Election Night Live: Behind the Scenes at Sky News
Key staff members including Editor-in-Chief Adam Boulton and Director of Content Cristina Nicolotti Squires lift the lid on how Sky News covered the election through the night.
Key staff members including Editor-in-Chief Adam Boulton and Director of Content Cristina Nicolotti Squires lift the lid on how Sky News covered the election through the night.
Sky News’ Political Correspondent has been on the road in the #LewisLorry travelling to towns and cities up and down the country, talking to voters on the ground.
He took a break from the road to speak to us about his sense of election from outside the London bubble.
At 10:00pm on 8 June, I was in a studio watching a live election-night show produced by two media companies that are going to be a big part of the future of political broadcasting. Neither of them were TV brands.
As the shock exit poll result came out, the two presenters, with a combined age about half that of David Dimbleby, reacted with squeals of surprise. This was all very un-Reithian.
Graphics is "one of the most fun jobs you could possibly imagine" during election season, Sky News' Head of Design Chyaz Buffett told us, as he and Graphics Editor Charlotte Bingham prepare for one of the biggest nights in news broadcasting.
But just how important is graphics for Sky News' election coverage?
The graphics team talk about their big plans for election night and how their work fits into the news broadcast.
Bromley is Sky News’ Editor for On-Screen Information, the man responsible for ensuring the accuracy of all the information that viewers see on screen.
His job on election night, he says, is to ensure that “anyone turning on Sky News at any point in the [election show] will find out instantly the state of play. I have always worked on the basis that, if we have information in the building and we can share it, why wouldn’t you do so?”
“The information -the words and the numbers – is what I am concentrating on,” he explains.
Evans oversees all of the social media platforms for Sky News and manages the channel's relationship with those platforms - an exciting position to have in the midst of an impromptu election period.
There is so much online engagement surrounding the election, how much does social media represent the voting public and how can Sky get the facts across in a way that will interest people?
We spoke to Evans about how people engage online during an election, how Sky News use social media for such events, and what they have in store for election night.
That message rings out again when I talk to Nick Phipps. Phipps is the Election Night Editor of Sky News’ 2017 Election results show – a position he first held in 2014 for the Scottish Referendum, and then at every major national vote since.
His turn in the hot seat came about because he asked for it.
“I spoke to [Head of Sky News] John Ryley,” he recalls, and asked the Sky boss for the opportunity. “He very kindly said OK.”
The project puts the broadcaster live at 250 declarations across the country, from Witney to the Western Isles, and from Hastings to Hartlepool.
Sky 250 builds on Sky’s world record-breaking coverage of the 2015 election, which put them at 150 declarations. That project took over a year to organise, this time they had just seven weeks to do it all again – but bigger.
Overseeing the organisation of the Sky 250 project is Valerie Hamill, who has been tasked with recruiting over 300 personnel, organising the tech and liaising with 150 count locations.
Peter Lowe is the Managing Editor of Sky News, and the man responsible for ensuring that the broadcaster meets its commitments to impartiality and unbiased reporting - something broadcasters are legally required to do under the Communications Act 2003.
News reporting, both in and outside of election season, must be fair and unbiased, it must show 'due impartiality', which Peter explains below, and 'due accuracy', meaning that the accuracy needed must be satisfactory and appropriate to the content.
As part of the RTS Inside Sky’s Election Campaign series, Sky’s Head of Politics, Specialist and Business Journalism Esme Wren, who is overseeing the broadcaster's election coverage, reveals her plans for covering the surprise General Election.
For the broadcaster, getting outside of London is key to covering the campaign, after lessons learned from the Brexit and 2015 General Election coverage where the opinion polls were out of touch with the final result.