Sophy Ridge: My advice to women is to be pushy
The first guest in the Women in Journalism Podcast is the amazing Sophy Ridge from Sky News.
Sophy was the first woman to present a Sunday morning political show, and she is the current face of Politics Hub at Sky. In March 2025, she was awarded the Network Presenter of the Year award at the Royal Television Awards.
Sophy Ridge: Transcript
Music: John Abbot, City Phases, courtesy of Epidemic Sound
Saint:
Welcome to INSPIRE, the Women in Journalism podcast, where we speak to the best female voices in the industry, charting their breakthroughs, career triumphs and challenges. We are your producers, I’m Marine Saint.
Shaw:
And I'm Freya Shaw. Across each episode, you'll hear from a different woman who's making waves in journalism. We ask our guests what has changed in the media industry, their career highs and lows, and how they navigate being a woman in journalism.
Saint:
Our show will also feature exclusive roundtable discussions between inspiring women from every beat and background in the media.
Amaro:
Hello everyone, I'm Sílvia Amaro. I'm an anchor for CNBC and the host of Europe Early Edition. For our first episode, we're joined in the studio by Sky News’ Lead Politics Presenter, Sophy Ridge.
Breaking barriers as the first woman to present a Sunday morning political show, Sophy Ridge on Sunday, she is now the face of Politics Hub at Sky. Sophie, welcome to the podcast!
Ridge:
Thank you. What a lovely introduction, I'm blushing! It feels really special to be here. I'm delighted to be the first guest, so thanks for the invitation!
Amaro:
It's our pleasure. We'll start the conversation where it all started for you. What is your first memory in terms of thinking about journalism as a potential career choice?
Ridge:
So I think it was probably when I was at school and I did work experience. I was sixteen or seventeen, I think, and we had to organise two weeks of work experience. I did a week at a law firm and then I did a week in my local newspaper. The week at the law firm was so terrible that I was like, This is definitely not what I want to do. And then I went to work for my local paper, which was the Richmond and Twickenham Times, and I had the most amazing time.
I kind of remember doing some court reporting; I remember going to interview some firefighters; and going down to the local station trying to vox pop people about the trains. I was like, wow, this is just super fun and really, really interesting. I think it was from there that I got the bug. I think it was a contrast with the week before, where I was basically just not allowed to do anything other than, you know, putting stamps on letters. And I was like, okay, I think that journalism is the one for me.
Amaro:
Very interesting contrast there.
Ridge:
Yeah, it was. Sometimes it's realising what you don't want to do, which also makes you realise what it is that you do want to do at the same time.
Amaro:
Sometimes it is even more important to know what you don't want to do, right? If we go back to journalism, you start thinking, okay, I really enjoy doing this. What did you do next? How did you then implement this dream into action?
Ridge:
I think what I did from then on was just to try to get involved in everything to do with journalism that I could. I did a magazine at my school, and then when I went to university, I got involved in the student newspaper.
I didn't come from a journalist background at all. I didn't know any journalists, my parents were teachers. So I didn't have an ‘in’ in the industry, if that makes sense. I'd also say that even though I do political journalism now, I didn't really come from a massively political family either. I wasn't someone who was brought up watching the news on TV or, you know, going out campaigning or anything like that. It came a bit later.
It was more that I just found journalism really interesting because it's about people. It's about all the things that matter, and that's how I kind of fell into it. And then just trying to kind of hoover up all the experience that I could from there.
Amaro:
I remember when I was in university, a lot of the teachers were telling us that we needed a specialism. At the time, personally, I struggled a little bit figuring out what kind of journalism I wanted. So, I'm wondering, how did you fall in love with political journalism?
Ridge:
So that took a long time for me. I would just want to get a job anywhere. So I started off, I remember applying for work experience at Zoo Magazine. You know, I would do anything. I was just trying to get my foot in the door, and my sort of break into the industry came when someone from the News of the World came to talk at university. I asked them for work experience afterwards. I kind of got in by doing work experience there and a traineeship through that paper. I mean, I started off doing showbiz reporting, so I'm so far away from where I am now doing politics, which is really what I'm much more interested in.
