{"id":687077,"date":"2026-07-12T04:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T04:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/687077\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T04:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T04:07:11","slug":"dermot-murnaghan-obituary-sky-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/687077\/","title":{"rendered":"Dermot Murnaghan obituary | Sky News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dermot Murnaghan, who has died of cancer aged 68, was one of British television\u2019s leading news presenters during a career that embraced Channel 4<\/a>, ITV and the BBC, then Sky. He had the skill of both relaying the day\u2019s stories with authority and challenging those in power with the questions that matter.<\/p>\n

After leaving Sky News<\/a> in 2023 on completing almost 40 years in front of the camera, Murnaghan admitted to getting frustrated when he heard, from his new vantage point on a sofa at home, politicians getting off lightly in interviews. \u201cI\u2019m throwing soft shoes at the television screen and knocking the radio over when I hear it because that\u2019s my obsession \u2013 I can\u2019t give it up,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Top of his own list of political scalps was Peter Mandelson, who resigned as Labour\u2019s trade and industry secretary in 1998 after Murnaghan pinned him down on allegations of not correctly filling in a mortgage application<\/a> form two years earlier \u2013 failing to declare to the lender another, interest-free loan for the property of almost \u00a3400,000 from Geoffrey Robinson<\/a>, then a shadow cabinet colleague.<\/p>\n

Having seemingly survived grillings over the previous 24 hours on BBC<\/a> Two\u2019s Newsnight, with Jeremy Paxman, and the Today programme on Radio 4, Mandelson scored an own goal by suggesting that his session for ITV\u2019s Lunchtime News be recorded. \u201cThis gave us the chance to do a longer interview,\u201d explained Murnaghan, \u201cbecause, quite frankly, the Lunchtime News is half-an-hour long and every minister knows that if they filibuster for three minutes you won\u2019t lay a glove on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this extra time, Murnaghan probed deeper, asking Mandelson whether he had told anyone else about the loan from Robinson. \u201cNo,\u201d replied Mandelson. \u201cIt was a personal arrangement made between us.\u201d But, when asked about filling in the mortgage application form\u2019s section about other relevant loans, the government minister appeared to contradict himself, saying: \u201cI have acted with complete propriety.\u201d Mandelson resigned a day later, and Murnaghan won the Royal Television Society award for best interview of 1998.<\/p>\n

A year earlier, Murnaghan broke the news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales<\/a> to ITV viewers. He was the channel\u2019s newscaster living closest to the studios when news of her car crash in Paris emerged in the early hours of Sunday 31 August 1997. Asleep in bed, he received a phone call at 1am from one of his editors: \u201cGet here as quickly as possible. Something has happened to Princess Diana.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview on breakfast television with Christine Lampard 25 years later, Murnaghan recalled<\/a>: \u201cBy the time it was confirmed that the princess had passed away, we\u2019d been on the air for about three hours as the story had developed from a serious car accident … reports of broken collarbones and things like that, non-life threatening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, he heard through his earpiece: \u201cJust read the statement. Just read that statement.\u201d Slowly, with a calm air, but also a hint of disbelief<\/a>, he read off the teleprompter: \u201cWe have reports from Paris that Diana, Princess of Wales, has been killed in a car accident and that her partner, Dodi Fayed<\/a>, has also been killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continued on screen for 18 hours as reaction in Britain and around the world unfolded, and later said: \u201cIt felt as though I was telling a close relative that another close relative had died.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murnaghan was born in Barnstaple, Devon, to Wendy (nee Bush) and Vincent Murnaghan, a civil engineer. The family moved to Northern Ireland, where they lived in Armagh and the Co Down towns of Newry and Holywood, where he attended Sullivan Upper, a grammar school.<\/p>\n

After gaining a BA and MA in history from Sussex University, Murnaghan took a postgraduate course in journalism at City University, London, and then became a trainee at the Coventry Evening Telegraph (1984-85).<\/p>\n

Murnaghan entered television in 1985 as a researcher, then reporter, for The Business Programme on Channel 4, switching to its sister series, Business Daily, in 1987. He moved to Switzerland as a reporter and occasional anchor for the European Business Channel (1988-89) and returned to Britain for the start of the breakfast show Channel 4 Daily (1989-92) to present the Business Daily feature, then World News bulletins produced by ITN.<\/p>\n

During 1992, he fronted weekend episodes of Channel 4 News, made by ITN, which he then joined to anchor, from 1993 to 1999, ITV\u2019s Lunchtime News \u2013 mostly with Julia Somerville co-presenting \u2013 as well as weekend bulletins, and he featured in the channel\u2019s Budget coverage.<\/p>\n

When News at Ten was axed in 1999, Murnaghan became sole presenter of the new, 20-minute ITV Nightly News at 11pm. Two years later, the original programme\u2019s reinstatement (only for three days a week at first) meant another move for him, joining Mary Nightingale as co-anchor of the ITV Evening News at 6.30pm. He also hosted ITV\u2019s weekly current affairs series The Big Story (1993-97) and its crime appeal show Britain\u2019s Most Wanted (1997-2001).<\/p>\n

He presented BBC Breakfast News<\/a> from 2002 to 2007, as well as BBC One\u2019s 6pm news (2003-07) and BBC Two\u2019s revival of the gameshow Treasure Hunt (2002-03).<\/p>\n

In 2008, Murnaghan switched to Sky News, where he later anchored coverage of the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton<\/a>, and hosted his own Sunday-morning show, Murnaghan (2011-16), before settling into the Sky News Tonight evening slot (2016-23). In 2022, standing outside Buckingham Palace, he was the first broadcaster to break the news of Queen Elizabeth II\u2019s death<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He signed off from Sky News for the last time with a nod to the satirical Anchorman films \u2013 about the fictional 1970s news presenter Ron Burgundy, played by Will Ferrell \u2013 by flinging his script to the studio floor behind him and telling viewers: \u201cYou stay classy, planet Earth. Goodbye.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Murnaghan hosted the BBC quiz show Eggheads between 2003 and 2014, and the true-crime series Killer Britain (2020-25).<\/p>\n

He won the Television & Radio Industries Club\u2019s 2000 newscaster of the year award.<\/p>\n

In 1989, Murnaghan married Maria Keegan, a journalist. She, their three daughters, Kitty, Molly and Alice, and son, