Daily Mail publisher DMG Media has made a “significant investment” in Prorata.ai, a generative artificial intelligence platform that plans to share revenue with publishers each time their content is used to answer a user query.

The deal gives Prorata access to DMG Media’s content, which includes the archives of the Mail, Mail Online, Metro, the i and New Scientist.

Guardian Media Group and Sky News all also announced on Wednesday that they have made their content available to the start-up, and they were joined on Thursday by magazine Prospect.

The Financial Times reports that the DMG Media investment values Prorata at about $130m (£100m). Press Gazette understands Sky News is also considering investing in the start-up.

DMG Media on Prorata: ‘It could be the cornerstone of a sustainable economic model for news’

Prorata has not yet launched any public-facing products, but has already signedsimilar content-sharing deals with the Financial Times, Fortune, Axel Springer and The Atlantic.

The company has previously told Press Gazette that it has created a mechanism that lets AI platforms determine “the value of contributing content” in a generative AI response and as a result “calculate proportional compensation” for the originators of that content. It has said it will make the technology available to license to other AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Prorata says it will share half the revenue from its forthcoming subscriptions to its licensing partners.

The business hopes to provide a solution to publishers who don’t want to be left behind should consumers move toward generative AI-powered search, but who have been burned by other AI companies who have ingested their content to create their large language models without providing any compensation.

[Read more: News Corp seeks massive damages from AI firm Perplexity for stealing content]

DMG Media vice chairman Rich Caccappolo said its deal with Prorata made the company “the first UK news publisher to invest in an equity stake in this industry-leading platform”.

“The rise of large language models and real-time content scraping represents a material threat to the news industry. There is a critical need to attribute content used by LLMs to generate answers and compensate all content creators for their work.

“ProRata’s platform is a vital first step toward advancing accurate and fair attribution and promoting transparency. It could be the cornerstone of a sustainable economic model for news publishers, giving them the incentive to continue investing in high-quality, informative journalism.”

David Rhodes, the executive chairman of Sky News, said: “Global audiences trust Sky News to give them the full story, first. ProRata’s solution helps advance that high-quality, impartial journalism across AI platforms and publishers.

“With all our partners today we’re securing our company’s massive investment in fair and accurate news reporting – now, and well into the future.”

Guardian Media Group chief executive Anna Bateson said: “The trusted, quality journalism for which The Guardian is world-renowned must be fairly credited and valued when used by AI platforms. Prorata respects and promotes these fundamental principles, and we are pleased to be partnering with them.”

And Prospect chief executive Mark Beard said: “In this age of disinformation, we respect and warmly approve of Prorata.ai’s approach. We share Prorata.ai’s belief that fact-checked, authoritative journalism is critical and will not only survive but thrive, if the publishers who produce it are credited and fairly rewarded alongside the technology companies that surface it.”  

Prorata’s chief executive Bill Gross told Press Gazette in August: “Current AI answer engines rely on shoplifted, plagiarised content. This creates an environment where creators get nothing, and disinformation thrives…

“Our technology allows creators to get credited and compensated while consumers get attributed, accurate answers. This solution will lead to a broader movement across the entire AI industry.”

The post DMG Media invests in publisher-friendly generative AI start-up Prorata appeared first on Press Gazette.

Press Gazette is honoured to announce the finalists for the British Journalism Awards 2024.

This year’s British Journalism Awards attracted 750 entries encompassing every major news organisation in the UK.

The finalists are announced today following a three-week process involving 80 independent judges and two days of jury-style meetings.

In order to make the shortlists work has to be revelatory, show journalistic skill and rigour and serve the public interest.

The winners will be announced on 12 December at a dinner in London hosted by Radio 2 presenter and journalist Jeremy Vine.

Details here about how to book tickets.

The shortlist for News Provider of the Year will be announced following a second round of judging. The winners of Journalist of the Year, the Marie Colvin Award and the Public Service prize will be announced on the night.

Chairman of judges and Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford said: “Without journalism, Boris Johnson would still be prime minister, wronged postmasters would not have a voice and victims of the infected blood scandal would not have a chance of compensation.

“The 2024 British Journalism Awards shortlists celebrate the stories which would not be told without journalists willing to shine a light on uncomfortable truths and publications brave enough to back them up.

“Congratulations to all our finalists and thank you to everyone who took the time to enter the British Journalism Awards.

“In a media world which is increasingly controlled by a few parasitic technology platforms it is more important than ever to celebrate the publishers willing to invest in and support quality journalism that makes a difference for the better in our world.”

British Journalism Awards 2024 shortlist in full:

Social Affairs, Diversity & Inclusion Journalism

Natasha Cox, Ahmed El Shamy, Rosie Garthwaite — BBC Eye Investigations

• Perfume’s Dark Secret

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• Missing from mainstream: Excluded children with nowhere to go
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision
• Hospital schools: On the mental health crisis frontline

Sasha Baker, Valeria Rocca — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• The parents group at the centre of a rollback of trans rights
• ‘One day they may thank us for that “abuse”’: Inside the Bayswater Support Group

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans, Cate Brown, Ed McGown, Tom Stone, Ed Campbell, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Mariah Cooper, Reshma Rumsey — ITV News

• Nowhere to go: Britain’s homeless emergency

Louise Tickle — Tortoise Media

• Taking the stand: Grace’s story
• Taking the stand: Emma’s story

Abi Kay — Farmers Weekly

• Level the Field
• Is there a problem with young farmer culture?
• Editor’s view: Facing hard truths about young farmer culture

Joshua Nelken-Zitser, Ida Reihani, Kit Gillet — Business Insider

• Iran will pay for gender-transition surgery, but it comes at a cost — your dignity

Features Journalism

Sophie Elmhirst — 1843 magazine, The Economist and The Guardian

• The last stand of the call-centre worker
• Chortle chortle, scribble scribble: inside the Old Bailey with Britain’s last court reporters
• Last love: a romance in a care home

Jenny Kleeman — The Guardian

• America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’
• She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all
• ‘I know someone who played noughts and crosses on one’: meet the top surgeon who burned his initials on a patient’s liver

Sirin Kale — The Guardian

• ‘My child was drowning’: life and death on an English maternity ward
• The life and tragic death of John Balson: how a true crime producer documented his own rising horror
• The Russell murders: is Michael Stone in prison for a brutal crime he didn’t commit?

Zoe Beaty — The Independent

• How Nigel Farage took over my hometown – and why Keir Starmer should be worried
• My battle to bring a predatory Met Police officer from the same unit as Wayne Couzens to justice
• ‘A court packed with those who know their way around already, and jails are too full to take them’

Inderdeep Bains — Daily Mail

• My doctors insist it’s time I died – but I will fight them: Extraordinary case of 19-year-old woman suffering from Charlie Gard condition battling medics’ attempts to ‘condemn her to death’
• Sudiksha: ‘Condemned to Die in Secret’ – The Shocking Story of the 19-year-old’s fight to live

David James Smith — The Independent

• How did so many miss the sinister warning signs about James Bulger’s killer for so long?
• Is Lucy Letby innocent? I’m a miscarriage of justice investigator – and here’s what I think…
• The wife of this Murdoch executive has been missing since the Sixties – will her body now be found?

Fiona Hamilton — The Times

• Nottingham attacks: ‘We have no faith in the police. We want justice’
• ‘A horrible way to die … and no doctors can help you’
• Realising Sarah Everard got into a sex offender’s car was horrific

Barbara McMahon — Daily Mail

• Ghislaine Maxwell ‘was tortured in prison – now she’s ready for a comeback’: Jeffrey Epstein’s socialite pimp runs half marathons at low-security Florida lock-up and is now ‘focused and motivated’ for her appeal next week, her brother reveals
• ‘I shook Epstein’s hand and asked him what my daughter would be doing’: Virginia Roberts’s father describes dropping her off at paedophile’s mansion, meeting ‘despicable’ Ghislaine… and blasts Prince Andrew for showing ‘no remorse’
• Black Widow who ‘relished killing and had no regard for human life, even for children’: Griselda Blanco shot a child in the head when she was 11 and rose to be Miami’s drug kingpin. As she’s immortalised on Netflix, her son recalls his ‘fearsome’ mother

Local Journalism

Abi Whistance, Joshi Herrmann, Kate Knowles, Mollie Simpson, Jothi Gupta — Mill Media

• Special investigation: The collapsing world of Liverpool’s charity kingpin
• Investigation: The spectacular rise and sudden fall of Gurpaal Judge
• Exclusive: How did a semi in Harpurhey sell for £1.8m?

Richard Newman, Jennifer O’Leary, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight

• Katie: Coerced and Killed

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Lough Neagh has become a scene of Biblical disaster, and Stormont was central to its destruction
• Killing Edgar podcast

Chris Burn — The Yorkshire Post

• Building societies scandal: Yorkshire victims reveal shocking stories – and plead for action to be taken
• Philips Trust: FCA got ‘Ponzi scheme’ warning on firm at heart of £138m building society scandal – 18 months before collapse
• Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham Building Societies to pay tens of millions to Philips Trust victims

Jane Haynes — Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Mail/Post

• Teacher’s ‘life blown apart’ in onslaught of hate as false racism claim goes viral
• The truth exposed about ‘secretive’ council meeting on equal pay crisis in Birmingham
• ‘Like a prison’ – the tower block for homeless families that has 8pm curfew and no visitors allowed

Wendy Robertson — The Bridge

• The Bridge newsletter

Health & Life Sciences Journalism

Rebecca Thomas — The Independent

• Mental health patients ‘raped and sexually assaulted’ as NHS abuse scandal revealed
• Nicholas’s story: ‘I’ve been locked up for 10 years because I’m autistic. Is a chance at life too much to ask?’
• Revealed: NHS regulator’s ‘culture of fear’ that leaves rogue nurses free to abuse patients

Fin Johnston — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Science for sale: Philip Morris’s web of payments to fund tobacco research
• Inside the strategy doc Philip Morris never meant you to see
• Tobacco state: why Japan was the perfect testing ground for Philip Morris

Hannah Barnes — The New Statesman

• The trauma ward
• The Cass Review into children’s gender care should shame us all
• Hundreds of doctors are challenging the BMA’s stance on puberty blockers