Obviously, it would be great if we could all go in having specialisms from when we're 21, but that's not the reality for a lot of people. Unless you've got a leg up in the industry already. My advice would be just kind of snatch at any opportunity you get. The hardest job to get is your first job, then after that, you can manoeuvre into where you want to be.
Amaro:
Any sort of skills that you remember gaining in that first job as a showbiz reporter that then helped you when you started covering politics?
Ridge:
I think one of the key things for journalists is to just get used to being a bit embarrassed. You have to be a bit pushy, and you have to be prepared to, you know, be a bit embarrassed.
I remember one of the first people I managed to speak to. I was at some event and Ross Kemp was there, who is obviously a very famous actor. And I remember going up to him, and I was nervous, I had all my questions, but I just had to go for it. I had to swallow my anxiety and go for it. I went up, and the first word that came out of my mouth was “Grant”, and he was so unimpressed. He was like, “I'm sorry, Grant, it's actually a fictional character from EastEnders....” Then he walked off, and I was like, Oh my goodness, I'm in the wrong gig here! I shouldn’t be doing showbiz!
But I think that skill set does help because a lot of the time, you have to put yourself in uncomfortable situations as journalists. I think that's all journalism - to get to the truth or to answer a difficult question. I think feeling the fear and doing it anyway is probably quite a good thing to do for the whole of your career, really.
Amaro:
It's very good advice! I'm wondering, how did you feel during, for instance, your first press conference? Asking the first question when so many other journalists are also there and to some extent, paying attention to what you're saying, right?
Ridge:
Yeah, totally. I think it is that fear again, and I still feel it, actually. But with all that stuff, the preparation is what helps. I'm definitely someone who tries to game it out before and work out the question I want to ask. But then I think you also have to be really prepared to rip that question up and to write something new, because you have to be flexible as a journalist as well. You need to listen to what people are saying and respond to that too.
But the fear is 100 per cent there still, I think it's..I mean, I was going to say that everyone feels it, but I'm not sure everyone does. I think, actually, it can be a bit of a female thing sometimes, doubting yourself. I think just punching through and realising that actually everyone else feels like this too, and you've got as much of a right to be in the room as anyone else.
Amaro:
You touched on a very important point. If I can just share a little bit, when I first started as well, I remember being in the press room full of male journalists, and the question of representation is very important as well. I'm wondering, how was it for you developing your career in political journalism, where even today it's still quite male-dominated?
Ridge:
Yeah, it definitely is still male-heavy today, and it was even worse when I first started as a political journalist when I was about 25. It was very male-dominated then, and I think a lot of the time, people don't realise who you are. So at Sky, people would often think that I was the makeup artist rather than the reporter. I remember going to Labour conference once and one of the MPs asking me if I was a weather presenter. I mean, it's definitely got better now, but people are just not used to seeing women in these positions. It does make you realise that they are making assumptions about you.
You can kind of go one of two ways. You can decide that it's really rubbish and you don't want to do it anymore. Or you can use it to become more determined, and I think that's definitely the case. From the sounds of it it’s what you decided to do as well.
Amaro:
Yeah, we're still here, right?
Ridge:
Exactly. Yeah, totally.
Amaro:
I do remember my first press conferences were in Brussels, I was covering European politics, and I was a 21-year-old woman in the room with a lot of 40 or 50-year-old men. At the beginning, I was a little bit scared about asking questions myself. So I'm wondering, where did you find that bravery to overcome that anxiety?
Ridge:
If you dwell too much on where you are and what could happen if it goes wrong. You’ve just kind of got to block it out and just do it. And then it does get easier, right? Which I'm sure you've found out with your press conferences and the journalism that you've done as well.
It's like the first time you do a bungee jump, you’re probably going to be really frightened. If you've done it 50 times, then you're probably not going to be quite as nervous. But it's also OK to be nervous. You know, if you're nervous, it’s because you care.
