Sky News: Presenters & Rotas

Wasn't Chris (" allegedly according to previous reports") somewhat of a disliked character in the Sky newsroom? I once read an article somewhere stating that he didn't have many friends in the workplace and no-one liked his off screen attitude. However, onscreen, I always found him to be a rather watchable and likeable presenter.

I've never read that before. Frankly I find that incredibly hard to believe. You would often see him in the background before a shift chatting to other presenters & staff. And you got the impression watching him present that he had an excellent rapport with many of his on air colleagues- particularly the sports presenters like Nick, Charlie and Sarah-Jane. Whether the same was true off air I don't know, but given he met his wife at Sky News he can't have been that bad!

Chris Bryant MP puts Kay Burley in her place in an interview over alleged phone hacking at the NOTW and other papers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDYalpZhG_8

Low quality but worth a watch if you missed it earlier. It's getting to the point where it's almost worth watching Afternoon Live to see what Kay is going to do or say to put her foot in it next. There is probably some entertainment value there, but if not you can always count on YouTube to catch up on Kay's "best bits."

He called her dim, a liar and a madam! Good tv. The way she was sitting and facing the interviewee suggested she didn't care about the issue. She was certainly put in her place!

Does she always sit in that bizarre Christine Keeler stance on this show?

Ha! She's utterly atrocious.

She's right about one thing - nobody cares what she thinks.

Actually, although she was clearly put in her place by the interviewee, I felt that she didn't retaliate anywhere quite as badly as she is normally capable of. Although yesterday's incident was yet another example of train-crash interviewing technique, she also backed down quite early-on after her first rude shouty interruption, when the guest was able to demonstrate that HE had researched the subject and was able to recount 1000+ cases of media harrassment, whereas Burley clearly had no clue about official research.

Brutal mad manners apart, one's case is not helped at all when one doesn't research properly.

I think she knew fine well that he wasn't going to stomach any nonsense from her. You simply can't "retaliate" on a subject you haven't bothered to research, when faced with something of an expert.

And since when was it a reporter's role to be "devil's advocate"?

That's her major malfunction - she thinks she's there to tell people they're wrong; but that's not what the gig calls for. She may be able to say, "this is what others say - how do you respond?", but she makes up counter arguments herself.

She may be a nice lady - I have no idea - and I've been guilty of sating cruel things about her in the past.

But as a journalist and television presenter she's simply the worst I have ever come across, and is getting worse with age.

I apoligize if this has been mentioned before, but according to the updated brochure on the sky news press office site it would seem that Joel Hills is now the presenter of the daytime business bulletins. Does anyone know what's happening to Anna Jones?

http://www.skypressoffice.co.uk/common/uploads/downloads/Sky%20News%20brochure%20Sept%202010.pdf

Uh oh. The alarm bells are ringing. Given all the redundancies at Sky News of late I'm immediately fearing the worst for poor Anna, especially as her position has been scaled back in recent years.

Hopefully she's just going to be going to be doing more news presenters, covering some of the bigger programmes. That would probably be the best use of her talents.

Could well be the case, hadn't thought of that. Sky could do with a regular relief presenter.