Since the sad culmination of the Nicola Bulley investigation, scrutiny has turned to the role of the media. The Bulley family issued a statement yesterday saying Bulley’s husband was “vilified”, particularly pointing the finger at Sky News and ITV in particular for contacting the family despite their request for privacy. The media’s coverage of the case has been described as “ghoulish”…
Guido usually leans towards freedom of the press, however taking a look at Sky New’s coverage, this description clearly seems accurate. After previously spending her mornings tracing Bulley’s final route on live TV with Inzamam Rashid, Kay Burley did another report yesterday. From an actual graveyard.
Kay reported that as the dust settled “Lancashire police have got a lot of questions to answer”. And what about the ghoulish media, Kay?
UPDATE: Broadcast regulator Ofcom say: “We are extremely concerned to hear the comments made by the family of Nicola Bulley about two broadcast licensees. We have written to ITV News and Sky News to ask them to explain their actions. We will then assess whether any further action is required.”
At the Royal Television Society awards last night Emily Maitlis and Newsnight were deservedly double award winners with Scoop of the Year and Presenter of the Year for the game changing Prince Andrew interview. Congratulations.
In a move more redolent of a nursery school’s sports day the luvvies judges gave all the television political teams an award. This follows on from the Booker Prize judges splitting the prize money with all the shortlisted authors. What is the point of woke judges not making judgements?
Poor Anna Soubry. She’s lost influence, friends, and will probably lose her seat.
She has poured her heart out to ITV’s Paul Brand “we made some terrible mistakes over leadership and I can tell you now that the problem was was that Chuka wouldn’t step up to it. And if Chuka had stepped up to it he would have been our leader, it was certainly …well I always assumed it was absolutely going to happen.
Paul Brand: Why do you think he didn’t?
Anna Soubry: You’d have to ask him that but he does have history of not stepping up. Very sad because he… to me he was absolutely the future for our country. I genuinely believe that, I wouldn’t have left my party if I hadn’t believed that.PB: Were you trying to persuade him to stand as leader?
AS: Good God, yes. Goodness me yes. He should have been our leader and he wasn’t and then after the EU elections which were a terrific blow of course they were you don’t give up at the first hurdle, for God’s sakes.PB: How did you feel when he joined the Lib Dems?
AS: I think he made a terrible mistake. I was genuinely really sad about that. For me it personally hurt, it really did hurt. I thought he was my big buddy. He was a major part of why I left the Tory party. To start something new with him as the leader, I don’t want to be the bloody leader I genuinely believe that Chuka Umunna should be prime minister of our country and had the – just what we were needing to be a great prime minister. I genuinely believe that.PB: Have you spoken to him since he joined the Lib Dems?
AS: Unfortunately, he has never called. He has never called me. Which I think is very sad.PB: The friendship’s sort of broken down then?
AS: Very sad. Very sad. We have exchanged emails but you now, you sort of, well I won’t go into it all but …
Watch her heartbreaking ITV interview in full and hold back your tears…
Peston earlier tweeted that the ERG were falling in behind May’s deal. Just a warning to Guido’s friends in the foreign exchange game. Please take Peston’s insights into the Conservative Party with a bag of salt…
Bloomberg, who should know better, reported Peston’s tweet as if it was a verified ITV News story. The newswire flashed it out across their terminals. Millions changed hands, boom and bust within minutes resulted…
Data Guido has been hidden away in a dark room, crunching the numbers to see whether our top broadcast journalists really are impartial on Brexit. It is rarely the case that one individual tweet gives the game away and reveals a top TV presenter’s biases – they usually won’t be so careless. Yet when you dig deeper you get a very different picture. Data Guido has collated every single tweet about Brexit sent by three top journalists from three major broadcasters since the referendum. We then categorised them as having either a positive sentiment about Brexit, a negative sentiment about Brexit, or being neutral. We started with ITV’s Robert Peston…
- Peston has sent 284 tweets about Brexit since 24 June 2016.
- 3 tweets had a positive sentiment, that’s just 1% of his total tweets.
- 47 tweets were neutral, that’s 17%.
- 234 tweets were negative, remarkably that is 82% of his total Brexit tweets having a negative sentiment.
Not much of a surprise given Pesto is best friends with Remain campaign supremo Roland Rudd and spent the referendum trying to do in Vote Leave. Though it’s not very becoming of a supposedly impartial broadcaster. Stay tuned for Data Guido’s Twitter sentiment analysis of two other prominent TV hacks…