Amaro:
It's a respect for the job.
Ridge:
Exactly. And I think sometimes the people who don't get nervous, who think they know it all, are the worst journalists because then they're not curious and they perhaps aren't as conscious of their own limitations and their own biases. So, I think that actually being a bit nervous and acknowledging that you don't know everything is fine.
Amaro:
It is fine. You'll get there with experience and time. I'm wondering about how you've seen the UK political landscape changing over time. You've touched on the point that representation there perhaps has improved? But not at the same pace that perhaps we have seen in terms of TV broadcasting. If you can give us a little bit of insight in terms of what you've witnessed from your position over the years?
Ridge:
Firstly, I do honestly think it has improved quite a lot from when I started, which was 15 years ago and it has gotten better. It definitely has gotten better, and I think that we should acknowledge that and reflect it as well.
If you look at the MPs make up in Parliament, there are so many more women MPs and there are more women in the newsroom as well. And more women on TV doing jobs that would traditionally be done by the guys. In political journalism and particularly in political interviewing, it used to be such a male-dominated thing, and now you do have more people coming through. People like me and Beth at Sky, or Emily Maitlis and Laura Kuenssberg. There's a lot of really exceptional female journalists out there, and I think that really helps and changes the culture as well.
I do feel that there has been a slight kind of backlash to it...I think in the last year or two, and mainly driven by what you see on social media. I think that that's something that we have to be quite alive to if we care about women fulfilling their opportunities and girls having the same start in life as boys. I feel like there has been a shift in the wrong way, actually, if I'm being completely honest, in the last couple of years. We always assume that everything just steadily progresses on-and-on and gets better. But that's not always the case. I don't think we should take our eye off the ball on that.
Amaro:
The task is not complete. It's an ongoing task, isn't it? I would like to discuss a little bit more about some of the implications of social media on our day-to-day. But before we get there, how did you find the transition from print to broadcast. I'm sure a lot of our listeners are perhaps trying to do the same. So what would you say?
Ridge:
The first thing I would say is I actually never particularly had an ambition to be on TV. My ambition was always to be a journalist rather than to be a TV journalist, so I was kind of ready to take a new challenge. I remember I applied for the political correspondent job at Sky News, and I also applied for a job at The Observer at the same time.
I wasn't even particularly wedded to being on TV, and I think everyone will come at it with a different perspective, but I think we should always put the journalism first. If you just want to be on TV, then that is all fine, obviously. But for me, it was always about the journalism, and the medium is secondary to the journalism that I want to do.
TV is a completely different thing. I think the best advice I was given was from John Sopel. He basically said just be yourself plus an extra 10 per cent and I think that is it. You have to be authentic, because if you're not authentic, people can see through it straight away. So you just be yourself.
Try and talk in the same way as you do when you're not on TV, as when you're on TV. Use the words that you would use normally in the same way, but then an extra 10 per cent of performance. That I think is the sweet spot, that's what I'm aspiring to be anyway.
Amaro:
I think that's a very good sentence there - be yourself plus 10 per cent, because even the intonation and the voice need to be a little bit more energetic than usual.
Ridge:
Exactly. I mean, don't take being yourself too far. I'm not saying to be like when you roll out of bed at 8:30 AM or talk in the same way that you might talk to your kids. But you have to be yourself, because if it's a complete performance, then I just don't think that's what people are after.
Amaro:
I'm wondering just whether being a print reporter first made you even a better TV correspondent and anchor?
Ridge:
I think that there is a really strong tradition of people who start in print moving into TV. Ed Conway, for example, at Sky, is someone who's taken a similar path, who started off in print. I think that it does mean you just focus on the journalism above everything. Working for a Sunday paper is also quite a pressured environment. You have to bring in your own stories - there are no free stories. So for me, that kind of story getting has always been a big part of what I'm interested in.
