Interview: Adam Boulton, Sky News (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
THROW Adam Boulton a question, and he'll fire back an instant camera-ready opinion. On a live 24-hour channel like Sky, this rare ability to extemporise provocatively yet thoughtfully has made him one of Britain's highest-paid reporters - the only political editor on a package (excluding clothing allowance) reputedly approaching £500,000.
So, it is unfair to play that old newspaper trick and boil down a typically eloquent hour-long Boulton discourse into a few startlingly opinionated soundbites. Still, here we go anyway. BBC and ITV news are "doomed". Labour's election team has a "worrying" zeal to exclude the media that must be fought. As for Boulton's own contribution to journalism: "Andrew
Marr would not exist" without him.
But first, in true Sky style, the big live story - Labour's obsession with bypassing journalists on the campaign trail. The Sun's political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, calls this "the most stage-managed campaign in election history". Boulton says it is becoming the story itself. "It's a worry," he says, "and it's something we report. This morning's news event, where as soon as the photo opportunity was over they blocked the cameras - you'll see all that on Sky tonight, that they staged the event,
didn't invite most of the press and blocked access. We show all that, so no one could call us patsies."
Still, he is not complaining too loudly. He admits that the policy benefits TV correspondents at the expense of newspapers, whose journalists are reduced to phoning him to learn about Labour's next media event. "We get access that the print people only get on an exceptional basis," he agrees. But that, he adds, is because Labour feels it cannot trust the papers to report fairly. "I asked one of Blair's spin doctors why they wouldn't do live TV debates and the first excuse was that they couldn't trust the newspapers to report the debates straight. However Blair performed, they'd say he'd been humiliated." Television, by contrast, is obliged to be "fair and balanced".
Not all TV is equal, though. "I think terrestrial news is ultimately doomed," he asserts. It is not, perhaps, an entirely surprising view from a man who has been with Sky since it launched 16 years ago, joining from TV-am. But ratings, he says, will prove his case. "On the BBC and ITV, news is seen as as bridge between Neighbours and whatever comes next, so the bulletins are under increasing pressure to be populist," he says. "Now, there's a thin line between populist and patronising. We at Sky are mercifully free of the pressures of having inherited an accidental audience. We can offer dedication to news. So the terrestrial news at 10, at 10.30, are doomed."
AS BEFITS an employee of a Murdoch-controlled broadcaster, Boulton shows little love for the BBC. "When I started at Sky, I can remember a BBC news producer questioning why we were having all those 'irrelevant' Eurosceptics on" - implying a
political agenda. "I said it was because they were going to break the Tory party, and I think I was proved right. The guy who launched BBC News 24 said they weren't going to put news conferences on live, as that wasn't what 24-hour news
should be doing. I think we won that argument, too.
"And here's a really arrogant claim," he adds. "Andrew Marr would not exist if it wasn't for Adam Boulton. People may hate it, but the character political commentary that everyone competes with, we, I, was doing it first."
Innovation remains a key selling point for Sky's election coverage, from on-screen "poll bugs" to a choice of 16 screens on election night. Boulton, 46, is working even longer hours than usual, starting at around 7am and finishing at midnight after the second of his hour-long weeknight talk shows. The weekends are also packed, with Saturday night and Sunday morning
shows to present, and whatever live reporting the newsdesk requires.
On election night, he will be on for 12 hours straight with Julie Etchingham. "After 11.30pm, frankly, we haven't got a clue what we're doing, we just know we'll go with the story. Unlike terrestrial coverage, which will be lulling itself into a coma, we won't disappear up our own swingometer."
Boulton expresses passing admiration for Fox News, Murdoch's notoriously partisan US channel, which "found a niche in the market". Has Murdoch ever leaned on him to push a political line? "In 16 years, I've been at dinners with Rupert Murdoch twice, and bumped into him in the corridors twice," he replies. "Believe it or not, when I have had conversations with him, it's
him asking me what I think is going on, not telling me what to say."
Murdoch has "good business reasons" not to interfere, he adds. When John O'Loan, the first head of Sky News, offered him the job, Boulton asked if it would require a political twist. "He said, 'No, you know that wouldn't work.' That was the moment I decided I could do this job. He meant that, if we were boycotted by half the parties over suspected bias, we'd be producing a less competitive product."
