Beth Rigby, political editor at Sky News, has become known for asking the questions the public wants answering – much to politicians’, and Dominic Cummings’, displeasure. ‘I’m probably on my phone for around 14 hours a day right now,’ she says. ‘I’m WhatsApping or phoning contacts, reading newspapers and Government publications, checking what MPs have said in the Commons and just consuming all of this information. I need to know everything so I can filter it and tell the viewers the three things they need to know right now.’
Essex-born Beth has been in political journalism for a decade now, after starting out in finance at the Financial Times aged 22. Climbing the ladder through her twenties, she ended up in what she calls the ‘golden trophy jobs’ of political reporting after having her first child.
‘I really liked being a financial journalist,’ she tells me over the phone from the north London home she shares with her husband Angelo and their two children. ‘But I didn’t get to do what I really wanted – political journalism – until I was in my early thirties. Now I’m doing it, it’s a massive privilege.’
Beth has been at Sky News for four years and her working day is typically a hunt for new information, spending most of her time at events. ‘Normally, I’ll go to drinks in the Commons or Portcullis House where the MPs hang out,’ she explains. ‘And you’ll trade information and pick up titbits.’
But with all of that gone during lockdown, the titbits that facilitate the ‘richness of reporting’ are replaced with WhatsApp calls. All the while, the news agenda remains ‘relentless’. ‘You’ve got a press conference where you’re on television every day,’ Beth explains. ‘You have got to make it count. The story changes so quickly and it’s the most important story I’ll cover in my lifetime, with millions of people watching, so it can feel like a bit of a pressure cooker.’
The restrictions on her working practices and the overwhelming nature of the job don’t seem to have impacted her too much, though, as Beth became a standout figure last month at Dominic Cummings’ press conference, held to explain his lockdown breaches.
I try to get out of the Westminster bubble and see what everyday people are feeling.
Beth’s questions – including asking him why there was one rule for him and another for everyone else – struck a chord with the public, so much so that her name trended on Twitter in the hours after the conference aired. ‘I went into it thinking, “What is coming into my inbox? What are viewers sending me? What is the mood of my friends and family?”’ she says. ‘I try to get out of the Westminster bubble and see what everyday people are feeling.’
But hours before the conference, despite her seemingly well-prepared questions and perfect hair and make-up (that she currently has to do herself, including cutting her own fringe), she was actually in her garden enjoying a well-earned break. ‘Parliament was in recess,’ she recalls, ‘so I’m in my garden digging up some flowers and I get a phone call saying Dominic Cummings was going to have a briefing in two hours, and I’m standing there in a pair of old tracksuit bottoms and grotty old T-shirt.
‘I raced to the shower. I had two hours to get from my back garden to the office and then to Downing Street. And you’ve got to get your face on, put a nice outfit on, get your hair done – which, let me tell you, is getting increasingly difficult as it gets longer. So you’re not just thinking, “What are my questions?” because you’ve got to do all this other stuff too. That’s an element of TV I begrudge the men for not having to do, because in the end they put on a suit and powder their noses – if that – and they’re off, whereas I have to do a whole intensive going out-out make-up face.’
It’s one of many particular pressures only women in TV seem to face, with Beth’s appearance one of the main talking points post-conference (albeit positive, with everyone obsessing over her sleek bob). In fact, Beth runs 25km every week to stay fit for what she says is a ‘physically demanding’ job, but also because it’s part and parcel of being a woman on TV; she also cites exercise as her main tool for coping with the stresses of the role.
But it’s not just looks that women on TV get picked apart for, it’s their entire being. Beth has stood out because she’s tough, holding politicians to account in a way the public wish they could. But search her name on Twitter and you’ll see she’s been branded ‘aggressive’, ‘rude’, a ‘bitch’ – to name but a few – nearly every time she appears on television asking the difficult questions.
When you’re a woman and you’re quite challenging, lots of people find that challenging themselves.
‘I do think women get punished more in the industry for having strong opinions, because women are expected to be more considerate and demure. So when you’re a woman and you’re quite challenging, lots of people find that challenging themselves because that’s uncomfortable for them.
‘I asked a question at a press conference last week and there was a bit of a Twitter storm around it,’ she says. ‘A man tweeted, “She never lets up does she?” There’s this perception that I’m nagging whereas, if I were a man, it would have just been quite a challenging, direct question.’
It’s something fellow broadcaster Emily Maitlis has fallen foul of recently, when she stated, in her introduction to Newsnight, that Dominic Cummings had ‘broken the rules’. The BBC said her statement did not uphold its own standards of impartiality.
‘I think that incident was about whether or not it was perceived as commentary rather than reporting, and the BBC will have a set of guidelines for that,’ says Beth. ‘But Emily is a great role model for women, she’s at the top of her game and that Prince Andrew interview made global headlines.’
Talking to Beth, there does seem to be a strong support system for women within the industry, despite there being so few of them. She says there are just three other female political editors in the political lobby alongside her: the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Heather Stewart from The Guardian and The Mirror’s Pippa Crerar. ‘We do have a little network and try to have drinks. It’s really important for the younger women that we hang out together and try to support each other, because politics is still a very male-dominated world.
Look at Parliament: you only have to see who is doing the media rounds in the morning, who’s hosting the press conferences every day, to see that there aren’t enough female voices at the top of the table in terms of who’s running our country.’
Beth also has her support system at home for when the pressures of the job get too much. Angelo, who is a stay-at-home dad, has taken care of home-schooling during lockdown, but Beth has enjoyed being able to see her kids more now that she’s not in the office every day (although she is at least three times a week). ‘That’s going to be something I take with me when we all come through this. I’m going to try to find the time to be at home with the children more because they’ve benefitted from it, as have I.’
But in terms of the news agenda, Beth doesn’t see it slowing down anytime soon. ‘I’ll be covering the coronavirus story for many years to come,’ she says. ‘We’ve had a huge health crisis, we could have another, the fallout of the economy has changed capitalism as we know it and it will reverberate for years. This will change our country – and our lives.’
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