Kay Burley off air for 6 months

Another mildly awkward moment for Anna Botting on the Press Preview: “...and there the Guardian shows a picture of my Sky News colleagues Beth Rigby and Kay Burley.”

I seem to remember this a few years back

Maybe the link was a clumsy one which made it feel more like a Sky on-screen corporate statement than reporting on the actual news but my goodness you're going a bit over-the-top.
Calling the clip 'humiliating', saying people responsible for the output should be 'ashamed' and that it's 'worse for Sky's credibility' than Kay & Beth breaking lockdown rules feels a bit extreme.

My strong hunch is that nobody in the general public who's not in the rolling news bubble will remember a thing about that clip in a week's time.

I was surprised at the rather strange way Kasia Madeira handled it on The Papers on BBC News. When the front page of The Guardian came up she didn't seem very sure if she could mention Sky News on air, started stammering, then called Kay Burley her colleague before trying to backtrack. Basically she made a bit of a mess of it and over complicated the whole intro. The reviewer then took over.

The way Sky News have reported on the whole saga, or lack of it, over the last few days is a lesson of how not to handle a situation where the channel itself or its talent are embroiled in a public row. The announcement by Sarah Hewson was pretty poorly handled by whoever the Editor was at the time as if they didn't know what to do or package it up. BBC News can manage to cover stories about BBC News, the recent equal pay issues surrounding some senior presenters come to mind, so why is Sky News so poor at breaking news where it, or senior people at the channel are indeed the story?

I wonder, is that when their contracts expire?

Shouldn't we slip the word "allegedly" in somewhere? 😂

The "Kay Burley" programme name seems to have gone. The Sky EPG has been updated and its now called "Sky News Breakfast".

Edit: Stephen Dixon hasn't called it "Sky News Breakfast" on air and there is no title card - just said 'welcome to the only breakfast programme live from Westminster'.
The blue programme name strap has gone.

Exactly. And the fact is it was a Sky corporate statement and introduced as such, although quite briefly, in a similar manner to how other statements of apology or fact are announced in live media.

It would have been very wrong to give it the breaking news treatment considering it involved themselves, and God that Ben Brown clip shows how poorly breaking news can be delivered on UK channels - a minute of umming and aaring wouldn't have helped.

Her name hasn't been completely purged from the metadata. I've just spoken her name into SkyQ's voice recognition mic, and up came thumbnails of her, and an invitation to set Series Record from Monday until the end of time.

I'm just not convinced Sky could take much more action than it did, honestly, given this was a minor criminal offence at most (in the legal sense – a summary offence akin to a speeding fine. Not downplaying the societal importance) that happened outside the confines of work. Being taken off air is a public handwringing, and removes opportunities for all three staff members to gain experience, reputational growth and further career opportunities during that time, and is something of a public rebuke.

But in relation to their employment contracts, it is unlikely a full suspension or contract termination would have been justified given a relatively minor indiscretion (remember, having a 'party' in which ten people were sat across two separate tables is lawful; social distancing is recommended advice, not law; any wrongdoing may have been a technical distinction). And, at any rate, they have not been fined, charged or convicted for any offence. They're being taken off air for stupidity or carelessness, and to avoid risk of accusations of hypocrisy or conflicts of interest, more than anything.

[Edit to add: the Sky statement said they had 'breached COVID guidelines'. They have not, publicly at least, reached the conclusion that any of the three necessarily broke the law. Burley has stated she believed she was compliant with the guidelines, but was clearly mistaken. It might seem pedantic, but as employees I find it hard to believe Sky wouldn't be opening themselves up to a large, high-profile employment tribunal claim(s) if they had taken much stronger action.]

While I get why people are angry with these individuals' actions, I'm not entirely sure what more you think Sky News could really have done?

It is no wonder even those covering it may be confused when all the coverage since the end of lockdown seems to have been about scotch eggs rather than what people can and can't do.

That said I'm not sure the BBC approach of havina correspondent report on the BBC from outside NBH for no apparent reason and "Nobody at the BBC was available for comment" is particularly great either (Eddie Mair's edition of Newsnight during the Saville scandal was a memorable one in that regard - you could tell how peeved off he was).




Once the internet lynchmob get involved, they don't particularly care for reason or proportionate responses. Those who look to "cancel" somebody seemingly aren't happy until they're out of a job and even then the abuse can still continue until the mob deem the punishment to be sufficient but in reality is excessive in relation to the incident. Donglegate is an infamous example of this

While no doubt there are some people who are angry mainly about COVID guidelines being breached by the respective Sky News employees, the sense I've gotten is that many of those up in arms are doing it less about the guidelines and more because it's a chance to lay into "the other side" - the amount of tweets I'm seen using this incident to try to defend Dominic Cumming's breach is ridiculous (when both Cummings & Burley/Rigby were in the wrong).