When Boulton was revealed in 2002 to be in a relationship with Anji Hunter, former "gatekeeper" to Tony Blair, some newspapers questioned whether his objectivity would be tarnished. It has remained a non-issue, he insists. "None of the politicians has ever raised it with me. Even when I had to interview Iain Duncan Smith on the day it was The Mail on Sunday's splash, he said it was absolutely not a problem, it didn't in any way question what Ido.
"What are Anji's politics, anyway? I'm also related by marriage to a prominent Tory peer [the wife he left for Hunter is the daughter of the late Lord Melchett]. How can you possibly say because someone has a relationship it affects their political views?"
MORE damaging perhaps was the revelation that four years ago Number 10 sounded him out to replace Alastair Campbell. "I think everyone's talked to Number 10," he says, a little annoyed. "Look, if you really want to know, I have been approached by all three main parties. It's not unknown, though not something I personally approve of, for journalists to move into PR, is it?"
The irony is that Boulton has been one of the spin machine's most outspoken critics, complaining to the Phillis Inquiry into government communication about Labour's reliance on "assertion, omission, diverting attention to others, pre-emptive briefing and leaking, and ... bullying and ridicule" of journalists. He has also accused ministers of seeking to "emasculate" broadcast coverage of politics. Now, to his relief, he feels the tendency is easing, simply because "control-freakery" became counterproductive. But "exclusion" - keeping out the press - is a growing concern. If the parties want to make their case directly to voters, he says, they ought to accept a live TV debate, perhaps staged by the Electoral Commission.
As for his own post-election plans, Boulton professes bemusement at media gossip linking him to an executive role at Sky or a move to ITV if Nick Robinson replaces Andrew Marr. "I'll keep doing what I'm doing," he says. "The fascinating thing about this job is that everything is always evolving. I began on television with TV-am, which is now out of business. There can be no guarantees that this company or indeed the BBC will exist in 10 years' time."
Meanwhile, there is a "genuinely exciting" campaign to report. "Me, Andrew and Nick all agree that the chattering-class assumption that the result is a foregone conclusion is not right," he says. "I can also tell you that Tony Blair doesn't believe it is either."
But ... if Boulton was forced to predict the winner? "Sky," he says, quick as lightning. And he flashes one of his trademark "back-to-the-studio" grins.
(Evening Standard, April 13 2005)
THROW Adam Boulton a question, and he'll fire back an instant camera-ready opinion. On a live 24-hour channel like Sky, this rare ability to extemporise provocatively yet thoughtfully has made him one of Britain's highest-paid reporters - the only political editor on a package (excluding clothing allowance) reputedly approaching £500,000.
So, it is unfair to play that old newspaper trick and boil down a typically eloquent hour-long Boulton discourse into a few startlingly opinionated soundbites. Still, here we go anyway. BBC and ITV news are "doomed". Labour's election team has a "worrying" zeal to exclude the media that must be fought. As for Boulton's own contribution to journalism: "Andrew
Marr would not exist" without him.
But first, in true Sky style, the big live story - Labour's obsession with bypassing journalists on the campaign trail. The Sun's political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, calls this "the most stage-managed campaign in election history". Boulton says it is becoming the story itself. "It's a worry," he says, "and it's something we report. This morning's news event, where as soon as the photo opportunity was over they blocked the cameras - you'll see all that on Sky tonight, that they staged the event,
didn't invite most of the press and blocked access. We show all that, so no one could call us patsies."
Still, he is not complaining too loudly. He admits that the policy benefits TV correspondents at the expense of newspapers, whose journalists are reduced to phoning him to learn about Labour's next media event. "We get access that the print people only get on an exceptional basis," he agrees. But that, he adds, is because Labour feels it cannot trust the papers to report fairly. "I asked one of Blair's spin doctors why they wouldn't do live TV debates and the first excuse was that they couldn't trust the newspapers to report the debates straight. However Blair performed, they'd say he'd been humiliated." Television, by contrast, is obliged to be "fair and balanced".
Not all TV is equal, though. "I think terrestrial news is ultimately doomed," he asserts. It is not, perhaps, an entirely surprising view from a man who has been with Sky since it launched 16 years ago, joining from TV-am. But ratings, he says, will prove his case. "On the BBC and ITV, news is seen as as bridge between Neighbours and whatever comes next, so the bulletins are under increasing pressure to be populist," he says. "Now, there's a thin line between populist and patronising. We at Sky are mercifully free of the pressures of having inherited an accidental audience. We can offer dedication to news. So the terrestrial news at 10, at 10.30, are doomed."
