Kay Burley, a top television news anchor, has been suspended from Sky News for six months after flouting lockdown rules during her 60th birthday party. Reports claim she will continue to receive full pay.
Ms Burley admitted that she had broken coronavirus social distancing laws when on Saturday she met with nine friends, including Sky News colleagues and alumni, for a birthday dinner in London. She then visited another restaurant after the 11 p.m. curfew, before returning to a house where people from three other households were mixing.
London is currently under Tier 2 restrictions, banning socialisation outside of your household or support bubble in public or private indoor settings. Where it is possible to socialise outdoors, there remains a limit of six people. Her actions are forbidden under current restrictions, of which the influential anchor has been a vocal champion.
British broadcaster Sky News, launched in 1989 by Rupert Murdoch before being bought out by NBC owner Comcast in 2018, revealed on Thursday that Burley would be suspended from the airwaves for the next six months, according to the BBC.
Ms Burley, a founding member of the commercial news channel, had written on Twitter that she had âmade a big mistakeâ and was âsorryâ.
Sky Newsâs political editor Beth Rigby and news correspondent Inzamam Rashid were among the nine friends present and have also been suspended for three months. Others who attended include Sky News anchor Sam Washington, and the networkâs former royal correspondent Paul Harrison, who is now the media chief for the Chinese Communist Party-controlled telecoms giant Huawei.
Rigby was also caught on camera hugging Burley â another breach of coronavirus restrictions â for which she later apologised.
âIâve covered the guidelines throughout the pandemic, and I should have known better,â Ms Rigby wrote to colleagues, acknowledging at the same time the âsacrificesâ ordinary Britons are forced to make while abiding by the oppressive lockdown rules.
Corbynâs Brother Found Guilty of Breaking Coronavirus Law at Anti-Lockdown Protest https://t.co/yT5F71djKP
â Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 3, 2020
Mr Rashid, the north of England correspondent, further breached lockdown by taking a 206-mile ânon-essentialâ trip from Manchester to London for Burleyâs party. Manchester is in Tier 3, where residents are recommended against leaving their area. Sources speaking to political news website Guido Fawkes said that Sky Newsâs management considered Rashidâs breach of rules âparticularly egregiousâ.
While the BBC said that it was not revealed whether the high-earning presenter would be paid during her half-year absence, The Sun reports that Kay Burley will be on full pay. The Daily Mail also claims that Rigby and Rashid will also continue to draw their salaries in their entirety.
Both Ms Burley and Ms Rigby were vocal critics of Prime Minister Boris Johnsonâs former senior advisor Dominic Cummings. Johnsonâs ally had allegedly broken lockdown rules by travelling to another part of the country to secure emergency childcare, later taking a drive to test his eyesight as he was recovering from the Chinese virus.
During a press conference on the scandal â inflated by the media and Remainer politicians during another Brexit proxy war â Ms Rigby claimed Mr Cummingsâ actions could âthreaten public health, if people decide that the rules donât matterâ, asking the senior advisor: âHow can you even countenance staying on and not resigning?â
Rigby continued during the Downing Street press conference in May: âWhy are you so different? What people see here is that thereâs one rule for you⌠and another rule for them?â
If you are going to adopt a position of moral superiority, you should probably do so from a position of moral superiority. đ https://t.co/3r1ruciP5I
â Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) December 8, 2020