I think from that perspective it does help, but it is quite different, it’s different pressures. There's a lot of pressure in print, but then the pressure on TV is the stamina because often you have to be broadcasting for hours, on Sky News anyway. I think it's keeping your energy levels up, which is a different task. People are completely different with it, some people are uber healthy, I'm the opposite. I'm basically a four-coffees-and-a-bag-of-Haribo kind of person, which I don't think is necessarily the best advice, but you know, we've all got to find a way that works for us.
Amaro:
Of course. I love that and I actually relate to that. You know, there's a big split in the newsroom between one camp and the other. Walk us a little bit through that pressure that you feel on TV. You're highlighting how you're coping with the fact that you need more energy on certain days. I can imagine that on election coverage it's extraordinary! Can you explain to us a little bit more about the pressures of being on TV, really, that people might not necessarily be aware of?
Ridge:
I think there are pressures being on TV, as you were saying, the sort of stamina of it. People judge you on your appearance, to be completely frank. An awful lot more than they do in real life, and you have to have quite thick skin to deal with that. Probably for better or worse, it is a part of the job, you can't turn up looking like a complete scruff. You have to dress in a certain way not to be distracting. As one person said, if you've got a dirty T-shirt on or you haven't brushed your hair, then that's all the viewer is going to look at. You just have to accept that as one of the downsides to the job.
The other thing that I would say is that the pressure in TV comes when things go wrong, which they always do. Things will always happen. It could be a technical issue, or it could be us as journalists and as reporters getting stuff wrong live on air. You just have to be the sort of person who doesn’t dwell on it and just moves on and gets over it. There'll be Joe Bloggs on X who might send you a couple of messages telling you that you're an idiot, but you just have to kind of zone it out and have an amount of either self-belief or just not caring that much, and that kind of helps maybe.
Amaro:
I relate to what you just said there. I think perhaps it's also about being open to feedback, but from very specific individuals.
Ridge:
That's a really good way of putting it, actually. It's something that some of the teachers at my daughter's school sometimes say: you should only care about what people think when they’re people that matter. If it's a teacher or a family member, or your best friend, other than that, just ignore it. That's actually quite good advice for working in TV as well, right? If it's your boss or if it's your mentor saying, you know what? That was going a bit far. You shouldn't have said that. Then take that on board, and we're all learning and improving. But if it is some random person who is just being abusive, then why should they have the authority to matter to you? And if you don't give them that, then they're just shouting into the void.
Amaro:
It's also about your mental health in the middle of all of this. And I think this is also a good moment to look at the impact of social media on TV reporting. How have you witnessed this change, and how does it impact your day-to-day?
Are you, for instance, being asked to be online more than you were expected to back in the day. How has that changed your role?
Ridge:
It's a big part of our job and, to be honest, I feel like I’m someone who’s always been quite online since I was a teenager, to be honest. It's something that I quite enjoy. When I started off in journalism, I was definitely quite keen to have a presence online and to interact with people. I've had to dial it back a little bit because, previously there were people who just wanted to engage with you to ask questions. To give feedback in a way that is absolutely fair enough - and I don't think we should be scared of feedback.
I think increasingly there are people online who are acting in bad faith, so they are not going there because they watch what you've done or because they want to tell you their perspective. They're there just doing it to be really annoying, basically. You have to try and drown those people out.
Now, that said, I still have, in the majority, a positive experience with people online, and I don't want to completely shut that off because I think it is quite nice having a direct dialogue with people.
Sometimes we are in a bit of a bubble as journalists, and it is important for us to recognise that. You know, here in the UK, we saw it through Brexit when way too many people working in Westminster were surprised by the result, and they shouldn't have been. We see it now, I think, with a lot of the political debates.
And that is because in the UK, personally, I think one of the biggest splits is between people who live in cities and people who live in towns in rural areas. If you're in a big city like London, it is actually important to hear other perspectives. Sometimes you do get that online. It's quite an important check sometimes on groupthink that you might get in the office. So I think that on the whole it's positive, but you definitely need to just drown out the abuse. I'm sure you must have experienced as well?