Robbie Boyd, Eamonn Matthews, Steve Grandison, Ian Bendelow, Sophie Borland, Katie O’Toole, Islay Stacey, Ali Watt, Frances Peters — Quicksilver Media for Channel 4 Dispatches

• Undercover A&E: NHS in Crisis

Ellie Pitt, Cree Haughton, Justina Simpson, Ellie Swinton, Patrick Russell, Liam Ayers — ITV News

• The Dark Side of Cosmetic Surgery

Martin Bagot — Daily Mirror

• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth
• Urgent warning amid fears cosmetic fillers could cause immune system problems

Hanna Geissler — Daily Express

• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying ‘allowed me to mostly forget’ fears, says Aussie man hit by brain tumour
• Dame Esther’s assisted dying petition delivered to Prime Minister’s doorstep

Crime & Legal Affairs Journalism

Sue Mitchell, Rob Lawrie, Joel Moors, Winifred Robinson, Dan Clarke, Philip Sellars, Tom Brignell, Mom Tudie — BBC

• To Catch a Scorpion
• How we found Europe’s most wanted migrant-smuggler
• Why the BBC could track down a people-smuggling kingpin before the police

Gabriel Pogrund, Katie Tarrant — The Sunday Times

• Millionaire’s ‘sex worker immigration scandal’
• Hamish Ogston: millionaire accused of exploiting women ‘set up charity to help win knighthood’
• Hamish Ogston: tycoon asked Met to arrest woman who accused him of sex trafficking

Mike Sullivan, Jerome Starkey, Mike Ridley — The Sun

• ‘Distraught’ Holly Willoughby under police guard after man is arrested over terrifying ‘kidnap plot’
• Police chief faces ‘Walter Mitty’ probe after being pictured wearing Falklands medal despite being 15 at time of war

Hannah Summers — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Family Court Files: mother ‘devastated’ after rapist father granted contact with child
• Family Court Files: Psychologist’s evidence used to ‘ramp up’ allegations of parental alienation
• Kristoffer White: TBIJ wins court battle to publish name of sex offender

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans — BBC Panorama and BBC News

• Abercrombie & Fitch ex-CEO accused of exploiting men for sex
• Lawsuit accuses Abercrombie & Fitch of funding sex-trafficking operation
• FBI investigate after ex-Abercrombie boss sex claims

Isobel Yeung, Alex Nott, Esme Ash, Nick Parnes, Alistair Jackson, Matt Bardo, Sarah Wilson — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Britain’s Unsolved Crimewave: Dispatches

Comment Journalism

Daniel Finkelstein — The Times

• Israelis and Palestinians must start to listen
• Wes Streeting’s lessons from Richard Nixon and China
• Here’s the Keir Starmer I’ve known for decades

Matthew Syed — The Sunday Times

• When I was at school a teacher could call me the P-word. We’ve come so far
• The storm is gathering, and Europe is still dithering on defending itself
• Locked in by language, we are freed by music, poetry, painting … and love

Will Hayward — WalesOnline/The Will Hayward Newsletter

• The most pointless job in Wales
• The worst political leader in the UK
• Bluster, fluster and ‘word salad’ nonsense: Vaughan Gething ducks and weaves like a boxer at the Welsh Covid Inquiry

Kitty Donaldson — i

• Part political update, part group therapy: inside Starmer’s Cabinet meeting
• Grenfell is a tragic reminder to the Tories that regulation is not a dirty word
• The winter fuel row is a painful wake up call for new Labour MPs

Frances Ryan — The Guardian

• A summer defined by men killing women and girls. This can’t go on
• Think of this: a plan to ‘warehouse’ disabled people. What kind of nation is Britain becoming?
• Cropped out, banned, airbrushed: the school photos that show the ugly face of Britain today

Duncan Robinson — The Economist

• Why the next Westminster scandal is already here
• The narcissism of minor differences, Labour Party edition
• British boomers are losing out for the first time

Specialist Journalism

Peter Blackburn — The Doctor (by the British Medical Association)

• Nowhere left to turn
• Fears for patient care due to shortages of chronic alcohol misuse treatment Pabrinex
• Not the only failing

Lucinda Rouse, Emily Burt, Ollie Peart, Louise Hill, David Robinson, Rebecca Cooney, Andy Ricketts, Nav Pal, Til Owen — Third Sector

• The End of Charity podcast

Lucie Heath — i

• Revealed: Water firms dumped sewage 5,500 times in a year ‘illegally’
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• Toxic water, debt and sewage dumping: How Britain’s rivers got so bad

Deborah Cohen, Margaret McCartney — BMJ/Pharmaceutical Journal

• Inclisiran: the ‘extremely unusual’ political influence behind the novel drug’s approval
• Galleri promises to detect multiple cancers—but new evidence casts doubt on this much hyped blood test
• Inclisiran: Government’s strategy to promote cholesterol lowering drug after Brexit was “spectacular failure,” says insider

Lee Mottershead — Racing Post

• Revealed: the racehorse owner fronting an illegal bookmaker with more than 1,000 customers
• ‘People don’t want to provide bank statements. We’ve got so many people betting with us’

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• The rise of the parent activist
• AI’s allure is proving hard to resist for the UK’s learners
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision

Emily Townsend — Health Service Journal

• Over 30 sepsis deaths linked to ‘systemic’ failings, investigation reveals
• Revealed: Doubling of average waits for critical stroke treatments
• Midwives call women in labour ‘Asian princesses’ amid ‘hostile’ environment fears

Roya Nikkhah — The Sunday Times

• Prince Harry at 40: ‘All he does is spend time looking back’
• The hospital heart-to-hearts that brought Kate and King even closer
• Prince William to build houses for homeless on his land in Cornwall

Foreign Affairs Journalism

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• Gun in hand, the Israeli settler tells the Palestinian: I will kill you
• First Hamas fighters raped her. Then they shot her in the head
• ‘Who will protect us?’: Christina Lamb on the Yazidis’ dangerous journey home

Alex Crawford — Sky News

• Libya floods: Child’s voice heard under rubble as rescue teams search desperately in Derna for survivors
• Warning of Islamic State’s growing resurgence – as Sky News gets rare access to terrorists’ families
• Report from Lebanon

Kim Sengupta — The Independent

• Bombs, betrayal and burying loved ones: Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russia’s invasion
• ‘I have buried more than 50 friends’: My life as a British soldier fighting on Ukraine’s bloody front line
• The families of hostages taken by Hamas are desperate – but can Israel get them back?

Vanessa Bowles, Jaber Badwan — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Kill Zone: Inside Gaza

Louise Callaghan — The Sunday Times

• The secret city of tunnels where hundreds live below Vegas glitz
• Claudia Sheinbaum: Meet the woman ready to be Mexico’s first presidenta
• Stand-off at Eagle Pass: welcome to the epicentre of the US border crisis

Secunder Kermani — Channel 4 News

• Palestinian detainees allege torture and sexual abuse by Israeli captors
• Myanmar military forces victims to fight in brutal civil war

Gesbeen Mohammad, Brad Manning, Nechirvan Mando, Ghoncheh Habibiazad, Esella Hawkey, Tom Giles, Hafez — ITV

• Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom

Stuart Ramsay, Dominique van Heerden, Toby Nash — Sky News

• Haiti gang boss will take part in talks if invited – but warns foreign forces will be treated as ‘invaders’
• Aboard ‘The Beast’: What do migrants face travelling through Mexico on way to US?
• Shocking scenes in Gaza hospital as IDF moves into Khan Younis | Israel-Hamas war

Arkady Ostrovsky — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Life and death in Putin’s gulag
• Death and destruction in a Russian city
• Life and fate (podcast)

Technology Journalism, sponsored by Amazon

Alexander Martin — The Record from Recorded Future News

• Ransomware attacks hit record level in UK, according to neglected official data
• UK government urged to get on ‘forward foot’ with ransomware instead of ‘absorbing the punches’
• Exclusive: UK to propose mandatory reporting for ransomware attacks and licensing regime for all payments

Marianna Spring — BBC News

• The real story of the news website accused of fuelling riots
• Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images
• X takes action on deepfake network smearing UK politicians after BBC investigation

Joe Tidy — BBC World Service

• ‘Pig butchering’ scammers target BBC reporter
• Sextortion warning: In six hours, my son was dead
• Stolen test data and NHS numbers published by hospital hackers

Amanda Chicago Lewis — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Secrets of a ransomware negotiator

Cathy Newman, Job Rabkin, Emily Roe, Sophie Braybrook, Guy Basnett, Ed Howker — Channel 4 News

• Deepfake Porn

Helen Lewis — BBC Radio 4/BBC Sounds

• Helen Lewis Has Left the Chat

Energy & Environment Journalism, sponsored by Renewable UK

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Apocalypse Neagh: The source of 40% of NI’s water is ‘dying’
• Watch: Sam McBride’s in-depth look at Lough Neagh’s blue-green algae crisis

Josephine Moulds — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Backroom deals, mystery companies and a ‘killer lake’: inside DRC’s gas and oil auction
• HSBC helped oil and gas industry raise $47bn despite net-zero pledge
• Barclays’ billions of ‘sustainable’ finance for fossil fuel industry is greenwash, says investor

Esme Stallard, Becky Dale, Sophie Woodcock, Jonah Fisher, Libby Rogers — BBC News

• Water firms illegally spilled sewage on dry days – data suggests
• BBC uncovers 6,000 possible illegal sewage spills in one year

Rachel Salvidge, Leana Hosea — The Guardian/Watershed

• The Watershed Pollution Map
• Landfills across England could be leaking harmful toxic ooze, warn experts
• ‘It’s a poison and it’s killing us’: the hidden dangers of old UK landfills

Guy Grandjean, Patrick Fee, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight Northern Ireland

• Spotlight – The Lough Neagh Monster
• Hundreds of environmental breaches by Moy Park

Sofia Quaglia — The Guardian

• ‘If we can’t fish any more, we’re going to die’: the volunteer sea patrols protecting precious Philippine waters
• From sea to plate … to sea! Hong Kong puts oyster shells to new use
• ‘It smells so bad’: glut of wild salmon creates stink in Norway and Finland

Jess Staufenberg — SourceMaterial

• Trojan Horsepower – Formula 1 and the Saudi oil lobby
• F1 lobbies for Saudi against EU green rules

