Interview: Nick Pollard, Sky News (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
WHEN it controversially dropped ITN last spring for Sky News, Channel Five promised "bigger, better news". This week, with Sky finally in place, Five's coverage has unquestionably been bigger. With 60 staff in the tsunami zone and 20 local freelancers, Britain's smallest terrestrial channel has had a reporting team ITN could only dream of. And Sky has finally won its longsought foothold in terrestrial TV.
For Nick Pollard, the former newspaperman and ITN producer who has run Sky News for eight years, it is a particular triumph. Pollard, 54, who joined the Birkenhead News at age 17, has shown that an innovative, hungry news operation can compete successfully with far better funded rivals. His budget may be £35 million compared with £50 million for BBC News 24, but by nurturing his reporters' ambitions, and offering innovations such as interactive voting and an onscreen news ticker sharing the excitement of breaking news with the viewer, he has picked up a string of awards.
This week on Five, he has been able to show how he intends to provide a fuller service than ITN - at lower rates. On Monday, for its first weekday bulletins, the Five News team could call upon a dozen reporters in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. "It's not that we thought ITN was doing a bad job," he says in his office on Sky's Isleworth campus. "It's just that we can do better - we can give Five complete access to everything we do the moment we do it.
"Over the next six months, we'll see Five News being a real home for innovative and original journalism."
In person, Pollard is straightforward and focused, with a consequent lack of small-talk. He is also something of a workaholic, arriving at the office shortly after 6.30am, and generally staying until around 5.30pm. Colleagues describe him as tough and demanding but fair, and point to a "caring" and approachable side. "During the Iraq war, he quietly gathered in the families of the reporters and engineers out there, and brought them into Sky to alleviate their fears," one recalls. "That sort of thing earns you respect."
He has also brought Sky recognition from the wider industry and its regulators, who have praised its lack of bias. "He's overcome the 'us' and 'them' view of Sky within the industry," says a colleague.
Yet some, particularly aggrieved former ITN staff, wonder if Sky's low bid for Five's contract owed more to Rupert Murdoch's television aspirations. Government papers released this week suggest that Murdoch's executives were strenuously lobbying ministers to ensure that the Broadcasting Act would let him buy Channel Five. So is the news contract simply part of Murdoch's grand plan to acquire Five?
"I'd think that's highly unlikely," Pollard says. "It has never been a factor in all the discussions we've had over the past year, or indeed five years ago, when we came close to winning the contract. It's just been a news supply contract, and that's always been the way we see it."
ITN, furious to lose out, suggested that Sky's cheaper bid meant it would be losing money. "That's complete nonsense, absolute sour grapes," he replies. "Sky News, and therefore BSkyB, makes a healthy profit on this contract. Sky would not have pitched on a loss-leading basis."
Still, he has personal reasons to regret any fallout with ITN: he was executive producer for News at Ten for 13 years, responsible for three General Elections and such coverage as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Murdoch's other news channel-Fox News, has beaten CNN in the US ratings with its opinionated coverage. Does Pollard see Sky News evolving into a British version of Fox? "I don't think there's any evidence that partisan news is on its way to the UK," he says. "The regulatory climate under Ofcom is unequivocal. Parliament has decreed that it's not going to happen." He rejects as "deliberate mischief making" suggestions - as in a 2003 Cardiff School of Journalism study - that Sky's coverage of Iraq showed "partisanship".
Pollard has spent 37 years as a journalist, 27 of them in TV news at Sky, the BBC and especially ITN, where he worked closely with Alastair Burnett. He claims to be "a big fan of the UK tradition" of objectivity, and sees no reason to emulate Fox. But hasn't Murdoch himself suggested that British news broadcasters should be free, like newspapers, to pursue a political agenda? Pollard quickly senses danger. "I don't have a view on that," he replies carefully.
A more consistent criticism is that Sky's drive to break stories leads to journalistic short cuts. A BBC documentary prompted the resignation of James Forlong, a Sky reporter who later took his own life, over allegations that he had faked a 2003 report from the Gulf. Pollard, who says this was a "unique" incident unrelated to editorial pressures, instead points to the eight screens beaming different news channels into his office. "I probably look at more TV news than anyone else, and the idea that we are less accurate than BBC News 24 is just simply not true."
He has taken "ironic satisfaction" this week watching the BBC "desperately trying to replicate what we've done". Sky took an early decision to anchor its tsunami coverage locally, and so transferred production and presentation to Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. It's quite clear that the BBC saw what we did and said: 'We're being left behind, we'd better do the same.'"
Pollard, who is married to a former nurse and has two sons, has to make a stream of ethically difficult snap decisions about which footage may be broadcast. With the Kenneth Bigley and Margaret Hassan videos, Sky decided not to broadcast any footage showing the subject clearly distressed. "We have no problem at all in pausing before we put material out, because I would much rather spend five or 30 minutes discussing the ethics and morality of showing something than put it on air and discuss it afterwards. It's inconceivable that it won't get harder in the next few years as terrorist organisations get increasingly sophisticated."
Footage of the tsunami victims has brought its own challenges. He allowed a "gruesome" scene showing a body being washed at a temple. "The crucial thing is the body was being lovingly handled by a volunteer. It said so much about the effort people were putting in." There were no complaints.
The 24-hour news agenda, meanwhile, continues its eternal cycle, and Pollard's concentration becomes more strained amid rings on his mobile and flashes on his eight screens. So what's next? A bid for Channel 4 News?
"No," he says firmly. "It's time for a period of consolidation. We've got an awful lot on our plate."
