Apparently the top twitter trend today is Sack Kay Burley! It started following the Sky News journalist's interview this afternoon with a David Babbs from the political group 38 Degrees, who were demonstrating in Westminster in favour of PR and electoral reform.
It's funny, I was at home this afternoon watching the election coverage and I saw her interview with Babbs. I'm not surprised people set up this twitter trend against her, the interview was dreadful! She was so embarrassingly aggressive, I eventually had to turn over!
You can watch a clip of the interview below and see what you think.
Jeremy Paxman it isn't! Shoddy journalism!
I spent most of this afternoon flicking between Sky News and BBC 24 trying to keep up to date with developments on the election. Are the Lib Dems going to do a deal and join the Conservatives in government and all that.
There was loads of coverage of demonstrators outside a building where Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was inside having some post election meeting. Demonstrators where outside showing their support for electoral reform and to try and persuade Clegg not to abandon his commitment to PR in any deal with the Tories.
During the afternoon Kay Burley was interviewing various people, and at one point there was a demonstrator who kept shouting in the background 'Sack Kay Burley' along with other anti Rupert Murdoch and Sky news comments. It was quite funny to be honest, but I'm sure it was annoying for Burley.
Perhaps she got fed up of hearing this bloke and decided to turn her frustrations against David Babb. What other reason would there be for such a hostile interview?
You can ask tough questions, but this is more than tough questions, it was just aggressively attacking someone for their views.
As a journalist you need to be asking the questions that the audience would naturally want ask themselves, and find out information the audience would want and need to know.
Burley did this up to a point, but then her interview technique started to sound like her expressing her own personal point of view, almost suggesting that the organisers of the protest were wasting their time. It wasn't proper journalism!
I ended up shouting at the TV saying, if he (Babbs and his organisation) want to protest it's because they're fully entitled to do so it's called democracy!
Someone should tell Burley this.
Yes, someone should tell Burley she's an ignorant bigot and put in her place. Perhaps at Fox News?
ReplyDeleteIt was the other-way around, the David Babbs interview came first, and that's why later on they started heckling her, and calling sky news shit. Her attitude was totally uncalled for and unnecessary, and she was showing extreme political bias while supposedly reporting the news.
ReplyDeleteActually, along with all the aggression and bias, Burley was practically screaming stuff at the guy that makes no sense whatsoever. For example, she said "they're already doing it! you can just go home!" implying that they are already going to introduce proportional representation - which is far from assured. She also insisted that 65% of the electorate voted for proportional representation (and also that 65% of the electorate voted for a minority conservative government or con-lib coalition). Presumably she thinks that 65% of people co-ordinated themselves to make sure there would be a hung parliament, distributing their votes in exactly the right way so that no party would have a majority. How she arrived at the figure of 65% though is anyone's guess. I suspect she thinks that because the Conservatives said before the election that any vote not for them is a vote for a hung parliament, she is counting anyone who voted for non-Tory candidates as having voted for a hung parliament! (This would make 64% and is the only vaguely mathematically accurate guess I can come up with). This is all breathtaking stuff, and I haven't even started on Kay Burley's idea of what democracy is - "go home and watch it on Sky News!". The bottom line is this was a party political piece from Burley, who was trying to defend the legitimacy of Cameron's potential elevation to PM, which relies on some kind of compromise between LibDems and Conservatives on the issue the protestors were trying to insist that the public cared about (PR). As such, it's not just bad TV, it's really worth a complaint to Ofcom, which is quick and easy and can be made online. The issue here is the role of the media in a democracy. http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/progs/
ReplyDeleteKate Burley seems to me to be more interested in imposing her opinions in any interview and in making a name for herself. She is annoying beyond belief and has turned me away from her sky slot a long, long time ago, I am therefore not surprised at this debacle. She may try to be the Sky equivalent of Jeremy Paxman, but alas she has neither the intelligence nor the journalistic craft. Mr. Murdock please sack her or just demote her to reading the autocue. She is incapable of interviewing people, its cringe worthy every time she does!
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