Amaro:
Yeah, it's not nice sometimes to be online, but I agree with you. It's important to be present and ultimately help spread the message of whatever story you're covering that day for instance, right?
Ridge:
Yeah, exactly. And also, part of the reason I think women get a bit more abused as well, men obviously get it too, is that people are trying to silence us out of the debate and they're trying to shut down our voices in certain spaces. And that's actually not okay.
Amaro:
It's not OK. I'm with you on that as well. Do you therefore use social media for news gathering as well? Do you get inspiration for some stories or for some places where you would like to go and cover it?
Ridge:
One example of that recently is last week we did some filming in prison, which was really amazing, actually. It was access that was so open and was something that really taught me an awful lot because I've been in prisons before, but it's been much more limited access. So we did a big report on that and a big live programme on that. Off the back of it, I was contacted by somebody who'd been in care, and they were saying that this was part of the story that we hadn't covered, that they think that we should cover. So that is an example of somebody who contacted me directly with a really thoughtful and important point, and then we will go away, and it's something that will give me food for thought. Maybe it's an investigation we can do, or an interview that we can do, but certainly a perspective that we should reflect. I think that those kinds of things definitely do happen and can be really helpful.
Amaro:
Perhaps shifting gears a little bit, give us some colour into what a day in the life of Sophy Ridge looks like.
Ridge:
It’s chaos, can I just say straightly, it's absolute chaos to be honest. I've got two kids, so I'm kind of constantly juggling and peddling plates in the air that end up getting smashed all over the place.
My programme is at 7:00 PM, so I kind of normally just try and sort all the jobs out for the first couple of hours of the day that I haven't had any chance to do. Then I will start reading the papers, I’ll watch the news, and I get a lot of news from my phone as well. So, just to try and get up to speed on what happens, we'll have the 11 AM call with the team. Then I'll come into the office, and from there it's a mad scramble to be honest, and every day is really different.
The guys here, the technical guys, the floor manager or the cameramen, they always joke about politics hub, saying that there's no point training anyone how to do politics hub because it is different every single day and it is always different. But that does keep it interesting for sure.
I'm quite involved in the structure of the show, like deciding what goes where and writing interviews. We will normally have two interviews a day to write. Then we have something on Politics Hub which we call, slightly grandly, my Thought, which for me is a really important part of the programme where I get to write effectively a monologue to introduce the show. It can be on anything; it's usually linked to the top story of the day, but it doesn't have to be.
And then to us by that time, it's like 5:00 PM. I haven’t left the office, or I've been in calls all day, so I'll just run out and get food. Because I need my caffeine to be up, and I need my sugar levels to be up in order to do it. But it's great. It’s such a thrill and such a rush. It's an amazing job, to be honest. I do feel very privileged.
Amaro:
Have you noticed any sort of change in the way you consume news?
Ridge:
I'll be honest, I'm terrible on my phone. I'm really bad on my phone, so I get an awful lot through my phone. I’ll watch Sky on my phone or use the app, and, I'm a subscriber to The Times as well, which I really like. So I definitely will consume news in that way as well, and then also through social media.
I think the way that I consume news probably reflects the changing habits of people consuming news as well, right? You're expecting it [news] more on-demand, and I think that is one of the biggest challenges for our industry. People want to be able to find what they want to watch right there and then. It's not in the same way where people will be like, “well, I'm going to settle in and watch the 10 PM news”. I think it’s switching, so we have to be alive to it.
Amaro:
Do you therefore think about that when you're putting the show together?
Ridge:
Yes, we definitely do. I think in particular with the Thought, for example, we're trying to make that quite digital first. So, not having any references to things that might date it, which again is definitely things that we wouldn't necessarily have considered before.
I also think in the way that we interview...and the way that I think about interviews as well. It shouldn't just be on the immediate story that happened. Yes, responding to live and breaking news is really important, but actually, you can get some really interesting answers if you go for things a little bit more evergreen or off the beaten track as well. I think that's stuff that I've definitely changed. How about you, have you done the same?
