despite the full programme being dedicated to it yesterday, I find it a bit strange there was another report looking back on the miner's strike today, with reporter Gwennan Campbell live from Rhondda Heritage Park - where last night's programme was anchored from.

You could argue they themselves answered the question of how they could of given ample coverage to current affairs and the anniversary by having a number of special reports across the week, rather than not covering yesterday's news stories.

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Interesting you noticed the Fire service stuff. I saw one 'revelation' day which had Jonathan Hill doing a long opening piece to camera that told us how to feel and think about the report rather than letting the facts of the report speak for themselves. After this bizaree start that felt like a poundland recreation of an Arron Sorkin TV show, the report opened with 90% of the same words as the intro. After customary ITV Wales trademark awkward pause, of course.

Weird activism rather than journalism is a recurring perception I'm left with. Just awful.

I can see where you are coming from there. Though, what I will say about their reports on the fire services is that it has been one of the few times I've heard ITV Wales journalism getting referenced on BBC Wales News coverage and reaching the Senedd. So good on them for leading the way on a major story.