ITN Boss On GB News; Prince Harry, Meghan Markle – Deadline

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Exclusive: Chris Shaw has left the building. The Oscar-nominated British news executive has said he’s quitting the company after 40 years of an on-and-off romantic relationship with news producer ITN, becoming the biggest man of his generation. gave him a front row seat to the news of Semi-retirement beckons, but not before the alumni interview.

So how did this show unleash? As Andrew Marr impressed when he left his BBC, has he found his voice after being constrained by the ITN’s commitment to impartiality? It takes more than a fun phone interview to break his career habits. But there’s no doubt he’s tight-lipped on his last day in the office. This is good news. For few people are in a better position to ponder the British news landscape than Shaw.

His embellished resume includes helping Rupert Murdoch launch Sky News in 1989, and nearly a decade later performing similar tricks at Channel 5, now owned by Paramount. increase.He is on PBS Frontline children of syriawhile the documentary was short Watani: my hometown He was nominated for an Oscar. The show also boasts some big royal scoops: Harry & Meghan: An African Journey Open the floodgates to Sussex stories, queen green planet One of Queen Elizabeth II’s only major interviews can be claimed.

We’ll start with the last five years of his career. This five-year period has given him a unique edge over the tumultuous aftermath of Britain’s Brexit, the war in Ukraine and the global pandemic. During this time he served as editorial director of his ITN, standing at the top of the ‘Himalayas’ to supply news to his three largest private public broadcasters in the UK, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. I’ve been keeping an eye on it.

Shaw feels the ground is changing under his feet as the ITN’s traditional and authoritative reports are thwarted by what he describes as the “loud voices” in the room. He mentions Murdoch’s Talk TV. GB News is a channel once backed by Warner Bros. Discovery that indulges in right-wing conspiracy theories.

“Broadcast news is in the midst of what is loosely called the culture wars,” Shaw says. “People want to be more acerbic, emphatic and dogmatic because it attracts attention and puts a certain pressure on regulated journalists.”

Talk TV and GB News have adopted Fox News-style host monologues, both of which are set to serve politicians on the front lines of primetime programming. Former Culture Secretary Nadine Dries has her own platform on Talk TV Friday night. Jacob Reese Mogg, on the other hand, is another senior Conservative who tells his worldview nightly on GB News. It’s hard to imagine either being reserved for hosting his ITN output.

Ofcom’s “laissez-faire” news regulations

Shaw believes UK media regulator Ofcom is taking a more ‘laissez-faire’ approach to cracking down on new stations, but the regulator appeared to be pulling a line this week. . It launched an impartiality inquiry into GB News by allowing two Tory MPs, Esther McVey and Philip Davis, to interview Prime Minister Jeremy Hunt about the budget. Similar interviews, including Dolly’s roundtable with her former boss Boris Johnson, escaped scrutiny because they offered “another perspective.”

Shaw says the ITN’s 50-year history in television news means it’s bound to a more traditional approach to equity, which it lacks flexibility. It doesn’t mean ITV News adjusted the bulletin to adopt more direct language, but the show notes that former BBC presenter Dan Walker appeared on Channel 5 News. “He has a great way of telling complex stories in a banal tone,” he says.

But Shaw worries that ITN’s broadcast client will be drowned out by the noise. “If we get to a situation where rival news channels start eating away at viewers significantly, or if we have a scenario like the US where Fox is the market leader, that puts a lot of pressure on legacy broadcasters to follow suit. Kakeru. Isn’t that right?”

It’s kind of a paradox that, at a time when new news services are pushing the boundaries of free expression, fairness is rarely so important for the likes of the BBC and Channel 4 News. The BBC came to the brink of survival over watchwords just last month when Gary Lineker tweeted his disapproval of the government’s asylum policy. Shaw’s former boss, former ITN CEO John Hardie, was drafted to review his media policy on the station’s social media.

It’s a “troublesome” task, Shaw says, and disagrees with the idea that fairness is codified into rigid social media rules. he says, flinching aloud at the task before Hardy. Shaw was partially responsible for creating ITN’s own social media rules, but said the company has preferred to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. The journalist, like former ITV News presenter Alastair Stewart, left the company in 2020 for misconduct.

Channel 4’s ‘ugly’ relationship with Boris Johnson

Channel 4 News is often accused of being liberal bigoted by right-wing detractors, but despite its conflicts with the government, it has never violated Ofcom’s impartiality rules. The show admits that the Krishnan Guru-Murthy-fronted news service had a “very delicate relationship” with Downing Street when Johnson was at the height of his power.

Asked whether the former prime minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, has threatened to privatize Channel 4 unless Channel 4’s reporting efforts get off the ground, Shaw said: other.Everyone was in a fuss back then [2019] The election and it got pretty daunting… I don’t think Channel Four News did anything wrong during that period, but things got pretty ugly.

This has never been more true than when Channel 4 News replaced Johnson with an ice sculpture after he refused to participate in a debate on the climate emergency in November 2019. The government threatened to review Channel 4’s broadcasting license. Shaw, who was in the building when the televised debate turned frosty, looks back on it with some affection.

“Ice sculptures have become cultural icons that caught the eye of Channel 4 News about government. It was a bit of fun, it was absolutely harmless fun. And despite the public’s commitment to environmental initiatives , pointed out that that particular government was not willing to participate [Johnson] Join that discussion,” he says.

“Ice sculptures have become shorthand for strained relationships. Have you ever been slightly silly?”

When not pulling pranks, Channel 4 News has been responsible for some of Shaw’s most memorable work.He points to the 2011 BAFTA-nominated film The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka, has mobilized international public opinion on the civil war in Sri Lanka, he says. Shaw said the station stands for “high-quality, progressive and adventurous filmmaking” and was “delighted” that the station would remain in public hands.

Harry and Meghan Focus on ‘Apparing Storm’

His other memorable scoop found a home on ITV. Harry & Meghan: An African Journeythe royal rift over Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was exposed for the first time. It was a documentary that said

Did they know right away that the footage was going to be explosive? “That little conversation in South Africa seemed so outlandish and unexpected and shocking…we were in a very special place. I knew I had something,” he replies.It was the beginning of a story that spanned many years, but the show found that the stolen conversations Bradby had with Markle were linked to the Netflix series. spareHarry’s book.

He sees an inevitable “conflict” between the Sussex’s desire for privacy and their willingness to share intimate details about their lives. I feel a little sorry for him because I don’t think he was there and I didn’t mean to go there,” he says.

Semi-retirement will be muted than those rushes of big exclusives: Shaw just bought his first iPhone after being welded to his work phone for most of his career. He plans to ‘dab’ in documentary production and appreciates the podcast’s ability to get people ‘hooked’ on stories that span multiple episodes.

The show may be moving away from storytelling, but the storytelling isn’t over yet.