Tuesday 11 May 2010

Sky News, have some dignity.

Please, watch the clips before deciding this is the post of a mad man.
It appears that the Sky presenters have suffered nervous breakdown's after the election results, there's a new story about one of them almost daily, headed by the venerable Adam Boulton and Kay Burley. I never really had much of a problem with Sky in the past, I knew it wasn't exactly the greatest source of news but it was at least mildly (very mildly) respectable. But as of 7th May 2010 they seem to have lost all pretense of trying to be an impartial and professional news agency.


Now I know I'm going to be told that I'm just sore about Labour's bad result, maybe that I'm a left wing nut or even a 'commie', but if you don't believe me, please watch the clips, they aren't edited or taken out of context, this is exactly as it was shown on TV. So what am I whinging on about? I'd say there were three clips that pretty much sum up what Sky has become since the election, the first with Burley, and the others both from Boulton yesterday. Lucky for you I've got the links here:

So, the interview that kicked it all off, Kay Burley tears into a protester for daring to demand a fairer voting system. She starts off by telling him that marching isn't going to make a difference and then descends into continuously interupting him and asking him 'Why don't you just go home? Go home and watch it on Sky News, you aren't going to make any difference here.' It really is shocking that a journalist can claim this shoddy intimidation of a protester could be called 'news'. Here it is. (The sound isn't as good on this one but it gets better after a few seconds)

As if that wasn't bad enough, on the 10th May Adam Boulton gets into a bust-up with Alastair Campbell in an interview, which he wasn't even conducting to start with! Notice how he seems to be in the interview to advocate the Tory position, surely a Tory MP would have been better suited to that? He, like Burley, continually interupts and doesn't let Campbell finish an answer, how can you have an interview where the interviewee isn't allowed to reply? He then launch's into a hysterical tirade telling him to 'stop telling me how to think, I'm fed up of you telling me what I think!' It really would be very funny if it wasn't supposed to be serious news. Just look how wound up he gets. The whole thing is here, the fighting gets nasty at about 4:23 but if you have time watch it all because you really need the context to see just how ridiculous it was.


After that it was hard to imagine Sky continuing to sink much further, but they really pulled it out the bag not a few hours later. Adam Boulton, seemingly still hurting from the Campbell interview, launches into Ben Bradshaw, again acting as the man putting across the Tory position. This time he tells him 'no, I'm not going to take this from you!' before carrying on putting across his side. And then off air he said to Bradshaw 'Don't you dare talk to me like that.' The man is clearly losing it. It seems to be a very sore nerve whenever someone suggests that the Tory's didn't win the election, no-one did. Have a look here.

That's all fact. Now it's the turn of opinion. I think its clear that the Murdoch empire (namely Sky and the Sun) are very sore that despite their very public backing of Cameron he failed to win a very easy election against an unpopular PM and on the back of a massive recession. He even got his son James to bulldoze into the Independent's HQ and verbally harangue their Chief Editor for daring to go against their message. They appear to be losing it whenever it looks like their man might not get into power and its really starting to show. If Sky don't get it together soon, they're on the fast route to being Fox UK, giving a biased and argumentative representation of the world,  and that doesn't bode well for their reputation. Sorry for the rant, but this really pissed me off.

I think Sky as a group should take to heart what Campbell told Boulton, ‘Adam, this is live on TV. Dignity, dignity.’

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