AS BEFITS an employee of a Murdoch-controlled broadcaster, Boulton shows little love for the BBC. "When I started at Sky, I can remember a BBC news producer questioning why we were having all those 'irrelevant' Eurosceptics on" - implying a
political agenda. "I said it was because they were going to break the Tory party, and I think I was proved right. The guy who launched BBC News 24 said they weren't going to put news conferences on live, as that wasn't what 24-hour news
should be doing. I think we won that argument, too.
"And here's a really arrogant claim," he adds. "Andrew Marr would not exist if it wasn't for Adam Boulton. People may hate it, but the character political commentary that everyone competes with, we, I, was doing it first."
Innovation remains a key selling point for Sky's election coverage, from on-screen "poll bugs" to a choice of 16 screens on election night. Boulton, 46, is working even longer hours than usual, starting at around 7am and finishing at midnight after the second of his hour-long weeknight talk shows. The weekends are also packed, with Saturday night and Sunday morning
shows to present, and whatever live reporting the newsdesk requires.
On election night, he will be on for 12 hours straight with Julie Etchingham. "After 11.30pm, frankly, we haven't got a clue what we're doing, we just know we'll go with the story. Unlike terrestrial coverage, which will be lulling itself into a coma, we won't disappear up our own swingometer."
Boulton expresses passing admiration for Fox News, Murdoch's notoriously partisan US channel, which "found a niche in the market". Has Murdoch ever leaned on him to push a political line? "In 16 years, I've been at dinners with Rupert Murdoch twice, and bumped into him in the corridors twice," he replies. "Believe it or not, when I have had conversations with him, it's
him asking me what I think is going on, not telling me what to say."
Murdoch has "good business reasons" not to interfere, he adds. When John O'Loan, the first head of Sky News, offered him the job, Boulton asked if it would require a political twist. "He said, 'No, you know that wouldn't work.' That was the moment I decided I could do this job. He meant that, if we were boycotted by half the parties over suspected bias, we'd be producing a less competitive product."
When Boulton was revealed in 2002 to be in a relationship with Anji Hunter, former "gatekeeper" to Tony Blair, some newspapers questioned whether his objectivity would be tarnished. It has remained a non-issue, he insists. "None of the politicians has ever raised it with me. Even when I had to interview Iain Duncan Smith on the day it was The Mail on Sunday's splash, he said it was absolutely not a problem, it didn't in any way question what Ido.
"What are Anji's politics, anyway? I'm also related by marriage to a prominent Tory peer [the wife he left for Hunter is the daughter of the late Lord Melchett]. How can you possibly say because someone has a relationship it affects their political views?"
MORE damaging perhaps was the revelation that four years ago Number 10 sounded him out to replace Alastair Campbell. "I think everyone's talked to Number 10," he says, a little annoyed. "Look, if you really want to know, I have been approached by all three main parties. It's not unknown, though not something I personally approve of, for journalists to move into PR, is it?"
The irony is that Boulton has been one of the spin machine's most outspoken critics, complaining to the Phillis Inquiry into government communication about Labour's reliance on "assertion, omission, diverting attention to others, pre-emptive briefing and leaking, and ... bullying and ridicule" of journalists. He has also accused ministers of seeking to "emasculate" broadcast coverage of politics. Now, to his relief, he feels the tendency is easing, simply because "control-freakery" became counterproductive. But "exclusion" - keeping out the press - is a growing concern. If the parties want to make their case directly to voters, he says, they ought to accept a live TV debate, perhaps staged by the Electoral Commission.
As for his own post-election plans, Boulton professes bemusement at media gossip linking him to an executive role at Sky or a move to ITV if Nick Robinson replaces Andrew Marr. "I'll keep doing what I'm doing," he says. "The fascinating thing about this job is that everything is always evolving. I began on television with TV-am, which is now out of business. There can be no guarantees that this company or indeed the BBC will exist in 10 years' time."
Meanwhile, there is a "genuinely exciting" campaign to report. "Me, Andrew and Nick all agree that the chattering-class assumption that the result is a foregone conclusion is not right," he says. "I can also tell you that Tony Blair doesn't believe it is either."
But ... if Boulton was forced to predict the winner? "Sky," he says, quick as lightning. And he flashes one of his trademark "back-to-the-studio" grins.
(Evening Standard, April 13 2005)
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