Arts & Entertainment Journalism

Mark Daly, Mona McAlinden, Shelley Jofre, Jax Sinclair, Karen Wightman, Hayley Hassall — BBC Panorama

• The Dark Side of Ballet Schools

Jonathan Dean — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Oasis reunion and Wembley gigs next year … is that definitely, maybe?
• Ridley Scott: I didn’t need historians to make my Napoleon epic
• Olly Alexander on Eurovision: ‘I was trying not to have a breakdown’

Rachael Healy — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘At the start you get molested and by 45 you’re too old to work’ – the secret misery of women working in TV
• Fresh crisis at ‘toxic’ Strictly as ex-staff claim they faced sexualised comments and cruelty
• ‘The outrageousness of what Louis CK did is totally lost’: the film about the backlash faced by his accusers

Tom Bryant — Daily Mirror

• BBC’s Huw Edwards scandal teen breaks silence in first interview – ‘I felt groomed’
• Huw Edwards scandal teen: Why I first tried to protect BBC star but now feel shame
• Paul O’Grady’s beloved dog nuzzled star’s shoulder as devoted husband battled to save him

Lucy Osborne, Stephanie Kirchgaessner — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘I honest to God believe I was drugged’: magician David Copperfield’s alleged victims speak out
• The FBI investigated David Copperfield for two years. The claim that he was ‘exonerated’ was widely embraced. Was he?
• ‘Magic David called’: David Copperfield repeatedly contacted Jeffrey Epstein

Clemmie Moodie, Hannah Hope, Scarlet Howes — The Sun

• Strictly pro Giovanni Pernice probed over serious complaints by 3 ‘traumatised’ contestants as BBC ‘gathers evidence’
• Strictly Come Dancing bosses make huge changes to show after Giovanni Pernice quits
• Strictly bombshell as Amanda Abbington demands backstage footage of her and Giovanni as she is diagnosed with PTSD

Carolyn Atkinson, Olivia Skinner — BBC Radio 4 Front Row

• The British Museum’s missing gems
• Painting stolen in art heist more than 30 years ago returned to Glasgow museum

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• ‘I felt used and abused’ on Arthur: alleged Russell Brand victim speaks

New Journalist of the Year

Rafe Uddin — Financial Times

• Labour loses Muslim support over stance on Israel-Hamas ceasefire
• Reform UK’s unusual structure with Nigel Farage in the middle
• How Post Office lawyers pushed boundaries in UK sub-postmasters scandal

Sammy Gecsoyler — The Guardian

• ‘We’re going to see people dying on the streets’: homeless refugee crisis grips Liverpool
• ‘Rat bites and chronic asthma’: schools on frontline of UK housing crisis
• Met police agree six-figure payout to student hit by baton at protest

Kaf Okpattah — ITV News, ITV News London

• Whistleblower reveals corruption and collusion inside Wandsworth Prison
• The fraud scammers putting people out of pocket by cloning phone numbers

Simar Bajaj — The Guardian, New Scientist

• Everyone is on their phones. But is it really phone addiction we’re experiencing?
• The surprising mental health and brain benefits of weight-loss drugs
• He was shot in the throat. Now he saves gun victims as a trauma surgeon in Baltimore

Nimra Shahid — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Santander arranged billion-dollar oil bond after making green pledge
• Santander weakened fossil fuel policy after raising billions for gas projects

Venetia Menzies — The Sunday Times

• Anxiety drug pregabalin killed my son — and hundreds more are dying from it
• The company taking refugees out of Gaza — and ‘making millions’
• After the earthquake: how Morocco is rebuilding

Oliver Marsden — The Sunday Times/Al Jazeera

• Hero taxi driver who saved scores from Hamas faces hatred from both sides
• Dodging Israeli rockets with Ghana’s UN peacekeepers
• Israeli strikes on Lebanon: Attacks are causing wildfires across south

Yasmin Rufo — BBC News

• London mayor election: Bots, misleading URLs cause voter confusion
• Ulez expansion: Contested claims examined
• Ulez: More than 300 cameras damaged or stolen in four months

Sports Journalism

Jacob Whitehead — The Athletic

• Special report: Newcastle United sponsor Noon and shocking allegations of worker mistreatment
• Saudi Arabia investigates worker mistreatment allegations after The Athletic report on Newcastle sponsor Noon
• Special report: ‘Disturbing’ safety issues at Hillsborough 35 years after disaster

Oliver Brown — The Telegraph

• Angela Carini was sent unforgivably into harm’s way by gutless IOC cowards
• After my grandfather hugged Jesse Owens, the Nazis told him: ‘Never embrace a black man again’
• Michael Vaughan: If I had gone through this racism ordeal at 80, I would have wanted to be shot

Simon Lock, Rob Davies, Jacob Steinberg — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism / The Guardian

• Abramovich’s hidden football deals during Chelsea’s time at the top (TBIJ) and Chelsea FC face new questions over how Roman Abramovich funded success (Guardian)
• ‘I worked for Abramovich?’: footballers were owned by oligarch via offshore deals (TBIJ) and Revealed: Abramovich, the super-agent and the footballers owned as ‘commodities’ (Guardian)
• Leaked documents reveal Abramovich is still connected to Vitesse (TBIJ) and Abramovich loans fund owner of Dutch football club, leaked documents suggest (Guardian)

Jacob Judah — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• The strange case of the disappearing football team

Riath Al-Samarrai — Daily Mail

• Drifting through life without gold medals, tortured by his past, and now claims of bankruptcy… How did petulant Wiggins fall so spectacularly from his golden bike?
• Seb Coe explains why he’s HAPPY to break 128 years of Olympic tradition by handing out cash for gold… and reveals Roman Abramovich’s unlikely role in athletics
• The curious case of Jade Jones’ drugs test and why the Chinese might be quick to ask questions, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

Ian Herbert — Daily Mail

• Looting and rioting, setting fire to police officers and hunting down English fans… fearful European clubs are turning a blind eye to shadowy leaders of their untouchable ultras
• Thirty-five years after horror of the Hillsborough tragedy, Mail Sport can reveal that incredibly the stadium is still not fit for purpose with poor stewarding, inadequate turnstiles and a problem tunnel
• Grubby, classless, the five-year legal battle over plane crash victim Emiliano Sala takes us into football’s sewers… where players are pawns and chronically inept clubs desperately try to save cash

Matt Lawton — The Times

• Man City launch unprecedented legal action against Premier League
• ‘The horror is everywhere’ – inside Lord Coe’s secret trip to Ukraine
• Russian athletes should be allowed at Olympics, says government

Um-E-Aymen Babar — Sky Sports

• How does endometriosis affect women in sport?
• USA cricket teen on tackling social media trolls, South Asian heritage and 2028 Olympic goals
• Um-E-Aymen Babar ok Tiktok

Campaign of the Year

Caroline Wheeler —The Sunday Times: Bloody Disgrace

• Thousands dead, 40 years of cover-up: time for justice for infected blood victims
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims
• Jeremy Hunt: I promised a dying friend I’d end infected blood scandal

Patrick Butler, Josh Halliday, John Domokos — The Guardian: Unpaid Carers

• Carers threatened with prosecution over minor breaches of UK benefit rules
• ‘Injustice’: 92-year-old with dementia told by DWP to repay £7k in disability allowance
• I’m under attack and fighting back: the scandal trapping carers

Computer Weekly editorial team — Computer Weekly: Post Office Scandal

• Post Office Horizon scandal explained: Everything you need to know
• Fujitsu staff instructed how to bid for government contracts during self-imposed ban
• Post Office Horizon replacement project labelled ‘unachievable’ as taxpayer bill reaches £1bn

David Cohen — Evening Standard: Show Respect

• Boys, porn and the alarming way they talk about girls – a special investigation
• School pupils tell how they are victims of sexual harassment every day
• Show some respect: Standard launches campaign with £500k to tackle sexist abuse in schools

Lucie Heath — i: Save Britain’s Rivers

• Save Britain’s Rivers: i challenges all parties to commit to election manifesto
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• National Trust signs up to i’s Save Britain’s Rivers manifesto

Hanna Geissler, Giles Sheldrick — Daily Express: Give Us Our Last Rights

• My assisted dying petition proves Brits are compassionate – now Rishi Sunak must act
• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying debate must move on to how law will change, MND campaigner says

Amy Clare Martin — The Independent: IPP Jail Sentences

• Revealed: 16 years in prison for stealing a bike and no hope of release – as 7 trapped in jail kill themselves
• ‘He looked like a starving dog on the floor’: Prisoner trapped on indefinite jail term driven to hunger strike
• Father imprisoned for 12 years for stealing mobile phone under ‘cruel’ indefinite jail term reunited with son

Martin Bagot, Jason Beattie — Daily Mirror: Save NHS Dentistry

• Dentists warn ‘rescue plan’ will fail to end crisis as 60,000 people sign our petition
• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth

Photojournalism

Thomas Dworzak — 1843 magazine, The Economist

André Luís Alves — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Giles Clarke — CNN Digital

Nichole Sobecki — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Dimitris Legakis — Athena Picture Agency

Stefan Rousseau — PA Media

Hannah McKay — Reuters

Interviewer of the Year

Alice Thomson — The Times

• Ed Davey: ‘Being a carer is harder than being a politician’
• Peter Kyle: It was 5am. A woman said, ‘Your partner is dead ’
• Emma Barnett: ‘The pain was so bad, I was losing the will to live’

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• ICC prosecutor: UK didn’t blitz the IRA — Israel needs that restraint
• The president’s daughter (and Instagram star) wanted by Interpol
• David Cameron: ‘Why did I take the job? Rishi Sunak asked!’

Laura Kuenssberg — Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News

• Baroness Mone and the PPE Scandal
• How Can We Protect Our Children Online?
• Inside No 11 with Chancellor Rachel Reeves

Charlotte Edwardes — The Guardian

• ‘You asked me questions I’ve never asked myself’: Keir Starmer’s most personal interview yet
• ‘Dismissing global warming? That was a joke’: Jeremy Clarkson on fury, farming and why he’s a changed man
• ‘The levels of attack are extraordinary’: Gary Lineker on punditry, podcasts – and why he won’t stop speaking his mind

Nick Ferrari — LBC

• Labour leader Keir Starmer joins Nick Ferrari to take your calls
• Champagne and caviar: Esther Rantzen reveals plans for final moments as she pushes for assisted dying law change
• Nigel Farage joins Nick Ferrari

Samantha Poling — BBC

• How I confronted Emma Caldwell’s killer
• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell
• Who Killed Emma?