Amaro:
Yeah, I think it's quite inevitable at this stage when putting a show together, you have to think about how this is going to live online, for instance.
Ridge:
Right. Exactly. So much of the audience now comes from there, and you have to follow the audience as well.
Amaro:
You need to cater for all of the types of audience that you have following you.
Ridge:
It's funny because I think often the great TV moments are the great online moments if I think about the stuff that has cut through for us. One of the most watched things recently was a moment when we were talking about the Supreme Court judgement on trans ruling with Dawn Butler and Simon Clarke. And Dawn Butler basically brought up the issue of trans men going in women's toilets, and there was this really, really long silence on the air where Simon Clarke was trying to kind of compute it. That was just a TV moment, but it was then watched millions and millions of times online. I think that sometimes we think “oh it's good to be just for TV” or “just for online”, and that's not the case.
I don't know about you, but I always know when things have cut through online because I get my friends texting me about it as well.
Amaro:
It's a good indicator.
Ridge:
Obviously, I’d love it if they were sitting down at 7 PM watching the programme the whole day. But it's only when it pops up on their Instagram feed that they actually realise.
Amaro:
For me, it's even worse, I'm live at 6 AM.
Ridge:
That's a lot!
Amaro:
Yeah. I would like to talk a little bit more about interviews, actually. You're very famous for some of your interviews and ultimately for how you're holding people accountable, which is obviously the role as well and the task. I'm just wondering how you prepare for these interviews, and how you deal, to some extent, with the backlash that might come from it?
Ridge:
Preparation is really key actually, and a lot of it is being across the news. I think there's two things that I would say. The first one is, for me, the kind of interview that I don't really like, is the ones where the interview is about the question rather than the answer, I think that’s disappointing. I'm much more interested in interviewing that is listening to an answer. You can give someone a hard time, but I try to only give them a hard time when they're not answering the question. I think that's when you can kind of step in on behalf of the viewer to get frustrated with somebody if they’re being evasive. I think listening to what they say is really, really important.
The best interviews as well - I think this is what elevates an everyday interview to an excellent interview - is one where you game out what they're going to say. It’s a bit like those ‘choose your own adventure’ storybooks. I don't know if you remember when you were younger and you could choose which way you go at the end of the chapter. It's a bit like that. You come up with the question and then you work out, they're either going to say this or that. Then you can kind of game out different responses to it. It’s like a big 3D chess game, almost. Those are the interviews I think that often you can really interrogate someone in a good way as well.
And then the other thing I would say is don't try and be too clever. I think often the best interview question to ask is: “I don't understand” or “can you explain that to me?” This is the other thing that I think being a former tabloid journalist teaches you. If someone uses evasive language or intellectual language, they're often trying not to tell you the truth or to obfuscate. Actually, if you try and get them to say something really directly, then that's when we know the truth of what they actually think about something. So that's another tactic, I guess.
Amaro:
It is sometimes a bit of a mental game because you have to follow what the person is saying and then come up with how you’re going to phrase your follow-up. I'm wondering how you would describe those moments? What goes through your mind when you're thinking, oh, this answer is quite long, he's not answering my question?
Ridge:
I think it's so frustrating when they're not answering the question. There are two ways to deal with it. You either just go in straight away and interrupt them. But then there is a risk that it becomes quite tetchy, and that's fine in some interviews, I think it's OK and if someone's repeatedly doing that I think you’ve got to do it.
Or the other thing is to try and do it in a slightly more jokey way. To let them answer, and then be like, “wow, you’ve just spoken for three minutes! You had a lot to say there!” Or be like “I'd love to try and squeeze in another question if I could...” slightly shaming them when doing it. There are ways that you can slightly throw someone off there.
