Unlike in London, Shane Warne’s visage did not stare down at me from billboards in Northern Ireland. But it was difficult to avoid previews of the Ashes in the north, for British news was everywhere. As I sat down for breakfast each morning in County Tyrone, I could reach for any number of daily and weekly newspapers, and observe just how clear was the divide between loyalist and nationalist titles. (When my mother and I had arrived in Northern Ireland for a family wedding, my media antennae had put me in a potentially sticky situation. Standing in a post office queue in Newry, I had heard a radio report that Bertie Ahern had invited Pope Benedict to Ireland, and repeated the news to my mother. Then we’d suddenly gone quiet, nervous about being overheard to express apparently Catholic sympathies.)

At night in Northern Ireland, I could watch main and regional news bulletins on the BBC, as well as on UTV, Channels Four and Five, and RTÉ One and Two. They do television news and current affairs seriously in Britain, with more than a dozen news bulletins on the various channels available to viewers each weeknight. The news is generally updated for later bulletins, unlike most of the second offerings on Australia’s commercial airwaves. BBC 1 and UTV also broadcast news bulletins late on Saturday and Sunday nights; in Sydney, since Channel Ten dropped its late weekend bulletins altogether, the latest news you can get is for five minutes between 8.30 and 9.30 p.m. on the ABC. BBC 1 broadcasts the public affairs programme Panorama on Sunday nights, and several channels feature regular panel discussions about social and political issues such as terrorism and aid to Africa. A Current Affair and Today Tonight would be laughed off air.

 By the time we left Northern Ireland, there was little room for news of Australia, the G8 summit or even the imminent July 12 marches. The first hint of trouble came as we were driving our rental car on the morning of July 7. Turning the radio dial, we deduced that there had been some sort of terrorist attack in London. As a Christian station was the only one to which we could tune in clearly, we heard the increasingly grim news interspersed with uplifting Christian music.

During our drive to Dublin airport on Monday, July 11, and on our arrival in London that night, radio reports and English newspapers assured us that, with the exception of the Piccadilly line, London’s transport system was working well. Londoners were back to work and displaying the spirit of the Blitz, intoned reporters and news anchors who were also covering the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Tuesday, my one free day in London before visiting the BBC Archives, revealed a very different city. Many Tube stations were closed, vacant taxis seemed harder to find than usual, and police officers were everywhere. By week’s end, my mother had been caught up in a bomb scare at Queensway and we’d become accustomed to sirens wailing through the night. I thought I also detected another, albeit well-intentioned, line of propaganda: television stations and broadsheet newspapers seemed to be going out of their way to feature relatives of the suicide bombers expressing shock at their actions and Muslim leaders condemning terrorism, and to focus on a young Muslim woman who had been killed in the bombings.

When I was in Kuala Lumpur on July 21, reports of further ‘incidents’ on London’s transport system began filtering through, and any suggestion that the city had returned to some kind of normality was abandoned. After some hours, Tony Blair appeared for a press conference, accompanied by John Howard, who was at 10 Downing Street for a scheduled meeting. I had seen no mention on CNN or BBC World of Howard’s earlier visit to the US or of the fawning of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Rupert Murdoch. Now, with the West again under attack, the world’s media was finally forced to take at least some notice of the Australian prime minister.

Back in Sydney on July 23, I saw the ABC news feature a story about the famine in Niger. I’m sure I viewed the same report on BBC World on July 20. This is the second time in recent months I have noticed ABC television carry, days late, a BBC story about a tragedy in Africa. I suspect an item about Shane Warne would have made it to air more quickly.