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey
• Kevin Spacey Breaks Down As He Faces Debt Of MILLIONS
• Piers Morgan vs Rishi Sunak Round 2 | Prime Minister Discusses Israel-Hamas War, NHS, Rwanda & More

Paul Brand — ITV News

• Interview with Rishi Sunak
• Interview with Ed Davey
• Interview with Keir Starmer

(View all three interviews here)

Politics Journalism

Jim Pickard, Anna Gross — Financial Times

• Keir Starmer accepted £76,000 of freebies including tickets to over 20 football games
• Keir Starmer faces backlash over early failure to disclose £16,200 in donor-funded clothing
• Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves declared clothing donations as office support

Pippa Crerar — The Guardian

• Kemi Badenoch accused of ‘bullying and traumatising’ staff
• Rishi Sunak aide placed bet on election date days before announcement
• Tories putting party reputation before sexual assault claim, says alleged victim

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• ‘No room for the Indians?’: Tory donor Frank Hester suggested staff climb on train roof
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Beth Rigby — Sky News

• Election exit poll
• The Battle for Number 10: A Sky News Leaders’ Special
• How Reform fares on Thursday will also determine the Conservatives fate

Caroline Wheeler — The Sunday Times

• Commons worker arrested after allegedly spying for China
• My MP husband Andrew Bridgen was captured by antivax ‘cult’
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims

Jane Merrick — i

• Thousands of disabled people died after ‘Covid treatment withheld’, inquiry to probe
• ‘My daughter was allowed to die of Covid because she had Down’s syndrome’
• Labour manifesto missing pensioners’ winter fuel and bus pass pledges

Steven Swinford — The Times

• Britain and US launch airstrikes on Houthi targets
• Jeremy Hunt looks for £9bn to balance his budget
• Teachers and nurses should get above-inflation pay rise, ministers told

Business, Finance and Economics Journalism, sponsored by Starling Bank

Simon Murphy — Daily Mirror & Sunday Mirror

• Fujitsu boss lives on ‘blood money’ with £2m mansion as we suffer, says Post Office victim
• Provider boasting of ‘compassion’ threatens daughter with court action over £50k care bill for her 93-year-old amputee mother with dementia
• Mirror tracks down former Post Office IT chief that Horizon inquiry insisted couldn’t be found

Ed Conway — Sky News

• Surge in sale of UK-made cars to Russia’s neighbours shows how it’s beating sanctions
• British firms’ exports are almost certainly bolstering Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, Sky data analysis finds
• How British financial services aid sale of Russian gas on European market | Ukraine War

Tom Bergin — Reuters

• Online-gambling giants conquer U.S. with tactics deemed too tough for Britain

Gill Plimmer, Robert Smith — Financial Times

• Chinese state banks are lenders to Thames Water’s parent company
• Thames Water owners pile group with debt
• Thames Water shareholders backed away over regulator’s debt demands

Siddharth Philip, Benedikt Kammel, Anthony Palazzo, Katharine Gemmell, Sabah Meddings — Bloomberg News

• Bogus Supplier of Jet-Engine Parts May Have Faked Employees Too
• Ghost in the Machine: How Fake Parts Infiltrated Airline Fleets
• UK Fraud Cops Make Arrest in Fake Airplane Parts Scandal

Anna Isaac, Alex Lawson — The Guardian

• Sellafield apologises after guilty plea over string of cybersecurity failings
• Nuclear Narnia: why is Sellafield Europe’s most dangerous industrial site?
• Sellafield nuclear site hacked by groups linked to Russia and China

Danny Fortson — The Sunday Times

• Mike Lynch: Flown to the US in chains, now he is free … and talking
• Inside Mike Lynch’s last stand as $11bn fraud trial looms
• The app that promised an NHS ‘revolution’ then went down in flames

Online Video Journalism

Alex Rothwell, Alastair Good, Yasmin Butt, Pauline Den Hartog Jager, Jack Feeney, Federica De Caria, Kasia Sobocinska, Stephanie Bosset — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse | Investigation
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation
• ‘Illegal’ conspiracy theory school exposed | Times Investigation

Andrew Harding — BBC News

• BBC tracks down smuggler behind Channel crossing which killed Sara, 7

Mohamed Ibrahim, Owen Pinnel, Mouna Ba, Wael El-Saadi, Feras Al Ajrami — BBC Eye Investigations

• Gaza 101: Emergency Rescue

Tom Pettifor, Matthew Young, Daniel Dove — Daily Mirror

• Has the man who killed Jill Dando finally been found?
• Jill Dando murder: Man wanted for questioning matches features of Serbian assassin
• Jill Dando murder: Key witness identifies Serbian assassin

Lucinda Herbert, Iain Lynn — National World Video

• Lured To Her Death: The Murder of Sasha Marsden

Reem Makhoul, Robert Leslie, Clancy Morgan, Amelia Kosciulek, Matilda Hay, Liz Kraker, Dorian Barranco, Barbara Corbellini Duarte, Erica Berenstein, Yasser Abu Wazna — Business Insider

• 4 Gazans show how war devastated their coastline

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey

Ben Marino, Joe Sinclair, Veronica Kan-Dapaah, Petros Gioumpasis, Greg Bobillot — Financial Times

• Chinese brokers launder hundreds of millions for global crime groups | FT Film

Investigation of the Year

Scarlet Howes, Mike Hamilton, Alex West — The Sun

• Ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’
• Huw Edwards used position of power to groom young people for 6 years even sending pictures from BBC desk to impress them
• We’re still suffering, say parents at centre of Huw Edwards scandal as they slam BBC for lack of answers after he quits

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace, Paul Morgan-Bentley, Esella Hawkey, Imogen Wynell Mayow, Alice McShane, Florence Kennard, Ian Bendelow, Victoria Noble, Alistair Jackson, Sarah Wilson, Geraldine McKelvie — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions, Channel Four Dispatches Investigations Unit

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• Russell Brand: In Plain Sight

Alex Thomson, Nanette van der Laan — Channel 4 News

• Post Office Scandal

Paul Morgan-Bentley — The Times

• I worked undercover in one of UK’s most dangerous jails — without checks
• My son died in HMP Bedford. I never felt he was safe there
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation

Ruth Evans, Oliver Newlan, Leo Telling, Sasha Hinde, Hayley Clarke, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• Undercover School: Cruelty in the Classroom

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Holly Bancroft, May Bulman, Monica C. Camacho, Fahim Abed — The Independent and Lighthouse Reports

• At last! Afghan special forces heroes set for sanctuary in UK after government U-turn
• MoD accused of burying admission that UK special forces had power over Afghan sanctuary claims
• Murdered, tortured or in hiding from the Taliban: The special forces abandoned by Britain

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Isabel Alderson-Blench, John Ray — ITV News: The Post Office Tapes

• New secret tape reveals top Post Office lawyer was warned of ‘wrongful’ convictions decade ago
• Secret tape shows Paula Vennells was told about problems with Horizon and warned not to cover it up
• Paula Vennells’ ‘smoking gun’ email reveals Post Office ‘cover-up’

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• No yawning or fingerprints on doors: the strict rules at Tory donor’s firm
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Samantha Poling, Eamon T. O Connor, Anton Ferrie, Shelley Jofre — BBC Disclosure

• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell

Scoop of the Year

Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions and Channel 4 Dispatches

Huw Edwards Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’ — The Sun

Naked photos sent in WhatsApp ‘phishing’ attacks on UK MPs and staff— Politico

No 10 pass for Labour donor who gave £500,000 — The Sunday Times

Labour will add 20% VAT to private school fees within first year of winning power — i

The Nottingham Attacks: A Search for Answers — BBC Panorama

Innovation

Harry Lewis-Irlam, Stephen Matthews, Darren Boyle, Rhodri Morgan — Mail Online: Deep Dive

• Anatomy of a loveless landslide: How Labour won on apathy and division
• Hour by hour, how D-Day unfolded…
• How China could seize Taiwan and spark WW3

Laura Dunn, Katie Lilley-Harris, Ellie Senior, Sherree Younger, Scott Nicholson, Jamie Mckerrow Maxwell — KL Magazine

• Rocky Bottoms
• Johnny Cave’s Asparagus
• Archangel Distilleries

Niels de Hoog, Antonio Voce, Elena Morresi, Manisha Ganguly, Ashley Kirk — The Guardian

• How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation

Alison Killing, Chris Miller, Peter Andringa, Chris Campbell, Sam Learner, Sam Joiner — Financial Times

• FT investigation finds Ukrainian children on Russian adoption sites

David Dubas-Fisher, Cullen Willis, Paul Gallagher, Richard Ault — Reach Data Unit

• DWP Cold Weather Payment postcode checker – map shows where households are due £25, £50 or £75 boost
• Enter postcodes in this map to see average house prices in your area
• Cheapest places in Greater Manchester to buy petrol as RAC issues fuel price warning

Gabriel Pogrund, Emanuele Midolo, Venetia Menzies, Darren Burchett, Narottam Medhora, Cecilia Tombesi — The Sunday Times

• The dead teenager, the lying suspect and the black box that proves it

The post British Journalism Awards 2024: Full list of this year’s finalists appeared first on Press Gazette.

Press Gazette has ranked the biggest UK and US news publishers on Instagram with four achieving follower-counts above ten million.

We looked at the news publishers from our top 50 UK and US website rankings to compile our new research.

Two publishers – BBC News (27.8 million) and CNN (20 million) – are above the 20 million mark. When Press Gazette last ranked publisher Instagram accounts (in June 2023) BBC News had 7.4m followers on the platform and CNN 4.2m.

The top two on Instagram are followed by the New York Times (18.2 million) and People (13.6 million).

In comparison, only one news publisher (Daily Mail) from the two top 50 lists has topped ten million on Tiktok, the newer platform.

