Kay Burley / Tony Garstang

[webofevil]

In what has already been a hectic couple of weeks for misogyny, it’s intriguing to watch a woman joining in the fun. Sky News’s Kay Burley has interviewed the wife of recently convicted serial killer Steve Wright. After the couple’s sex life dwindled he took to visiting prostitutes, subsequent to which he started killing them. This prompted our Kay to ask possibly British broadcast journalism’s worst question to date:

"Do you think if you’d had a better sex life, he wouldn’t have done this?"

I can’t even be arsed to enumerate the number of ways that this is wrong, the number of false assumptions it rests on and the prejudices it feeds, since if that’s not obvious to you, you’re unlikely to be reading this blog in the first place; chances are you’re out and about in your rape van.

Sadly, although they invite us to Have Our Say at the end of the article, the Sky News moderators don’t seem to have found space for my own query:

"Does Kay Burley think that if she had been getting more sex at home she would have been level-headed enough not to ask such a dazzlingly unprofessional question?"

—although they have chosen to give houseroom to a contributor who demands that the government investigate age gaps in marriages to prevent the younger partners getting sexually frustrated.

This seems to be an apposite time to remind ourselves of the immortal words of avid Littlejohn reader Tony Garstang from Marlow on this very topic:

"Very sad but as has been said before: a serial killer’s victims often meet him half-way."

In the months since I first wheeled out Tony’s quote we have had our top forensic scientists and senior psychoanalytical experts studying it for any trace of meaning, but we are no further towards deciphering it.


Kay Burley’s magnificent line of questioning has already been picked up by Mitch Benn and matgb’s Liberal Conspiracy. The more the merrier, to be honest.

Comments

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Not wishing to defend the journalist, here, but it's perfectly possible - knowing the dubious values that are endemic throughout News International - that her producer insisted on the question being asked.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Watch her questioning style. The question is entirely in keeping with her husky-voiced faux concern. And if she's that much of a producer's puppet after so long doing the job then bollocks to her anyway.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine her coming up with that question off the hoof. That's something that they'd have kicked around in a meeting beforehand, wondering if it was tasteless or not, and then just deciding to ask it anyway. It's right that Burley takes some flak, but there's probably an office full of sensationalist fuckwads who should take their share of the blame.

Sorry, been reading Flat Earth News.

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Burley received some notoriety during Sky News's coverage of the September 11, 2001 attacks when she said, "If you're just joining us, the entire eastern seaboard of the United States has been decimated by a terrorist attack." [Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kay_Burley)]

[dermfitz.livejournal.com]

Am I mad or did she used to present in the TVam days, and actually look older then? Or was that someone else?

[webofevil.livejournal.com]

Yes she did, yes she probably did and no it wasn't.

[robsoft.livejournal.com]

Amused to see the Wiki entry has been updated to include reference to the Pam Wright interview.

[matgb]

This is of course true, it doesn't excuse it though—one of the comments to my peice at LC made the point that Sky News is basically an entertainment channel pretending to be news, and this is typical of their prurient concentration on irrelvancies.

She has form on the subject, and has chosen to front a show and ask the question, ergo she's equally culpable if not more so, it's her name attached to the question, not the producers.