Bryant v Burley

There is always the danger, when you have an opinion, of allowing that opinion to influence your viewpoint. For instance, I think that Rupert Murdoch and his affiliated publications are hideously biased politically towards a side I disagree with. I know that the News of the World, one of those publications, is currently under scrutiny thanks to allegations of phone-hacking. I also know that Sky News is, in part, owned by Murdoch.

All this leaves me open to the suggestion that Sky News would provide poor coverage of this story. Indeed, they, along with most of the mainstream media, provided no coverage of it the day The Guardian broke the story, and only relented when it became too big to deny. But, as Kay Burley points out in the clip, as a journalist she is there to provide the opposite side of the argument. It is only that she performs this badly that it is worthy of criticism.

The first problem is her demand for evidence. This is normally a perfectly reasonable demand, except for the fact that all the evidence has been out in public for a while (see Jack of Kent's blogpost for details), and, as an interviewee, it's a little unfair to ask him for all the figures when he doesn't have them to hand.

Nevertheless, the interview then progresses. Burley asks Bryant if he is prepared to make a controversial claim. A claim that he had already made before he was interrupted by Burley asking for evidence. If nothing else, it's poor journalism to ask an interviewee merely to repeat the same point over and over again.

Since Paxman's famous interview with Michael Howard, in which he continued to ask if Howard the same question without getting a straight answer, it seems that all journalists think they can badger their way to the truth. Burley is not alone in this, and neither is it limited to politics. Fabio Capello was badgered by a journalist minutes after England's draw with the USA in the FIFA World Cup as to the future of goalkeeper Robert Green. When Capello rightly argued it was too early to make a firm decision, the point continued to be brought up.

The biggest problem with Burley's "Devil's Advocate" argument is that she tries to make a dismissive comment without phrasing it as a question. Her assertion that Bryant should merely change his PIN and there would be no problem is immediately countered, despite the fact that she was clearly trying to move on to another topic. Of course, the fact that she seemed to be defending the concept of phone-hacking itself, rather than the fact that these are just allegations, is also disturbing.

So, is it journalistic bias, or just being "dim"? It's difficult to say objectively. However, whichever is the case, it's not the first time that Kay Burley has shown herself to be astonishingly poor at conducting an interview. If only there could have been protesters behind this interview...

Pie in the Sky

Hello all,



A couple of months ago I posted a tweet on my Twitter page (which I'm shamelessly linking to here), saying,

People want to sack Kay Burley. People are laughing at Adam Boulton. Sky - When you BECOME the news, you're doing it wrong.

This immediately became the most re-tweeted tweet I'd ever posted, implying that other people, like me, were also fed up with Sky "News"'s take on events at that time. More than 1000 people complained to Ofcom about the clash involving Boulton above, and a further 1000-odd complained about Kay Burley's shocking "interview" with a protester:

(Though this did lead to this fantastic moment, in which the protesters made their opinions of Sky News very clear).

This kind of "news" coverage (the inverted commas are getting tedious, so I shall stop, but you get the idea) is quite common in America, where pundits like Bill O'Reilly and the monstrous Glenn Beck have made their names by being bullies dressed up as journalists. There is no attempt to dress the news as anything other than propaganda, and as a result, gaining facts is a tricky business. But in this country, mainstream broadcasters must be impartial, and our news is the better for it.

Some important facts must be added at this point, that may or may not have relevance. Sky News is, ultimately, owned by Rupert Murdoch, at that time a prominent supporter of David Cameron and the Conservative Party, who owns many newspapers who proclaimed their support publicly in the run-up to the General Election. He also owns FOX News, the home of O'Reilly, Beck, and many of the most significant right-wing propagandists currently working in America. His son, James Murdoch, is the direct head of News Corp's dealings in Europe, and is non-executive chairman at BSkyB. He is also the main reason for Murdoch Snr's switch from Brown to Cameron. This information might lead us to assume a bias is likely, BUT it does not make it inevitable.

I was disappointed when Ofcom decided to reject the complaints leveled at Sky News. For me, both of these incidents show clear journalistic bias. David Babbs, the director of the movement behind the protest, seems barely able to speak three words before Burley shouts at his pointlessness and tells him to go home and watch it all on Sky News (nice plug, there, Kay). And at what point did anyone vote for a "Hung Parliament"? The only people claiming you could actively vote for a Hung Parliament were the Conservatives, though I would argue this is more an inability to grasp facts rather than a deliberate link. However, it is, whichever way you look at it, shockingly poor journalism.

Boulton's outbreak is less serious than Kay Burley's crimes, if much funnier. It weakens your integrity as a journalist if you are unable to counter arguments with anything other than shouting (rather like John Sweeney getting angry at the Church of Scientology), and so again can only be seen as bad journalism. His constant point-scoring techniques make him sound more like one of the politicians he interviews than an impartial onlooker. Even if we accept that, as an interviewer, he must take the other side of the argument, it is clear from the footage that he is trying to undermine Alastair Campbell's arguments, rather than challenge or highlight them.

If Ofcom are not going to censure such poor journalism and partial broadcasting, there remains only one solution. As the protesters themselves shouted out on Sky television, "Watch the BBC"!