Ladbible does not feature in the latest ranking because it has it has fallen out of the list of the top 50 news websites in the UK. It currently has 14.1 million followers to its biggest Instagram account. Cosmopolitan, The Daily Wire, The Verge, NME, Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit similarly have fallen out of our top 50s so do not eapp

Excluding the impact of Ladbible’s removal, the top seven remain the same – but The Guardian (5.8 million followers) in eighth place has overtaken Buzzfeed and Unilad (both 5.7 million).

The fastest-growing Instagram account over a two-year period was the New York Post, increasing by 74.7% since 2022 to 1.2 million.

It was followed by Healthline Media (up 60% since 2022 to 1.3 million) and UK tabloid the Mirror (up 57% to 441,000).

Four news publishers on our list saw their Instagram followings decline since June 2023: Buzzfeed (down 7%), sister publication Huffpost (3% to 3.2 million), Unilad (down 2%) and The Daily Beast (down 2% to 452,000).

Since June 2023 only, the Mirror was the fastest-growing (up 45%) followed by ITV News (up 34% to 512,000) and the New York Post (up 32%).

But the follower count for BBC News increased the most in absolute terms (2.1 million) since last year - almost double the next largest growth seen by Fox News (up 1.2 million to 9.4 million).

Four added at least one million followers to their counts - also including the New York Times and People.

The percentage of people saying they use Instagram for news has risen from 2% in 2014 to 15% this year in 12 key markets surveyed by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (UK, US, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Ireland.

It remains behind Facebook, Youtube and Whatsapp in importance but has overtaken Twitter/X and is still ahead of Tiktok and Snapchat.

The post Two news publishers have 20m+ Instagram followers: Leading UK and US titles ranked appeared first on Press Gazette.

Five of the biggest news publishers in the UK and US have increased their core Tiktok followings by more than two million people in just over 18 months.

Press Gazette has updated our ranking of the biggest and fastest-growing news publisher Tiktok accounts, having last done so in January 2023.

The analysis features the 70 news publishers from Press Gazette’s most recent lists of the 50 biggest UK and US news websites that were found on Tiktok. 

Nineteen of the publishers are not included in the growth comparisons as they were not included in our previous analysis – with some of those likely to have been more recent sign-ups to Tiktok. 

The rankings look at each publisher’s main account only but it should be acknowledged that some news outlets create separate accounts for different verticals.

Reuters and The New York Times saw by far and away the biggest percentage increase in their Tiktok following during the period, but this is due to their small followings at the start of 2023.

Among those with over 100,000 followers at the time of our last update, the 371% growth seen by BBC News was the largest.

CNN (238%), GB News (221%), Yahoo News (218%), CNBC (205%) and The Independent (204%) were the other larger accounts to more than triple their follower count.

There was also some impressive growth for local news sites such as the Liverpool Echo (204%) and the Manchester Evening News (193%), though Newcastle’s Chronicle Live (464%) remains small (6,200 followers) despite that growth.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Washington Post (13%) and The Telegraph (14%) took the least advantage of TikTok’s growth.

In terms of absolute growth, there was no matching the Daily Mail, which added 5.6 million new followers over the period. This was more than two million more than any other news publisher in our analysis.

Insider, a section of Business Insider, was a distant second place, adding a still impressive 3.5 million new followers in the period.

CNN (3.1 million), Sky News (2.9 million) and BBC News (2.9 million) also added more than two million followers each since the start of 2023.

The New York Times added almost 750,000 followers from a starting point of under 5,000, while Reuters added over 175,000 from a base of less than 1,000.

Who are the biggest news publishers on Tiktok in the UK and US?

The Daily Mail, which was in third place behind ABC News in January 2023, is now leading the way at the top with nearly ten million followers for its main account on the platform at the time of writing. (Between our data collection and time of publication, it has now surpassed ten million.)

One of its smaller accounts, Daily Mail UK, which has 980,800 followers, would still place comfortably in the top half of the outlets considered. It celebrated surpassing ten million across all its accounts, which also include a global news account and others dedicated to crime, sport, royals, showbiz, the US and Australia, in January this year.

It does have a smaller Tiktok following than Ladbible (13.8 million followers on its main account), but although the younger brand was top of the ranking in 2023 it was not included in our latest update as it is not currently ranked in the top 50 news websites in the UK.

Of the 70 newsbrands covered in this analysis, 21 were followed by more than a million people. This was more than the number (19) who had followings below 100,000.

This increased reach comes off the back of further growth for TikTok, which is now used for news by 8% of people in 12 key markets including the UK and US according to the 2024 Reuters Institute Digital News Report - up from 1% in 2020.

Across all countries surveyed where Tiktok operates, it is now used for news by 13% of people - overtaking X/Twitter (10%) for the first time - and 23% of 18 to 24-year-olds, the report found.

However 27% of Tiktok users said they struggle to detect trustworthy news on the site, the highest of all social media platforms covered. And only 34% of Tiktok users said they pay attention to journalists or news media, preferring online influencers and personalities. By contrast, on X 53% of users say they pay attention to journalists or news media.

Note: This article was updated after publication to add Channel 4 News, which we discovered had been wrongly missed off our list of the UK's top 50 publishers and therefore met the criteria for inclusion on this ranking.

The post Fastest-growing news publishers on Tiktok since start of 2023 revealed appeared first on Press Gazette.

Sky News has promoted Nick Sutton to director of platforms after four years leading its digital output.

Sutton will have responsibility for the broadcaster’s output across digital, TV and audio, including driving the “quality, consistency and cross promotion” across all the platforms.

He joined Sky News as head of digital output in 2020 after spending 23 years at BBC News, ending his time there in charge of its website.

Sky News executive editor and managing director Jonathan Levy said that in the past four years Sutton “has been instrumental in making us one of the biggest digital players in the UK”.

He added: “This role calls for a first-class editorial person who understands the imperative of multi-platform journalism at this critical and transformative moment for Sky News and our industry. Nick is that person and will start his new job immediately.”

Sutton, who is known by many beyond his news colleagues for creating the #tomorrowspaperstoday hashtag on Twitter while at the BBC, said: “I’ve loved working at Sky News over the last four years and am excited to take on this new role at a time when the media landscape is changing so rapidly.

“Linear television has been key to the success of Sky News over the last 35 years. It continues to play an important role, with us reaching 10 million people on TV in the last month but there are also real opportunities to use the video generated by the channel to reach new audiences across digital platforms and offer millions of more people the full story, first.”

July was the best month on linear TV for Sky News since October 2022. Internal figures put its digital audience at 37.6 million for the month – more than 50% higher than the 2024 monthly average until then – with visits up 32% to 197 million and page views up 31% to 668 million. There were 53.6 million video views across the Sky News website and app.

Sky News has also consistently been among the fastest-growing major sites in Press Gazette’s regular ranking of the top 50 newsbrands in the UK. In June it was the sixth biggest news site in the UK, up 4% month-on-month and 12% year-on-year to an audience of 20.6 million, according to Ipsos iris data.

Sky News said one of its key objectives has been to improve its live journalism, including via live blogs and video streams. It has also become one of the biggest news accounts on Tiktok, with 6.3 million followers – behind only the Daily Mail among the 50 biggest UK-based publishers.

The post Sky News promotes Nick Sutton to director of platforms appeared first on Press Gazette.

“Appalling harassment and abuse” against journalists covering far-right riots and counter-protests over the past week has been condemned.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show after this story was first published, Liverpool Echo editor Maria Breslin said a member of her team was “attacked” in Southport on the first night of violence (on Tuesday 30 July) after the vigil for the three girls who were stabbed at a dance class.

She said they “had quite expensive equipment stolen, glasses broken, left with cuts and bruises. I know of people from other teams who were spat at, someone had to take shelter in a local home”.

Breslin suggested that “whoever these disaffected people are, they certainly see us as part of the problem possibly, or certainly reporting on what’s going on. So it’s really challenging, and it makes me really angry because we should be safe in doing our job. Even back in the office we’ve had quite a few unpleasant phone calls this week.”

Asked the nature of the phone calls, she said: “There have been a lot of phone calls that have been quite extreme in their nature, in terms of racist language et cetera. It’s really difficult, but I’m really proud of the professionalism shown by our team in being determined to report on what’s happening in, essentially, our community.”

Latest: BBC journalist received ‘defamatory and highly personal attacks’ over ‘out of context’ riot clip

On Monday journalists for LBC and Sky News were forced to leave the areas they were reporting from in Birmingham where members of the Muslim community had gathered in response to rumours of a planned far-right protest in the area.

LBC reporter Fraser Knight posted on X: “As a reporter, I’ve just been chased out of an area of east Birmingham by groups of Asian men who had come out to ‘protect their community’ against a planned far-right demonstration.

“The security guard with me decided immediately it wasn’t safe for us – it was clear we weren’t welcome – but there wasn’t a safe place for us to go for miles. Cars followed us, we had abuse shouted at us and at one point a group of around six men ran after us down a road with what looked like a weapon.

“We were forced to run… We were warned that we’d regret it if we hung around. We’re safe now.”

Meanwhile Sky News communities correspondent Becky Johnson was surrounded by masked men who told the team to leave while she was attempting to report live.

“Becky will have security there,” anchor Mark Austin told viewers. Johnson later thanked her security officer as well as the cameraman and producer.

As the team began to drive away a balaclava-clad man then attempted to slash a tyre on their broadcast van using a knife. No damage was done and they were able to leave.

Appearing on Times Radio on Wednesday, Conservative MP Robert Jenrick accused Home Office minister Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, of appearing to “explain away or justify intimidation against a female journalist [by] sectarian gangs on the streets of her own city in Birmingham”.

Phillips had written on X in response to a post by Reform UK MP Richard Tice: “These people came to this location because it has been spread that racists were coming to attack them. This misinformation was spread entirely to create this content.”

On Sunday Sky News North of England correspondent Charlotte Leeming was also forced to stop live coverage after being intimidated while on-air by masked men with weapons in Middlesbrough.

Her colleague in the studio said: “I’m sure your producer is watching your back, if you need to go Charlotte, please feel free. We know it’s a volatile situation there.”

Sky’s North of England producer Hope Yeomans also reported seeing other journalists targeted. She wrote: “We have seen other journalists targeted by rioters – telling us that we are all working for the government and are preventing the truth. We have had colleagues who have had their camera equipment smashed and stolen.”

