Please, don't 'what next' me

An exciting, excitable edition of the BBC 6'Clock News last night, followed by a slightly more measured 10. 

Whilst the 6 brought impressive coverage, with impressive live reporting firepower, there's room now for more context, and much, much less "what-happens-nextery". 

The use of video loops and wallpaper (often without a caption saying location and 'recorded earlier') is familiar to viewers of 24 hour news channel. It can create a misleading impression in a 'bulletin'; and I'm not sure last night if the right 'wallpaper' necessarily accompanied the location of the various correspondents. And, against a black sky, shots of the flaming remains of missiles falling to earth, make situation look more terrifying. 

At 10, there was a clear contradiction between correspondents in the region, one repeatedly using "unprecedented" about the scale and impact of the Iranian, barrage and another, in London, saying the Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow 1 and 2 defence systems had largely worked. 

A comparison needs to be done with the April attack by Iran. Then the Israeli Defence Force said they dealt with 120 ballistic missiles, over 30 cruise missiles, and around 170 drones.  This morning the BBC website says of last night's action: "Iran launched around 180 missiles towards Israel, the Israeli military said. That would make it a slightly larger attack than April's barrage, which saw about 110 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles fired towards Israel."  Different, then, but not necessarily unprecedented. 

In the 'what-nextery' department, we heard quite a lot at the beginning of the week about Iran's options being very limited.  In the end, they went for option 1 - but probably guessing that the impact would be about the same as April. 

Meanwhile the IDF continue to manage the narrative. We've been watching the Israeli tank compound in northern Israel since the weekend. Yesterday the IDF told us they'd made 70 unreported raids into Lebanon in the past year to destroy and capture munitions. How did they keep that quiet, and where are the tanks now, and are they unopposed ?

Finally, please, more maps, that help viewers with less knowledge of what's were understand what's going on. It is insufficient, and misleading, to place a huge red arrow between Iran and Israeli, and think that's job done.