Newswatch

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Newswatch (officially Newswatch UK Ltd) a right-wing media monitoring company. It was incorporated on 6 September 2007 and is co-owned and directed by the right-wing activist David Keighley and a managing consultant called Barclay Thompson. [1]

The company is the successor to Minotaur Media Tracking which David Keighley co-owned with Kathy Gyngell, a former TV-am producer and the wife of Keighley’s former boss and close friend Bruce Gyngell. [2] Kathy Gyngell is listed as one of four team members on the Newswatch's website along with Keighley, Barclay Thompson and the company’s main researcher Andrew Judd. [3]

Minotaur Media Tracking produced a number of reports for the Eurosceptic think-tank Global Britain and the Centre for Policy Studies. The great majority of these reports alleged a bias in favour of EU integration in the UK media (particularly the BBC) and several alleged a broader bias against right-wing politics and the Conservative Party. The reports received favourable coverage in the right-wing press, [4] and the Global Britain reports were followed up with correspondence between the BBC and the Tory peers who founded the think-tank. [5]


Notes

  1. Companies House, Newswatch UK Ltd Annual Returns, made up to 6 September 2008
  2. Former TV-am boss dies’, BBC News Online, 8 September, 2000
  3. Newswatch, The Team [[Accessed 14 January 2009]
  4. e.g. Edward Heathcoat Amory, 'How the BBC revealed its pro-Euro bias', Daily Mail, 7 December 2000; p. 7; Andrew Sparrow, 'BBC programmes `heavily biased in favour of EU', Daily Telegraph, 8 December 2000; p.2; Edward Heathcoat Amory, 'This is Europe calling...', The Spectator, 28 April 2001; p.20
  5. Copies of reports and correspondences relating to 'BBC Europhile Bias' are posted on Global Britain's website: http://www.globalbritain.org/BBC.asp