And a day earlier, amid a brawl between far-right and counter-protesters in Bristol, Sky News correspondent Tom Cheshire and his cameraman Chris “both took beer bottles to our helmets”. Leeming had also been wearing a helmet for protection.

On Monday Sky News executive chairman David Rhodes told staff: “In the past week, Sky News colleagues on four continents described to me some form of difficulty they’ve faced delivering our eyewitness journalism.

“Events in these opening days of August will have been tough to process, and I’d encourage colleagues to seek the support they might need from their managers and from our company in continuing to respond.

“Let’s remember that in febrile times like these, people depend on Sky News more than ever– it’s fundamentally our promise of ‘the full story, first.’ We all have a job to do.”

Sky advised staff across the business to work from home or leave its West London headquarters early today (Wednesday) ahead of a planned protest at an immigration centre in nearby Brentford.

“While we don’t expect the protest to directly affect the Sky Osterley campus, there will be additional security on-site tomorrow as a precaution,” a message from Sky Group security to staff said. It also included travel advice and locations to avoid for anyone who has to travel home in the evening, adding: “Please prioritise your personal safety at all times.”

Also in Middlesbrough on Sunday a national press photographer, whose name was not reported, told The Guardian he had been chased by a far-right mob.

“A guy with a balaclava said: ‘Oi camera, give it here,’” he said. “There are situations where it’s fight or flight, and neither of those were an option because there were about 150 of them in a confined area of a terraced street.”

He managed to get away with people shouting “Get him!” and “Stop him!” behind him, it was reported.

Another photographer told The Guardian he was in Bolton on Sunday and was punched on the arm while taking a photo at a counter-protest.

He said: “Quickly, it looks [as if] he goes for another punch, but misses and says: ‘Stop taking fucking photos. We don’t need any photos, get the fuck away’,” adding that a brick was thrown at him and missed. He planned to miss the next riot, fearing he would be recognised, but said he couldn’t stay away too long as “I have to go out to pay the bills”.

Freelance journalist Amanda Ferguson was called a “traitor” while covering riots in Belfast on Saturday and had her phone “smacked” out of her hand. The incident was reported to police.

Séamus Dooley, Irish Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, said: “This sort of behaviour cannot be tolerated. Filming journalists doing their work is intended to intimidate. Amanda is a diligent and committed journalist and it is shocking to see her subjected to this type of attack.”

Also in Belfast, on Tuesday, Belfast Telegraph visuals editor Kevin Scott had his car “attacked by a crowd of masked males who damaged the car and tried to gain entry” while attending a series of incidents.

In Rotherham on Sunday a rock was thrown towards journalists, narrowly missing a cameraman.

On the first night of clashes in Southport last Tuesday (30 July), an ITV News crew were forced to move away from one area “as the crowd are not happy to be filmed, to put it lightly”, UK editor Paul Brand said.

A video taken by a member of the public, and posted by Brand, shows men walking behind him and his crew with one shouting “all your f**king fault, media”. Brand wrote that “media are not welcome… It isn’t possible to engage with the people involved.”

On the same night a journalist for The Publica, which describes itself as a “space for free-thinkers and mischief-makers”, was punched, knocking out part of a tooth. He also had his phone charger stolen.

Jack Hadfield told Fox News: “I am recovering well after the attack, if still being a bit shaken. It certainly has not deterred me from continuing to cover on the ground events, and I’m taking the broken tooth to be a battle scar.”

He said he was attacked by a man who had identified him as a journalist at about 10.40pm.

“I was set upon by one man, who proceeded to hit me repeatedly in the head, face and body. I started running further down the road… where a far larger crowd of approximately a couple of hundred people or so were still gathered.

“At that point, I was surrounded by 10 to 15 men, who I attempted to explain to that I wasn’t part of the mainstream media. They demanded that I delete images and videos off of my phone, which I did,” although he was able to recover them from his “recently deleted” folder. He said he was then struck again and pushed to the ground before running away to the police line.

Safety of journalists and news crews ‘must be paramount’ amid riots

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said on Monday that journalists are “increasingly being targeted by these mobs” and that “it is vital that employers are conducting full risk assessments, providing appropriate safety equipment and ideally deploying staff in pairs or teams”.

On Wednesday she added: “These are some of the worst and most widespread public order disturbances in modern times that appear designed to terrify some of the UK’s most vulnerable communities. Journalists covering these events have also been subjected to wholly unacceptable violence and intimidation.

“Police and employers must do all in their power to ensure that journalists can work safely. Access to appropriate equipment and the ability to work in pairs, or with other backup is paramount, for freelancers as well as staff.”

Bectu, the union that represents many camera crews and others who work behind the scenes, said the safety of news crews “must be paramount”.

Head of Bectu Philippa Childs said on Wednesday: “We know this is a particularly difficult and unsettling time for Bectu members, many of whom are directly impacted as they work to bring the nation coverage of these events or are facing venue or event closures as a result of the unrest.

“They have our full support and we are speaking with broadcasters to ensure appropriate procedures are in place to protect staff, as well as freelance crew.”

Childs added: “No one should face violence, threats, intimidation or racism simply while carrying out their job. We condemn the appalling harassment and abuse of some media professionals that has occurred during the recent unrest.

“A free press and being able to report without intimidation or fear is an essential part of our democracy. The safety of news crews and other media workers must be absolutely paramount.”

Tim Dawson, IFJ deputy general secretary said: “At a time when untrue information is rife, the work of journalists is all the more crucial, and is dependent on the ability of reporters and photographers to do their work.

“Those who attack journalists are attacking democracy, and undermining everyone’s right to know. They must be protected and safeguarded – just as should be the vulnerable communities who are targeted.”

The post Journalists facing ‘appalling harassment and abuse’ amid riots appeared first on Press Gazette.

Top political podcasts saw downloads rise 50% or more during the 2024 UK general election, according to their publishers, leading one to dub it “the first podcast election”.

Press Gazette has heard from podcast company Acast, hosting platform Spotify and publishers including the BBC, Telegraph, Politico and Sky, who all report significant listenership growth over the election.

Although podcast publishers are secretive about numbers Press Gazette estimates market leader The Rest Is Politics is likely to have achieved more than ten million downloads in June. No-one from publisher Goalhanger responded to requests for comment.

Update: On 6 August Goalhanger put out a press release stating The Rest is Politics and sister interview podcast Leading together saw combined total downloads and full episode Youtube views of more than 21.6 million in the election campaign period between 22 May and 5 July. This meant they were getting more than 700,000 audio downloads an episode.

Co-host Alastair Campbell said: “It fills me with hope that so many people tuned into our show across the general election. Rory [Stewart] and I aim to fly the flag for balanced debate and real clarity amidst the constant noise of 24-hour rolling news, and we’re delighted to see our audience respond in such positive ways.”

‘Truly the first podcast election’

Podcast production and hosting company Acast told Press Gazette that, “from the announcement through the week of the election, our political podcasts saw an average growth of 53%”.

Sam Shetabi, Acast’s UK content director, added that “podcasting in general has a bit of a summer lull between June and August… whereas all of our news podcasts have completely bucked that trend”.

He said that Political Currency, the Persephonica and Acast podcast featuring former politicians George Osborne and Ed Balls, had been “a superstar” within the group, seeing episode downloads rise 81% between the week the election was called and the week it ended.

Besides Political Currency, he said, the FT’s Political Fix grew by 39%, The Guardian’s Today in Focus grew 47% and The Times’ How To Win An Election grew 43%.

He added the growth had been “greater than that of a lot of our football shows”, despite the surge in listening for those podcasts amid the Euros.

A spokesperson for Spotify, one of the biggest podcast hosting platforms, painted a similar picture, telling Press Gazette: “Total hours played of news and politics podcasts in the UK have increased by 49% over the last 12 months.

“Listeners in the UK to news and politics podcasts have increased 6% over the last 12 months, so there’s been a slight increase in the number of people listening, but a big increase in how long they’re listening for.

“The Rest is Politics is the top political podcast in June 2024, and in 2024 overall [the BBC’s] Newscast has seen the most growth over the last year, increasing its listenership by 64%.”

The BBC, which has increasingly been trying to direct its podcast audiences toward its own platform BBC Sounds, said Sounds saw a record number of listeners on the morning following the election.

A spokesperson said: “Eight out of ten UK adults came to the BBC across all platforms as audiences tuned in to BBC election coverage in their millions.

“The week of the general election was the biggest week for BBC News on BBC Sounds in at least the last 18 months, with results day (5 July) the second biggest day on BBC Sounds overall. We also saw significant audience interest in our election podcasts.”

Other publishers also furnished Press Gazette directly with figures about their increases.

Global said that The News Agents, hosted by former BBC presenters Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall, is nearing 100 million all-time downloads and that “listens are up 45% since the general election was called”. The podcast hit 10 million downloads in December 2022, three months after launch.

The Telegraph’s The Daily T, which launched only shortly before the election was called and hosted the first election trail interview with Rishi Sunak, told Press Gazette its election night and results day episodes “performed on average 45% above a typical episode’s performance”.

“The Rishi Sunak interview was listened to 84% more times than the average episode,” a spokesperson for the publisher added, and “podcast listens the week of the election were 2.7 times higher than the week prior to the election announcement.”

[Read more: Why Telegraph’s Tominey and Ahmed think there is room for another daily podcast]

Politics at Jack and Sam’s, a co-production between Politico and Sky News presented by the former’s UK editor Jack Blanchard and the latter’s deputy political editor Sam Coates, has hit two million downloads since it launched in October.

It had its most successful week following the election, “with more than double the listeners on Monday 8 July than the week before”.

Another Sky podcast, Electoral Dysfunction — fronted by political editor Beth Rigby and politicians Ruth Davidson and Jess Phillips — has also hit two million downloads, having launched in March.

Sky said Electoral Dysfunction was “growing week on week and achieving above our targets” and that its election debrief episode the day after the vote “was the most successful episode to date, with a 40% increase in audience”.

Both the podcasts saw record downloads in June, the publishers said — in part because they increased their frequency, with Electoral Dysfunction going up to twice a week and Politics at Jack and Sam’s going out every weekday.

Dave Terris, the head of audio at Sky News, said it had been “truly the first podcast election”.

