Welcome
Sky News - International News Channel
by Adam Boulton, Political Editor Sky News
At Sky News we greatly value our viewers abroad and we know that they value us back. Opinion formers around the world follow out international news service.
Last summer when President Obama made his first visit to Africa, he chose Sky News for his only foreign TV interview. Knowing that we were the right place to discuss difficult questions of race and global responsibility. Special feeds of Sky News are going into the US State Department and the White House.
Our satellite footprint stretches from Nigeria to the Arctic circle, and we have local tv and cable carriage deals all over the world – South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Scandinavia to name just a few – as well as relationship with News Corp stations, Fox in the US, Star in Asia, Sky News Australia and Italy's Sky 24. Working on the road I’ve watched Sky News in my hotel room in every continent except Antarctica, and that’s because I haven’t been there.
World history didn’t wait for us when we launched as Europe’s first 24-hour news channel back in 1989: the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Empire collapsed. On the streets of Eastern Europe our reporters quickly discovered that they were familiar faces, Europe’s newly freed citizens were hungry for satellite news.
Since then Sky News has covered all the big global events, often winning awards. These seminal moments include 9/11, the Tsunami, the Gulf War, the Invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Balkans Conflict, the release of Nelson Mandela, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the banking crunch, and the inauguration of Barack Obama (in HD), to name just a few of them.
As technology becomes ever more interactive, our work is increasingly two-way with the public. Texts, Twitters, emails, phone calls and blog comments from Abuja to Adelaide enrich our output and keep us on our toes. The Sky News iphone app. has just passed the million mark.
This means we are reporting in new ways. For example the Boulton and Co Blog's annual Valentine's Day "Most fanciable MP" list has now become an annual media event. Similarly the blog created headlines around the world when we posted the transcript of President Bush's overheard "Yo Blair" conversation with the then British Prime Minister.
Sometimes the rest of the world can teach us a lesson. 50 years after the Kennedy/Nixon Presidential debate, a Sky News campaign has resulted in the first ever Leaders’ Debates in the UK during the 2010 General Election.
I'll be chairing the Sky News debate and I'm sure I'll get plenty of feedback on my performance. Once they've seen you on TV, viewers are seldom backward about coming forward in the flesh. A man came up to me at an international conference and said: “You don’t know me, I’m the Prime Minister of Sweden and a big fan of Sky News.” New Zealand's Prime Minister complained directly that we’d switched their national feed from Sky News to Sky News Australia. As I wander around Westminster and the rest of the world, most days some viewers come up to say hello (or worse).
There is a big difference between Sky News and our international competitors such as CNNi, BBC World, and EuroNews. Our viewers get the same news service – a breaking news service - wherever they are. We make no apology for being British based - with a wide international remit, and bureaux around the globe. I believe viewers want news with a heart and commitment – there’s no secret where we are coming from and our viewers are quite intelligent enough to take account of that.
Besides, Anglo-Saxon democracy and journalism have grown up together with one of the best records for freedom of speech in the world – we are proud to belong to that tradition. We offer international news and news about Britain without putting them into boxes. We’re curious about the rest of the world but that doesn’t mean our viewers don’t want to know what’s going on in Britain.
Tony Blair once said that “showing an African life is worth as much as a Western one would help defeat terrorism”. You can’t do decent job of journalism on a complicated idea like that if your starting point is a neutral, non-committal, pale beige pap. At the same time Sky News is lucky that we are not a National Broadcaster (capital ‘N’, capital ‘B’). Our informal and open style of journalism is welcoming to viewers outside the UK.
In any case Britain and the “rest of the world” are coming closer together. In that speech Mr Blair also pointed out that British politicians can no longer shut the door on the outside world. Unlike a decade ago, the main items on any Prime Minister’s agenda – migration, climate change, terrorism, organised crime, economic growth – are now all essentially global concerns. These issues are also at the core of Sky News reporting and we find time for the less weighty matters which make the world go round such as celebrity gossip, true crime, weather and sport.
Globalization is a reality. Sky News covers the world. Thanks for watching and please tell your friends wherever you are.