Often with ministers they come in with a line, and they will say the same line to every single question because it's the line they've been told to say from No. 10. That is really, really boring and it's a waste of everyone's time because they're not answering the questions that you're asking them in good faith. So, you have to find a way of throwing them off. Often it's just holding a mirror up to it. It's like look, I know that that's a line that you've been given by No. 10, but the question was actually this. There are definitely ways of doing it in a way that don't have to be too aggressive.
A lot of it is tone as well. When I first came to do the Sunday programme, I was very aware that I was the first woman to be given that job. The only examples of interviewing, almost, were men that came before me. So the kind of Jeremy Paxmans or the Andrew Neils, who I think are both brilliant interrogators, but for me as a person, that's just not really how I am in real life. I think it would have come across as inauthentic. I had to try and find a way of being robust and holding people to account, but staying true to myself, and I think a lot of it is tone. Basically, you can ask some really rude things, but if you say it in quite a gentle and polite tone, you kind of get away with it, and no one often realises.
I remember once asking Chris Grayling, “Minister, why is it, do you think, that misfortune just seems to follow you around?” You can kind of do it in that slightly more feminine way, I guess. As long as the context of your questions is still really tough and hard, then I think that's quite a good combination.
Amaro:
And then it goes back to the preparation, right? We don't have too much time left and I know you're very busy, but I would like to understand a little bit more about how you prepare for these big interviews, which happen daily. How much work do you put behind the scenes?
Ridge:
Yeah, quite a lot. I am someone who does quite a lot of prep, to be honest. There are a couple of people in the office who, if it's a really big interview, I will go to and we will kind of game it out a little bit. I'll send them drafts, for example, and get their perspective on it too. I think what I would normally sort of do is just work out in my head the areas that I want to go down. I think for most interviews, you've only really got time for three topics in general.
I remember Jeremy Paxman once calling it the something sandwich, where basically you put the really difficult bit in the middle, you ask them a nice question at the beginning, and you always end on a nice question as well because that's their last memory of the interview. Actually, I think that is quite a good structure for interviews. I think it’s quite good advice, to be honest. Then, after that, you will start filling it in. You'll work out what bits of research you need to pull for it, and you would go down that bit, and you work out what you're going to say to their responses, so it goes down to that level.
I quite like looking at previous interviews and things that people have said as well. Because often there's a thread that you can try and pull at a little bit more, like they might have given a glimmer of something interesting in an interview. And then you can pull that thread and get a bit more out of them from that perspective. I do love the accountability interviews, but I also find the emotional interviews really powerful. I remember Nadine Dorries coming in to do an interview, and I checked with her before, which I normally would never do. But if it's something very, very sensitive, I will do it, because she talked about being abused by a priest. It had been a small line in a previous interview, but she said that it was okay to talk about it more.
Sometimes it's those interviews that actually end up staying with you more. And these are people who you might interview like ten times before, and you're going to ask them about Brexit, trade deals or tariffs or whatever. But the interviews that I remember are actually the ones where someone has opened up a little bit of their soul to you. I guess that is the greatest privilege, really, as an interviewer.
Amaro:
It's the more human element of it. Yeah, we also have these privileged roles to some extent because you're able to be in this position and learn people's firsthand experiences like the one you just highlighted there. And when you think about reporting on political news, how do you make sure that you're impartial when doing these interviews?
Ridge:
It's such a good question. For political impartiality, like I said, I was not massively political growing up. You do see some journalists who were members of political parties, and that wasn't really me. So I don't have that party political background, and also to be totally honest, the longer I've done this job, the less sure I've become of anything. You end up seeing quite good people from lots of different places, and also people who are absolutely hopeless from lots of different places as well. I’ve felt myself become almost less political as I've continued to do the job.
The thing that I would say, and it goes back to what we were talking about before, is that I do think it is important to be aware of our own biases. I live in London, I have a job that is well paid, I had a good education. All of these things are important to be aware of. I think that in the media, we end up giving too much coverage to stories that impact us. If you look at the private school VAT, for example, it has had an enormous amount of coverage. And if you look around most newsrooms, I think it would be interesting to see how many journalists send their children to private school - probably quite a lot. I'm not saying it's not a big story, but there are other stories that potentially should get more coverage. And because they don't impact people in the newsroom, they're not getting that coverage. Those are the kinds of biases I think are really important for us all to be aware of as journalists.
