Sky News prepares for a UK election leaders debate in 2010. (Photo: Justin Downing / Sky News via Getty Images)  Less 

Declassified UK’s analysis of the written outputs of three of Sky News’ principal foreign affairs journalists has found that the media outlet acts largely to amplify the views of the British Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office, while rarely offering critical, independent analysis.

A study by Declassified, covering 203 articles written by Deborah Haynes, Alistair Bunkall and Dominic Waghorn, has found that Sky routinely amplifies the views of the UK government in its military and foreign policies and provides almost no serious attempts to independently scrutinise or criticise them.

The research, which has analysed all articles by the three correspondents that could be found from November 2019 to November 2020, found that the primary focus of Sky’s critical reporting has overwhelmingly been countries presented by British officials as enemies of the UK – Russia, China and Iran – as well as the US under Donald Trump.

Two of the reporters, Haynes and Bunkall, offered no serious critical coverage of UK military or foreign policies or the human rights abuses committed by Britain’s close allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel, which all receive substantial UK military and other support. Waghorn’s articles offered only very occasional critical coverage.

In Sky’s written outputs, British government officials and their claims are routinely quoted favourably, with little or no independent commentary, context, or qualifications provided by the journalists.

Declassified’s analysis does not cover the video outputs of these and other Sky journalists, nor all of its journalists reporting on foreign affairs, and therefore offers a partial picture of Sky’s foreign news reporting.

However, Haynes is Sky’s foreign affairs editor, Alistair Bunkall is its defence and security correspondent and Dominic Waghorn its diplomatic editor.

Deborah Haynes provides the most striking example of reporting favourable to the UK government. Of the 107 of her articles analysed in the research, Declassified found 39 with the words Russia, China, Iran or Belarus in the headline. No headlines could be found that mentioned UK-allied states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel or Bahrain.

Declassified found 670 mentions of the four UK rival states in Haynes’ articles and 25 for the four UK-allied states.

Haynes’ articles covering UK foreign policies were few in number but routinely tended to reinforce government messaging. Several articles were based on uncritical interviews or press conferences with figures such as the chief of the defence staff, the head of the domestic security service, MI5, the head of signals intelligence agency GCHQ, the head of UK Strategic Command, the head of the Royal Air Force, and the foreign secretary.

Some other articles are based on unidentified “sources” in the Ministry of Defence (MOD) or Whitehall. These pieces typically allow officials to put forward government positions, especially on alleged increasing threats to the UK posed by Russia, unfiltered by independent scrutiny.

Deborah Haynes (centre) speaks at an event on drone warfare in 2013. (Photo: Chatham House / Creative Commons 2.0)

Dr Justin Schlosberg, a media specialist at Birkbeck, University of London, said: “This research provides yet another example of how, all too often, journalists at the biggest and most respected news brands tend to treat official sources with enormous deference – especially those from within the security state.

He added: “This fundamental blind spot has had disastrous consequences in recent years – notably in skewing public attention away from inconvenient conflicts and issues, and allowing the UK government to broadly shape Sky’s foreign news agenda.”

Informing the public

Haynes’ articles often simply convey the view of the MOD to the public without distinguishing whether government messaging is correct or false, in effect adding to Whitehall’s public relations machinery.

For example, a series of articles written in April 2020, at the beginning of the coronavirus emergency, highlight the armed forces’ role in aiding the domestic response to the pandemic, which appear largely to be simply passing on information from the MOD, unfiltered by independent commentary.

Many of Haynes’ articles contain approving quotes and articulate positions supportive of the government’s military and foreign policies, especially on threats posed by Russia and China.

“Russian cyber spies are trying to steal research into coronavirus vaccines and treatments from Britain, the US and Canada, the three countries claimed on Thursday”, Haynes wrotein July 2020, in an article sourced to GCHQ.

In December 2019, Haynes wrote: “Efforts by states such as Russia to break international rules, undermine democratic governments and exploit divisions in societies pose a far more insidious danger to the security that Britain and its allies have enjoyed since the end of the Second World War.”

Haynes made no similar statements that could be found about any threats posed to international security by the US or the UK.

In one of several articles on China, Haynes observed in June 2020: “China is in the ascendancy while an international system of rules and institutions that underpin UK power and influence is under increased strain”.

Haynes conveys the view promoted by the establishment that NATO is a purely defensive alliance needing to contain an expansionist Russia. She wrote in June 2020, for example: “NATO was established to defend against the former Soviet Union and is now actively pushing back against Russian activities”.

Russia has violated international law in several areas, notably in its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and is believed to be behind attacks in the UK – such as the murder of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 and the attempted poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, southern England, in 2018.

However, Russia’s abuse of international rules is typical of all “great powers”, including the US and the UK which are also serial violators of international law and contributors to human rights abuses, unmentioned in any article by Haynes that could be found.

UK policies concerning its occupation of the Chagos Islands, its role in US drone wars, its covert military policies, the detention and torture of Julian Assange, its complicity in the torture of terror suspects in the “war on terror”, and mass surveillance techniques practised by GCHQ, are all instances of policies violating domestic or international law.

Our research could find no mentions of these policies in the articles reviewed. The focus of British journalists on official enemies rather than the UK itself suggests they are keener to contribute to political objectives than to hold their own authorities to account.

A freedom of information response from the MOD to Declassified indicates how much the military values Haynes’ reporting.

When Russian naval ships sailed through the English Channel in March 2020, MOD media officers noted approvingly that a Royal Navy press release had received: “Repeated broadcast on Sky News, featuring analysis from Deborah Haynes and breaking news ‘ticker’”.