I suspect that when the histories are written the revolution in Libya will occupy a similar place to the Romanian revolution in 1989 - the bloodiest to date but in the end an uprising that lacked much significance for all but its people.
Libya is not significant in the way Egypt is. Egypt's revolution is crucial. It's still not clear whether the revolution there will stick. What is clear is that it's not over.
So why then has the media studies industry become fixated with coverage of Libya, or more specifically with the fall of Tripoli? Lacking a real battle there to bring the Libyan story to a dramatic conclusion, attention turned suddenly to the battle between the broadcasters - the fight, at the death, between the BBC and Sky; a story from which virtually all other broadcasters have been written out: the moment when Alex Crawford, Sky's multi-award-winning female correspondent, almost singlehandedly slew the mighty - and mostly male -Libyan legions of the BBC.
It is a tale in which the technological tail has been lifted up and praised for wagging the editorial dog: the Sky team managing to point a portable satellite dish in the right direction while on the move as the rebels entered Tripoli. An achievement, to be sure, but not one that should surprise us too much more than 40 years after live pictures were broadcast from the moon.
The perceived battle between the BBC and Sky gives us the latest glimpse of how the immediate attractions of 24-hour news have become the gold standard of today's journalism. It is a story retold with relish by hackademics and TV reviewers, leaving very little room for the work of other broadcasters. It's a story with a distasteful edge: how 'the BBC lost 10-0'; how its correspondent(s) 'missed the bus'; how Sky's correspondent might have been reckless (firmly and convincingly denied by Alex Crawford); whether other reporters 'lacked balls'.
It's a story that may lead aspiring young journalists to draw the wrong conclusions. It's even a story that could cost lives. So let's redress the balance.
The truth is everyone has been the first into somewhere; the BBC or Channel 4 News here, Sky or ITV News there. During 'the Arab Spring' there were several occasions when ITN, which produces the news for both ITV and Channel 4, was 'first'.
I was in Tripoli, frustrated by the near impossibility of getting through Gaddafi's roadblocks to the besieged city of Misrata, when I watched John Irvine's astonishing ITV report from there. He was the first British broadcaster to report from inside the city, a coup achieved by bypassing Gaddafi's forces on a ship from Malta. The bravery and brilliance of Irvine and his cameraman Sean Swan (on a front-line that later claimed the lives of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros), the sheer power of their report has faded amid the clamour over Tripoli. But he was first.
I was part of the first group of journalists allowed official access to Tripoli in March 2011. Not a coup, of course, since we had simply been chosen from a list produced by the Gaddafi regime. The night I arrived I interviewed Gaddafi's son Saif. Sky News wasn't in Tripoli that night. Also on that trip was the BBC's excellent Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen. One week in he interviewed Colonel Gaddafi.
Before anyone can accuse me of sour grapes, let me make one thing clear. Alex Crawford and her team did brilliantly. I will toast her future success and have already congratulated her on her scoops. But the media studies industry is in danger of agreeing on a new received wisdom which is as false as that which once said Sky News is not worth watching.
It goes something like this: Channel 4 News is irreproachable, anchored by the unbeatable Jon Snow; BBC News is failing in its public service duty to provide the very best broadcasting and analysis; the upstart Sky News is whipping the BBC's ass around the world; ITV News has lost its 'kudos and influence'; and Channel 5 News isn't worth mentioning.
It's a strange narrative.
Bill Neely is the International Editor of ITV News. He has just returned from Syria, where he led the first (!) TV news team into the troubled city of Hama.
A longer version of this post appears in Mirage in the Desert? Reporting the Arab Spring, edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble, and published by Abramis.