“During an average day on the campaign trail, our political editor Beth Rigby and deputy political editor Sam Coates would write an analysis for online, do a TV package for the News at Ten and then discuss the big political news of the moment on Electoral Dysfunction, Politics at Jack and Sam’s and the Sky News Daily…

“Both Electoral Dysfunction and Politics at Jack and Sam’s have reached two million downloads. Considering that nine months ago neither of these propositions existed, we’re extremely pleased to see how they’ve been received.”

Will the influx of new listeners stick around now the election is over?

That listeners would take an interest in politics during an election does not necessarily mean that they will stick around once it’s over. But Acast’s Shetabi said: “We would expect there to be a nice long tail that you retain…

“They will favour one of those shows that they particularly enjoyed listening to over this election period, and I expect there to be growth in all of those shows that continues for the rest of the year.”

Asked how advertisers had taken to the growth of political podcasting given the well-publicised reticence of brands to advertise against some hard news, Shetabi said: “I think there was some nervousness around the election period itself… lots of brands chose to try to [advertise against] other content, and also because we had the Euros there were lots of other opportunities for lots of other ears to reach.”

But he added: “What we have seen with advertisers is if they’ve changed their plans, they’ve moved campaigns to later in the summer, rather than cancel them.

“There’s not really a sensitivity around news and politics per se. It’s more around the current context [of an election].”

Meanwhile, Politico’s executive director of advertising and partnerships for Europe, Rolant Glyn, told Press Gazette: “We’ve had sustained interest from new advertisers to engage with our podcasting output and, in particular, Politics at Jack and Sam’s since its launch.

“The increased number of listeners and subscribers shows an appetite to hear from Jack and Sam’s unique perspective on British politics which we’re expecting to contribute to revenue growth in the second half of the year.”

Podcasters are secretive about exact listener numbers

Unlike radio, television or (to a decreasing extent) print circulations, there is no auditor for podcast audience sizes.

Although multiple publishers were generous enough to provide Press Gazette with data on how their listenership had increased over the election, none were willing to hand over average episode download or monthly listener numbers.

However, Press Gazette did gain access to a copy of the media kit for Goalhanger, the Gary Lineker-founded publisher of the most popular politics podcast, The Rest is Politics.

The media kit appears to date from before the launch of the also highly popular The Rest is Politics USA (which debuted this year) and The Rest is Entertainment (which debuted in November 2023). It claims The Rest is Politics receives eight million downloads monthly, making it the second most popular podcast in Goalhanger’s stable after The Rest is History, which receives ten million downloads monthly.

The Rest is Football, Goalhanger’s third most popular podcast, was on three million downloads a month at the time the kit was issued and The Rest is Money, hosted by Robert Peston and Steph McGovern, was on 500,000.

The publisher said listeners average 40 minutes per episode, that two-thirds of its audience are aged 28 to 59 and 70% of its audience is male.

Which UK political podcasts were popular on Youtube during the UK general election

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do display in-app leaderboards showing which podcasts are most popular, both overall and by topic. Press Gazette has captured the top ten from both leaderboards on Wednesday 17 July below.

Although neither Apple nor Spotify display audience numbers, one other popular podcast medium, Youtube, does.

BBC research, previously reported by Press Gazette, has suggested that approximately one-third of podcast consumers prefer to watch their podcasts than listen to them — something reflected in the popularity of so-called “vodcasts” like The Joe Rogan Experience.

The profile and tastes of these video podcast listeners likely differ in some regards from audio-only podcast consumers, and not all podcasts are published to Youtube. However, because the data is public, it is possible to see how those podcasts that do publish to the video platform fare in relation to one another.

If you have any other podcast listener data to share, let us know at bron.maher@pressgazette.co.uk.

The data shows that on Youtube, too, The Rest is Politics was the most popular UK politics podcast of the election, garnering more than 4.2 million views on podcasts uploaded between the date the election was called and Wednesday 17 June. (Press Gazette has refreshed the above chart twice after publishers requested inclusion. First, the day after publication, to add four additional podcasts: Channel 4's Political Fourcast, Joe Media Group's Politics Joe, Crooked Media's Pod Save the UK and IFS Zooms in from the Institute for Fiscal Studies; second, on 22 July, to add TLDR News' podcast and Novara Media's Novara Live.)

Illustrating the extent to which vodcast and podcast audiences can differ, the second most popular political podcast was that of The New Statesman, which received 3.2 million views. On Spotify and Apple Podcasts The New Statesman Podcast ranks 34th and 32nd respectively at time of writing. (Similarly Politics Joe, which is 71st on Apple, and 29th on Spotify, is fourth on Youtube, and Channel 4's Fourcast, which is second place on Youtube, comes in at 159th on Apple and does not rank at all on Spotify's 50-strong leaderboard.)

The New Statesman (a sister title of Press Gazette) told us after the publication of this story that across all its Youtube content, regardless of publication date, it received 5,212,722 views between 23 May and 18 July. Although we excluded shortform Youtube Shorts from this analysis, the NS channel's Shorts published since 23 May have received 1,484,157 views.

The News Agents was third-ranked among the Youtube podcasts, nearing two million views.

It is also possible to plot how podcast releases performed.

Most podcast publishers on Youtube use the medium to host both their audio products and their general video content. But for the handful of publishers on the above list that mainly use their Youtube channels to host their podcast, it is possible to see use the platform's publicly-available channel subscriber figures to see how subscriptions to certain podcasts on Youtube grew over the election.

Acast's Shetabi told Press Gazette the growth across podcasts during the election showed the market still has plenty of space for new entrants

“The audience size is only growing," he said.

"The election period proved that — all of these shows grew to some extent because people were discovering new shows and new perspective, new angles... You're not going to say that two of these shows in the top 20 news and politics podcasts are the same."

Additional reporting by Amy Seal and Juliana Pamiloza.

The post ‘The first podcast election’: Political podcasts explode in run-up to polling day appeared first on Press Gazette.

The BBC News Channel and Sky News both reached more viewers in July than they have in any month since October 2022.

The uptick for viewers to the UK’s biggest TV news channels came in the month that saw an assassination attempt on former US president Donald Trump, the UK general election results and start to the first Labour government in 14 years, the climax of the Euros, and a stabbing attack at a children’s dance class in Southport which triggered the start of riots.

Sky News was also briefly the news as it tried to report the news, being briefly taken off air on the day of a massive global IT outage on Friday 19 July after, it was later confirmed, a faulty software update by cybersecurity provider Crowdstrike.

In July the monthly reach of the BBC News Channel was up by 22% compared to June to 12.8 million, while Sky News was up 25% to 10 million.

Compared to July last year, they were up by 25% and 16% respectively.

It was the first time Sky News has crossed the 10 million mark in a month since October 2022, according to BARB broadcast viewing data.

In a note to staff on Monday, seen by Press Gazette, Sky News executive chairman David Rhodes said the channel’s “average daily reach for the month put us tenth in all UK TV, inclusive of PSB channels, and the largest Sky-branded channel for the month which included the general election”.

He added: “Sky News beat BBC News Channel on five days in July, which brought us closer to the competition than any month this year,” referring to 4 July (polling day), 5 July (election results day), 9 July (start of new Parliament), 23 July and 25 July.

“We’ve been closing that gap across all metrics, and nearly doubled BBC News Channel’s reach on the day of attempt on Donald Trump.”

BBC News did have its own viral hit in the immediate aftermath of the Trump rally with correspondent Gary O’Donoghue’s interview with a man describing seeing a man on a roof in the minutes before the shooting.

Citing Sky News' internal Adobe metrics, Rhodes also claimed the brand reached a digital audience of 37.6 million users in July - more than 50% above its monthly average in 2024 so far across its website and app.

Ipsos iris figures (which are collected differently and so are not directly comparable) put Sky News on an audience of 20.6 million in June.

Rhodes also said Sky News saw visits up 32% compared to the 2024 monthly average to 197 million in July, with page views up 31% to 668 million.

Rhodes said in a statement to Press Gazette: "Coming out of the general election, audiences came for US politics, sport - even our own experience of the global IT outage seemed to deliver what we call 'the full story, first'."

In his note, he praised staff for sending "concise and timely" push alerts, particularly on Sundays, saying they had outperformed the market on developments in US politics.

The assassination attempt against Trump happened just after 11pm UK time on Saturday 13 July with updates on what happened coming throughout the following day. The following weekend, on Sunday 21 July, Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race.

Rhodes told staff: "We are more agile and responsive than the competition on breaking news events."

He also described video as a "bright spot", with 53.6 million views across the Sky News website and app "not to mention views off-platform".

In the past few days Sky News has rolled out improvements to its iOS mobile app to "put video more at the centre of the experience", he said, with an Android update to follow.

However Rhodes also warned of the difficulties facing journalists in the UK and elsewhere, writing in his note to staff: "In the past week, Sky News colleagues on four continents described to me some form of difficulty they've faced delivering our eyewitness journalism," referring to coverage of everything from the conflict in Israel and Gaza to the riots taking place in cities across the UK.

Amid a brawl between right-wing protesters and counter-protesters in Bristol on Saturday, Sky News correspondent Tom Cheshire and his cameraman Chris "both took beer bottles to our helmets". Separately a freelance journalist, Amanda Ferguson, was called a "traitor" while covering riots in Belfast on Saturday and had her phone "smacked" out of her hand.

Rhodes concluded his note by writing: "Events in these opening days of August will have been tough to process, and I'd encourage colleagues to seek the support they might need from their managers and from our company in continuing to respond.

"Let's remember that in febrile times like these, people depend on Sky News more than ever-- it's fundamentally our promise of 'the full story, first.' We all have a job to do."

The post July is best month for BBC and Sky TV news channels since October 2022 appeared first on Press Gazette.

Production bosses at the UK’s biggest broadcasters have lifted the lid on the challenges of organising their election night programming within six weeks.

Broadcasters expecting an October election had to work around an unexpectedly early date, some technical mishaps and, in the case of Channel 4, starting the campaign without a studio in place.

Chairing an event at ITN on Thursday, Jon Roberts, its director of technology, production and innovation, said he would “argue with anybody that election programmes are the hardest thing to put together. I think they’re the most extraordinary achievement in television.

“You can name any massive high-profile event and I’m not sure any come with the same combination of factors — the amount of outside sources, the graphics and results, the workflow which underpins the whole show.

