"Just f***ing start talking”, shouted the legendary ITN studio director Diana Edwards-Jones into the earpiece of a reticent reporter at a constituency count more than 40 years ago as she commanded general election night coverage with great panache.
The Fellowships were presented last night during the RTS Patron Dinner at One Great George Street in London.
The recently departed Head of Sky News was in combative mode as he outlined three recommendations to improve British broadcast journalism.
First, John Ryley said: “Broadcasters should start reporting on the Royal Family with the same rigour as they treat every [other] story on the news agenda.… They are too supine, too incurious, too compliant.
The Sky newsroom: 24 hours left as the boss; 39 years in daily news – 17 years as the head of Sky News – will come to a hard stop tomorrow at noon, when Charles is crowned King and Camilla Queen.
Standing at my desk, I look across the newsroom and reflect on how this trade has changed. Now, there are no ashtrays. No plastic cups of half-drunk coffee. No typewriters. But so many mobile phones.
The accuracy of the fire was surprising,” was the laconic observation of Sky News camera operator Richie Mockler. He was explaining what happened when gunmen, thought to be a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance squad, ambushed Sky’s chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay and his team. They were driving in a rented Hyundai saloon car on a major road from Bucha to Kyiv, about 20 minutes from the centre of the capital.
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.
