MediaGuido has never quite understood why Sky News, an impartial broadcaster bound by Ofcom rules, allows its political correspondents to opine about how much they don’t like the Tories and Brexit on the “Sky Views” section of its website. Suppose it doesn’t make much difference from their output on telly…

Today, Sky’s Lewis Goodall has written a long attack on Boris. Goodall has decided that Boris “surely knew” what he was doing from the start and that he “intended” the whole row to play out as it did. No actual evidence of this, naturally, and no reporting to justify the claim. Goodall goes on to argue Boris only got away with it because he is posh, compares him to Enoch Powell and says “I give the suggestion that there has been an increase in the numbers of attacks on women wearing the niqab in recent days absolute credibility”. No statistics or reporting to reasonably measure this, obviously. 

Some other Goodall classics include “Brexit talks cannot succeed”, written in September 2017. If you’ve ever got the impression that Sky’s political correspondents are a bunch of left-leaning Remainers, you might be onto something… Goodall is a former Labour Party activist and researcher at the Labour wonk shop the IPPR.

Lewis is entitled to his partisan pro-Labour Party views, but why are they being aired by a supposedly impartial broadcaster?

UPDATE:

Indeed, as a Sky News output prod I was categorically told I could not write for a certain conservative leaning professional blog lest there be any impartiality issues. So surprised my former employers are now allowing opinion pieces by reporters with party connections

— Jay Singh-Sohal (@JSinghSohal) August 13, 2018