“Normally, we’re doing something super ambitious in the studio at the same time. We’re building this whilst doing the campaign [coverage]. We’re all doing it, and we’re all aware that there’s going to be reviews the next morning and every decision that we make as part of that.

“And just the general predictability of all of that through the night — there’s so much content on election night, you could run the same programme 30 times and make 30 different programmes based on thousands of decisions that are happening in those control rooms.”

Channel 4: ‘Not having the luxury of a studio that we could call home was a big issue’

Perhaps the most dramatic subject of these pressures was Channel 4, which Roberts explained had “the slight disadvantage of having, at the point the election was called, no office, no team, no studio, no programme plan, no infrastructure”.

Channel 4 does not produce its own shows in-house, instead commissioning outside companies for all its content. ITN produces news programming for Channel 4 as well as ITV and Channel 5.

But unlike ITV, which had a large studio at the ITN building ready to use for the election, Channel 4’s studio was too small for a major overnight election programme — so it began the campaign effectively “homeless”.

Roberts said, as a result, the overnight election show “was more of a traditional production programme commission — except for the fact it’s nine, ten hours, 11 hours and it’s six weeks away”.

ITN Productions assistant head of productions John Keyes helped put the show together and said they started “literally from scratch”.

“When that starting gun went we were like — ‘right, where are we going to do this?’… Being homeless for a while and not having the luxury of a studio that we could call home was a big issue.”

After deciding that Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire would be somewhat unwieldy for London-based guests, Channel 4 ended up broadcasting from Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. But they had to take the second-largest studio, which required ITN to “reconfigure our set entirely to fit into a smaller studio space”.

He added that “Riverside Studios were brilliant — they’re very used to doing live shows, but they’re certainly not kitted out in the same way that a broadcast studio like ITN, BBC or Sky would be.

“They don’t have an MCR [media control room] to call home like ours [in the ITN offices]. We’re very much dealing with a normal TX [transmission] studio — four lines into the building, four lines out. Trying to make that work for election night coverage is just a massive OB [outside broadcast], essentially.”

The show ended up bringing on Channel 4 News anchor Krishnan Guru-Murthy to co-present with Emily Maitlis who usually presents podcast The News Agents, alongside The Rest is Politics hosts Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart and polls analysis from Professor Hannah Fry.

[Read more: Election 2024 — How broadcasters covered UK general election]

Keyes said he spent election night “in a converted crew break room sat down in front of the computer with about 100 Whatsapp channels for our various locations, just hoping we had enough people and enough equipment in the right place at the right time.

“And we did — the result was brilliant for us.”

The ITN staff working on Channel 4’s election night show did not get access to their studio until the Monday before the Thursday 4 July election, Keyes said, and they were out of it by Friday.

“That was it from point to point. We got the set [and] the lighting sorted over Monday and Tuesday and then we technically rigged Tuesday night and into Wednesday.”

They had one in-person, four-hour rehearsal period, and a separate graphics rehearsal period, “and that was it”.

“It was just unbelievable in the timeframe that we had,” Keyes said.

[Read more: Inside Channel 4 News on the day a rain-soaked Rishi Sunak set the date]

BBC News director of media operations on getting a camera (or an iPhone) at every election count

Morwen Williams, the director of media operations at BBC News, said it had not been smooth sailing at the national broadcaster either.

Less than an hour before the exit poll went live at 10pm, Williams said, the main steadicam in their New Broadcasting House studio stopped working properly.

“That was a very worrying hour,” she said. “We had Plan B and Plan C lined up but luckily we got it back… What I would have hoped was a calm before the busyness was not quite as calm. It was quite frantic, that 90 minutes.”

The BBC trialled several new coverage and production features at this election, including a stream of the radio overnight programme which Williams said “was nearly the one that broke us, but we did it… It got a great iPlayer audience, who knew?”

The BBC also managed to get a camera at every constituency count.

“It was an iPhone with a tripod,” Williams explained. “All the iPhone had on it was the app to go live. It had been charged up already — literally, you take one out of the [package] tube and you turn the iPhone on. You’ve got one option, you hit play, you’re on air.

“And that was it. And we had, was it, 369 of those? And we’ve got most of them back. A few left to chase up.

“And that worked really well. You never saw that full screen [of the count] — you always saw that as a multi-view.”

Sky News output editor Phipps commented that broadcasters were “always looking at each other’s work” and that there’s “a bit of cross-fertilisation” between them — noting that he has a Guinness World Record on his wall at home for having overseen 139 live web feeds from counts during the 2015 general election.

[Read more: Election TV ratings — BBC is clear winner but Channel 4 doubles 2019 audience]

Sky News: ‘We rehearsed for lots of other eventualities’

For its 2024 coverage, Phipps said, Sky News had “a stringer at every single count in the country.

“At this last election we were live at about 82, 85 different locations, some with Sky crews, others with students who we’d given cameras to — something we started doing back in 2015. We’ve actually got some of those students now working at Sky News, including on screen, so it’s created a fantastic production line of experience.”

He added: “Everyone thinks they knew what the result was going to be but believe me, we rehearsed for lots of other eventualities. 

“What we knew was it was going to be historic, because either Labour were going to return to power or the Conservatives were going to succeed in doing something that no other government had done [and] effectively win yet another election victory.”

He said they had made sure to rehearse the graphics thoroughly, too: “It’s the only show you can work on where technically you could get sent to jail if you put a graphic on too early. So we have a lot of rehearsals — I’m sure everyone else does — [to figure out] how do we ensure the exit poll does not go on air before 10 o’clock.”

[Read more: Sky’s Sam Coates reveals his election formula — 18-hour days, power naps and gallons of Huel]

ITV News: ‘Our whole build and design plan’ was for an October election

Jenny King, the head of technical production at ITN, was involved in both putting together ITV’s election night programme and producing coverage of the campaign.

She said the team had been taken aback by the timing of the election.

“We didn’t plan for the election to be when it was,” King said. “And our whole build and design plan was for the election to be — well, I was going with October the 17th. But that was proved wrong.

“So we managed it. It was really challenging. Although in hindsight it worked really well, and I’m really, really pleased that the team was able to pull it off.

“The challenge is producing the day-to-day news bulletins out of the same studio that we’re also trying to rehearse a massive election programme [in]. And I think that’s where our second studio space did come into its own”

Panel moderator Roberts commented that, “as far as I remember, everything we said was impossible in July, and only possible in October, we did in July”.

King said that was “pretty much right”, adding: “I think there were massive benefits to the July election — not least it’s not now bang up against the US election, so it gives everybody a bit of a breather.”

[Read more: News and politics page views reach record high in 2024 election week]

The post ‘The hardest thing to put together’: Inside election night at the UK’s biggest broadcasters appeared first on Press Gazette.

As the dust settles on the election, newsrooms across the country will now be dissecting the outcome and analysing the impact of the results. This is the seventh election I have covered, and it has been a campaign with lessons for political journalism. 

While journalism indeed faces challenges on many fronts, the role that news organisations continue to play in scrutinising political parties at the key moment of democratic decision remains both essential and in demand.

The figures speak for themselves. The Battle for Number 10 [leader special] programme saw Sky News receive some of its best ever TV audiences, reaching 2.45 million people over its 90 minutes. And for election night itself, 2.5 million viewers tuned into Sky News and Sky Showcase between 9pm and 2am with many millions consuming our results service and analysis on our digital products.

This moment offers us an opportunity to take stock of some key moments from this election and what they mean for the journalism. So here are six reflections that stand out for me:

Six lessons from 2024 election at Sky News

1. Debates matter, but format is key – audiences want to hear more than 45s answers

Looking at our own output, the Sky News Battle for Number 10 leaders format proved resilient and informative for audiences in this campaign. We set about creating a special event in Grimsby that delivered room for scrutiny, avoiding the traps experienced by other broadcasters of shouty exchanges and a wave of soundbites. 

Our viewing numbers told the story of our success. The Grimsby event beat our 2015 and 2017 leaders debate viewing figures and provided our highest peak audience figures for the year. 

2. Politics isn’t just a Westminster story 

At Sky News we decided it was imperative to hit the road with our broadcasting. Seeing the election through the eyes of our target towns series gave an edge to our reporting.

The issues and opinions that we covered from Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes showed that there was no better place to explain the dynamics of this election than this symbolic must win seat. Similarly, through our Faultlines and Bench Across Britain series we reported on the many concerns of ordinary people that simply weren’t being talked about by the politicians.

These pieces drew strong audiences on our digital platforms. So, covering political stories affecting the whole UK is an absolute must for future campaigns.

3. Campaigns still matter

Another key lesson from this election is that campaigns still matter. Despite a lack of jeopardy in the polling numbers ahead of 4 July, voters were still given some memorable and important moments in the campaign which undoubtedly shaped voting intent. 

Our own social channels saw more engagement during this election than any other campaign in history and in today’s world social media is a good litmus test of how much people are engaging with an issue. 

4. Data is the new frontier

In this election, the political parties have utilised data more than ever. Much of the media decided to do the same. From our regular campaign checks and online focus groups to the in-depth polling and analysis of the online election, we were able to identify the trends that matter and learn which claims from politicians that people just didn’t believe.

Audiences increasingly expect data-driven journalism, especially online, and in this election we saw broadcasters doubling efforts to meet this challenge – if done correctly that’s an asset to election coverage. 

5. On-screen experts help audiences connect with politics 

On-screen talent continue to help broadcasters to hold a true and meaningful connection with our audience. We’ve seen many news organisations securing big names for their offering.

Sky News was well set from the beginning of the campaign to bring viewers exciting reporting and expert analysis. Our refresh of our political programming was already well-established last autumn, and we extended these formats across a seven-day week during this campaign to meet audience appetite.

6. This was the podcast general election 

Finally, this was truly the first podcast election. We’ve seen many media organisations double down on their audio output. Our own Electoral Dysfunction and Politics at Jack and Sam’s podcasts have each almost received two million downloads in recent months. I believe that political podcasts are only going to increase in their influence, so watch this space for what comes next time around.  

Let’s not forget we have another seismic election around the corner, later in the year in the US. I do think many of the above lessons can be taken on board for November, after we all get a moment to catch our breath.

The post 2024 election: Sky News boss shares six lessons for media appeared first on Press Gazette.