It's quite hard because it's subconscious, right? So, we don't realise we're doing it, but I just think it's something that we should be quite rigorous on. We need to be asking the questions that the whole country wants to ask, not just the questions that we find interesting ourselves.
Amaro:
I think it also highlights the importance of having a diverse newsroom, right?
Ridge:
It's absolutely right. It's totally true, and journalism is not good at that at all. The entry-level jobs are poorly paid, a lot of them are in London, and you’ve got rent costs. It's also, and I found this myself getting in, it's a hard industry to get into. It's a really, really hard industry to break into. So, I think that diversity is very important and also class diversity as well, which is often the one that is very, very difficult to tackle because it's invisible.
Amaro:
And it gets forgotten or ignored as a result. Perhaps in more positive news, in March, you won Network Presenter of the Year at the Royal Television Awards! Congrats! We were wondering how that made you feel and what that meant for you and the team?
Ridge:
Honestly, it was such an amazing thing for me. I was kind of overwhelmed, actually. And look, I know like these awards happen and everyone is like, “oh my god, journalists and their awards...whatever”. But for me, you look back at the people who won that award before: Susanna Reid, Clive Myrie, Anna Botting, Emily Maitlis. Just to be put in the same breath as some of those previous winners is a massive honour.
Also, to be honest, it's just really lovely that people get what you're trying to do, that people understand what it is you're trying to achieve. Which for me, is trying to have a more relaxed, informal style of presenting; trying to be more intimate; talking directly to viewers. And for that to be recognised was really, really humbling, and it meant a huge amount to me to be honest.
Amaro:
More to come, I'm sure.
Ridge:
Thank you. It was. Yeah, it was very. It's a great moment for me. Thank you.
Amaro:
There's been a lot of good advice in this conversation, but as we conclude, what would be the advice you would highlight for younger women out there who're trying to make it into the industry? If you think about yourself when you were trying to make it into journalism.
Ridge:
I think my advice, for women specifically, is to be pushy. Because we see it as being pushy, but guys don't say it's being pushy, they see it as being confident. That's what we need to do. Sometimes it is quite hard because it goes against what we are told as women. To be deferential and not to be bossy and not to push yourself forward. But actually, that is what you need to do. So, just find the head of a TV company and email them. Or if you've got a story, pitch the story to a newspaper and just be pushy.
I was going to say have self-confidence, but it's not really that, because you can't change how confident you feel about yourself. I think it's like feeling the fear and doing it anyway, because that's what the rest of us are doing as well.
Amaro:
And it comes with practice, easier it gets, like you highlighted earlier.
Ridge:
Yeah, that’s completely it, so just keep going!
Amaro:
Sophy, it has been such a huge pleasure speaking with you. Thank you for your honesty and for your brilliance. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Ridge:
It's been so lovely to chat to you as well.
Amaro:
Thank you Sophy.
Ridge:
Thank you.
Shaw:
Thank you for listening again to the first episode of Women in Journalism's brand new podcast and another congratulations, Sophy, on your incredible award. It was so, so well deserved.
Saint:
And thank you, Sílvia for hosting this episode and for all your support on the new podcast. It was such an inspiring episode and really incredible to hear how Sophy was the first woman to host a Sunday politics show. I really valued how candid Sophy was about that lack of representation she felt, and also how as women, we need to just put ourselves out there.
Shaw:
I mean that's definitely something that I can take on board. I'm 100% guilty of not pushing myself as much as I could and should do, but, yeah, it was nice to know that I'm not alone in that. So, thank you Sophy for raising that!
SainT:
And we have even more exciting conversations lined up. So join us next time for more stories, career journeys and guidance. Don't forget to check the Women in Journalism website and socials for updates, new episodes, events, and more. Keep listening and stay inspired.
