Media Coverage
Even before the blackout the UK press were anticipating a UK equivalent of the Northeast blackout of 2003, which occurred two weeks earlier (August 14) and affected about 100 times more people. For example, on August 15, The Daily Express had reported that the National Grid might not be able to cope with predicted power surges in the winter of 2004.
On the day of the blackout London Mayor Ken Livingstone declared the situation a "catastrophic failure" and "the normal British disease of underinvestment and not keeping your plant up to date". The press followed this lead. The power transmission company National Grid plc responded that, as they had invested £3000 million in the last 10 years, the system certainly could not be described as old and decrepit.
Headlines such as "Power cut cripples London" (CNN) concealed the fact that over 90% of London's population was unaffected (but see below for the effects on the London Underground and mainline rail services).
Later it became clear to the press that the blackout might not be directly attributable to underinvestment, but this was still the main thrust of the stories: e.g. The Independent, 30 August: "Just admit it, Mr Urwin. National Grid needs to invest more".
On 8 September the London Evening Standard ran a story "Blackout report will take weeks" . On 10 September National Grid published a 43-page report describing the causes of the blackout (and made it available on the internet ). The national BBC TV evening news did not cover this.
In mid October an anonymous National Grid engineer spoke to the BBC. It emerged that there may have been a maintenance problem not covered in National Grid's report (see below).
Read more about this topic: 2003 London Blackout
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