Sky News is celebrating its 30th anniversary by broadcasting non-stop behind-the-scenes footage of its newsroom all day, offering viewers a sanitised insight into the exhausting process of keeping a 24-hour news channel on air.
Staff had been warned in advance not to say or do anything that they would not want to be broadcast, with more than 40 cameras and microphones placed around the Sky News offices on Tuesday. Some journalists had already arranged a post-it note system for awkward conversations. Desks were unusually tidy. News meetings were conducted with the utmost seriousness, with few jokes and no swearing. All of this was overlaid with football-style commentary describing what viewers were seeing, which often provided more insight than the raw footage.
Staff appeared deeply self-conscious that their discussions were being broadcast to an audience of several thousand people, many of them journalists at rival organisations and media reporters desperately hoping to spot an embarrassing mistake. Some tried to look relaxed in what was clearly one of the least relaxing workplace environments ever.
Digital editor Mark Alford, in a morning news meeting with his team, cracked a joke before turning to another member of staff: “Gemma, what have you got on showbiz?”
Gemma replied: “Before showbiz, I don’t know you if you’ve seen this but Adam Parker just sent an email from Staffordshire police saying that four children have died in a house fire.”
Suddenly the tone changed. Staff ceased their awkward laughter and adopted serious expressions, aware that their reactions were being broadcast live. Orders were given to scramble and then send a breaking news alert.
Gemma returned to her showbiz list: “Angelina Jolie is in Bangladesh visiting the Rohingya … Paul McCartney has got a gold Blue Peter badge …”
“A gold Blue Peter badge? For doing what?” asked Alford.
“For his services to music,” said Gemma, doing her best to do her day job.
“Took him a long time to get a badge!” said someone else.
A few moments later an alert was sent to those with the Sky News app announcing the house fire deaths in Staffordshire.
Every awkward moment is broadcast live. There’s the slip of the tongue in which a staff member accidentally promises an interview on Northern Ireland with the deceased singer George Michael, rather than the former US senator George Mitchell.
A separate news gallery filled with directors had been set up to ensure that footage of the main news gallery could be broadcast live. There was footage of editor-at-large Adam Boulton sitting on his own in a TV studio while waiting to go live, which always carries its risks.
During one discussion on how to cover actor Liam Neeson’s comments on race, news output editor Nick Phipps asked his staff to find someone to go on air and make the argument that the views were “not acceptable”.
“But fundamentally the piece is about Liam Neeson and what impact these comments will have on him and whether people want to see his films,” he added.
At the end of a different news meeting, Sky News reporter Ashish Joshi swept in to ask veteran presenter Colin Brazier how the team meeting went.
“It’s a quiet news day. It’s a patchy news day,” replied Brazier, who then admitted viewers had seen a sanitised version of what really happens behind the scenes: “Normally there’s quite a lot of gallows humour, which we excised from that meeting.”
Comedian John Oliver considers #SkyNewsRaw a 'terrible idea' https://t.co/88EXlZHdQH
— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 5, 2019
Sky News editor John Ryley was interviewed by one of his employees, as the on-screen caption described him as “one of the leading figures in British TV news”.
“We feel it is very important that news organisations are transparent about the decisions that we make,” said Ryley, who helped to organise the strangely compelling experiment in newsroom transparency. “I’m keen to demonstrate that.”
What Sky News Raw demonstrates is the effort and level of staffing needed to run Sky’s news output across TV, radio, and online – plus the detailed consideration that goes into every piece of material. But as the saying goes: if you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”. Journalism could possibly be added to that list.