Hosted by journalist and presenter Cathy Newman, the prestigious awards will take place on Wednesday 23 February 2022 at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London and will celebrate creative and excellent journalism for both news and current affairs.
Newsreaders are necessarily calm and rarely ruffled. Until, in the case of ITV News heavyweight Julie Etchingham, they get to interview their teen hero, Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran. “I was so flummoxed – I’d been such a teenage fan that I couldn’t actually get a sentence out. I made a complete fool of myself,” she admitted.
Etchingham, who was talking at an RTS Devon and Cornwall event in November, went on to identify general election leaders’ debates as her most terrifying on-screen experiences. The worst was her first, the unprecedented seven-way debate in 2015.
An expert panel, routinely faced with decisions about how to cover fake news, considers the pitfalls, the ethics and the psychology behind one of the most insidious disrupters in the modern world.
Chair
Naga Munchetty, Journalist and Presenter, BBC Breakfast
Speakers
Sander van der Linden, Professor of Social Psychology in Society and Director of the Cambridge Social Decision Making Lab, University of Cambridge
Matthew Price, Editor, Data and Forensics Unit, Sky News
Sky News presenter, Gillian Joseph, interviews Rhodri Talfan Davies, BBC Director of Nations, about the BBC’s plan for its biggest transformation in decades. Rhodri also discusses his vision for BBC Nations and how the BBC can play a central role in the development of the UK's creative economy.
Nick Martin, Sky News, accepts his Specialist Journalist of the Year Award at the RTS Television Journalism Awards 2021 and pays tribute to the staff at the care homes he reported from who "fought so hard to keep their residents alive".
After an unparalleled and challenging year, the BBC leads the way with 23 nominations across the 19 categories including ‘News Channel of the Year’, and ‘Breaking News’ for the coverage of Boris Johnson being rushed to hospital with Covid-19. ITV and Sky News follow garnering 10 nominations each, both including ‘Scoop of the Year’ and ‘Television Journalist of the Year’, for which the nominees are Alex Crawford for Sky News, Clive Myrie for BBC News, and Robert Moore for ITV News.
Sky News reporter Gillian Joseph shares what she has been up to in lockdown and advice on how to gain more skills during this time.
Preparations to celebrate the life of Harriet, my wife, at a memorial service in West Oxfordshire dominated the first half of March. Peritoneum cancer. Aged 58, Harriet died at Christmas.
Honest eulogies, festoons of flowers, elaborate afternoon tea, and the wonderful choir from St Bride’s, the journalists’ church, were all sharply halted with only five days to go when the chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, made clear that all gatherings, “big or small”, should not go ahead.
Earlier, the RTS convention had been told that, as a brand, Netflix today enjoyed the same high levels of public trust as the BBC. As for the TikTok-using, mobile-addicted members of Generation Z, the BBC looked to be completely under the radar.
Now it was the time for Tony Hall, the BBC’s Director-General, to respond. He did so in a wide-ranging, troop-rallying speech, and argued that, in today’s age of uncertainty, characterised by propaganda and disinformation, the BBC and public service broadcasting were more important than ever.
