Gray & Keys: Sky Sports one man down
It was widely briefed to the papers this morning that the suspension for Andy Gray and Richard Keys by Sky Sports over sexist comments about a female referee’s assistant was merely the precursor to a more terminal parting and so it has proved.
Andy Gray has been sacked by the broadcaster in response to “new evidence of unacceptable and offensive behaviour”.
After standing down Gray and Keys from last night’s Chelsea match, Barney Francis, Sky Sports’ managing director, said he had “no hesitation” in terminating Gray’s contract.
He said: “Andy Gray’s contract has been terminated for unacceptable behaviour. After issuing a warning yesterday, we have no hesitation in taking this action after becoming aware of new information today.”
Sky has been looking for further evidence of sexism and found it in ”an off-air incident that took place in December 2010″ which “came to light after Andy Gray had already been subjected to disciplinary action for his comments of 22 January 2011″.
This is the incident, involving Gray making inappropriate comments to co-presenter Charlotte Jackson off-air. Keys’ position is unclear but he helped his cause by personally apologising to Sian Massey.
The lineswoman has been stood down from the match she was due to officiate at Crewe tonight, where the attendance would have been doubled by the presence of news reporters scrutinising her every flag.
Richard Littlejohn speculated in the Mail this morning that Keys and Gray had been “set up” within Sky. Was he being punished for threatening to sue the News of the World, a sister operation in the News Corporation group, after discovering that his phone had apparently been hacked?
Or were there those within Sky Sports, who had detected a pattern of sexist behaviour by Gray and were determined to use it to lever the veteran pundit, paid £1.7 million it is believed, out of his job or publicly embarrass him at the very least.
Massey’s presence for the Wolves – Liverpool game on Saturday lunchtime looks like an elephant trap that Gray toppled in to. He was encouraged by Sky’s team at the game to comment on Massey’s appearance. The off-air “offside” comments were dispatched to a Sunday newspaper within minutes of their utterance, almost as if someone guessed what was coming.
The suspension last night looks like a holding position whilst Sky’s lawyers checked that they had watertight grounds for dismissal. Rupert Murdoch, in London to meet his top execs, will have signalled that a clearing out of the Augean stables was approved at the highest level - Sky News’ coverage of the story was tougher than the BBC’s.
This new “clean slate” News Corp policy of confronting damaging stories head-on must have implications for the phone hacking scandal. Heads are now likely to roll for journalists identifed in the documents see by police as the company asks rival newspaper groups to take similar action if their own excesses now come to light.
All the sexism videos have been brought together in this video archive:
http://skysports.videohq.tv
The guys have, err, ‘form’, going back ages.