(Evening Standard, January 5 2005)
WHEN it controversially dropped ITN last spring for Sky News, Channel Five promised "bigger, better news". This week, with Sky finally in place, Five's coverage has unquestionably been bigger. With 60 staff in the tsunami zone and 20 local freelancers, Britain's smallest terrestrial channel has had a reporting team ITN could only dream of. And Sky has finally won its longsought foothold in terrestrial TV.
For Nick Pollard, the former newspaperman and ITN producer who has run Sky News for eight years, it is a particular triumph. Pollard, 54, who joined the Birkenhead News at age 17, has shown that an innovative, hungry news operation can compete successfully with far better funded rivals. His budget may be £35 million compared with £50 million for BBC News 24, but by nurturing his reporters' ambitions, and offering innovations such as interactive voting and an onscreen news ticker sharing the excitement of breaking news with the viewer, he has picked up a string of awards.
This week on Five, he has been able to show how he intends to provide a fuller service than ITN - at lower rates. On Monday, for its first weekday bulletins, the Five News team could call upon a dozen reporters in Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. "It's not that we thought ITN was doing a bad job," he says in his office on Sky's Isleworth campus. "It's just that we can do better - we can give Five complete access to everything we do the moment we do it.
"Over the next six months, we'll see Five News being a real home for innovative and original journalism."
In person, Pollard is straightforward and focused, with a consequent lack of small-talk. He is also something of a workaholic, arriving at the office shortly after 6.30am, and generally staying until around 5.30pm. Colleagues describe him as tough and demanding but fair, and point to a "caring" and approachable side. "During the Iraq war, he quietly gathered in the families of the reporters and engineers out there, and brought them into Sky to alleviate their fears," one recalls. "That sort of thing earns you respect."
He has also brought Sky recognition from the wider industry and its regulators, who have praised its lack of bias. "He's overcome the 'us' and 'them' view of Sky within the industry," says a colleague.
Yet some, particularly aggrieved former ITN staff, wonder if Sky's low bid for Five's contract owed more to Rupert Murdoch's television aspirations. Government papers released this week suggest that Murdoch's executives were strenuously lobbying ministers to ensure that the Broadcasting Act would let him buy Channel Five. So is the news contract simply part of Murdoch's grand plan to acquire Five?
"I'd think that's highly unlikely," Pollard says. "It has never been a factor in all the discussions we've had over the past year, or indeed five years ago, when we came close to winning the contract. It's just been a news supply contract, and that's always been the way we see it."
ITN, furious to lose out, suggested that Sky's cheaper bid meant it would be losing money. "That's complete nonsense, absolute sour grapes," he replies. "Sky News, and therefore BSkyB, makes a healthy profit on this contract. Sky would not have pitched on a loss-leading basis."
Still, he has personal reasons to regret any fallout with ITN: he was executive producer for News at Ten for 13 years, responsible for three General Elections and such coverage as the fall of the Berlin Wall. Murdoch's other news channel-Fox News, has beaten CNN in the US ratings with its opinionated coverage. Does Pollard see Sky News evolving into a British version of Fox? "I don't think there's any evidence that partisan news is on its way to the UK," he says. "The regulatory climate under Ofcom is unequivocal. Parliament has decreed that it's not going to happen." He rejects as "deliberate mischief making" suggestions - as in a 2003 Cardiff School of Journalism study - that Sky's coverage of Iraq showed "partisanship".
Pollard has spent 37 years as a journalist, 27 of them in TV news at Sky, the BBC and especially ITN, where he worked closely with Alastair Burnett. He claims to be "a big fan of the UK tradition" of objectivity, and sees no reason to emulate Fox. But hasn't Murdoch himself suggested that British news broadcasters should be free, like newspapers, to pursue a political agenda? Pollard quickly senses danger. "I don't have a view on that," he replies carefully.
A more consistent criticism is that Sky's drive to break stories leads to journalistic short cuts. A BBC documentary prompted the resignation of James Forlong, a Sky reporter who later took his own life, over allegations that he had faked a 2003 report from the Gulf. Pollard, who says this was a "unique" incident unrelated to editorial pressures, instead points to the eight screens beaming different news channels into his office. "I probably look at more TV news than anyone else, and the idea that we are less accurate than BBC News 24 is just simply not true."
He has taken "ironic satisfaction" this week watching the BBC "desperately trying to replicate what we've done". Sky took an early decision to anchor its tsunami coverage locally, and so transferred production and presentation to Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. It's quite clear that the BBC saw what we did and said: 'We're being left behind, we'd better do the same.'"
Pollard, who is married to a former nurse and has two sons, has to make a stream of ethically difficult snap decisions about which footage may be broadcast. With the Kenneth Bigley and Margaret Hassan videos, Sky decided not to broadcast any footage showing the subject clearly distressed. "We have no problem at all in pausing before we put material out, because I would much rather spend five or 30 minutes discussing the ethics and morality of showing something than put it on air and discuss it afterwards. It's inconceivable that it won't get harder in the next few years as terrorist organisations get increasingly sophisticated."
Footage of the tsunami victims has brought its own challenges. He allowed a "gruesome" scene showing a body being washed at a temple. "The crucial thing is the body was being lovingly handled by a volunteer. It said so much about the effort people were putting in." There were no complaints.
The 24-hour news agenda, meanwhile, continues its eternal cycle, and Pollard's concentration becomes more strained amid rings on his mobile and flashes on his eight screens. So what's next? A bid for Channel 4 News?
"No," he says firmly. "It's time for a period of consolidation. We've got an awful lot on our plate."
(Evening Standard, January 5 2005)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, January 05, 2005
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