Sky News

Chair

Beth Rigby, Political Editor, Sky News 

Speaker

Tony Hall, Director-General, BBC 

The new position has been created to demonstrate the channel’s commitment to reporting on climate change.

Thomas-Peter will leave her position as Sky News’s US correspondent, after covering hard-hitting stories across the US, including the #MeToo movement, the Harvey Weinstein scandal, the Trump presidency, the opioid drugs crisis and the rise of the far right.

The reporter also sailed around Britain as part of an expedition for a documentary analysing the effects of ocean plastics on the environment.

Beth Rigby is the stand-out political broadcaster of our times. This is despite the former print journalist having been on our screens for only three years. No one asks the acute, no-nonsense yet empathetic questions like the new political editor of Sky News. And no one does it in her accent.

She drops so many Gs that Rigby dreads party conferences in Birmin’ham. We worked together on the Times, where she was a scoop-winning media editor – and when I saw her first steps on Sky News I knew, as her bosses obviously did, that a star had been born.

However it ends, the battle royal for the right to own most of the assets of 21st Century Fox, and all of Sky, reflects deep and significant trends in global media. The resolution (in favour of suitors Disney, Comcast or both) may end up being less important than what the outcome tells us about market dynamics.

This battle is about the response of legacy media to accelerating shifts in consumer behaviour and to the threats posed by the big digital disruptors. In a market where content and distribution are increasingly intermingled and global, size unlocks the prize.

Speculation that BBC Two’s Newsnight might be axed was firmly squashed in February, when Sky News head of politics, business and specialist journalism, Esme Wren, was appointed editor of the flagship show.

Doubts about its future had re-emerged last autumn with the introduction of Nick Ferrari and Emma Barnett’s ITV series, After the News, and the announcement that Newsnight editor Ian Katz was leaving for Channel 4 to become its director of programmes.

Helen-Ann successfully pitched the idea of the campaign to Sky's CEO after witnessing the shocking plastic waste on a beach in Bermuda while working as a producer at Sky News.

The new partnership will support young people (aged 16-17) who are from disadvantaged backgrounds and are interested in a career in journalism, by running an e-mentoring scheme.

The e-mentoring scheme will enable the youngsters to match with industry professionals and allow for a greater scope to find mentee's best suited to them.  

Fewer people from poorer backgrounds are entering the industry and it is hoped this partnership will open the door to the next generation of journalists, regardless of their background.

Rigby had a front row seat to the Conservative campaign, as Theresa May’s approval ratings drooped in the aftermath of the controversial social care policy outlined in the Tory manifesto.