I didn’t watch any of the news coverage of the hunt for and subsequent suicide of murder Raoul Moat – The Guardian’s Charlie Brooker watched more of it than a sane man should.

Reporters were competing to get as close as possible to an armed confrontation with a mentally unstable gunman with an acknowledged hatred of the media. On air, they whispered down phones so the police couldn’t hear them. Sky’s James Matthews crept to “within metres” of the standoff until an armed officer caught him. “Crept up silently, first I knew was when I felt his breath on my cheek,” he tweeted. There were other tweets from TV reporters, written in a breathless hurry. Channel 4′s Alex Thomson apologised for the rush: “Sorry lots of Bberry tweets in dark running thru people’s gardens evading cops – some spelling may have gone astray”. Charlie Brooker, The Guardian.

There’s a police standoff with a Gunman so what do the press do – everything they can to make the police’s job harder – bloody morons.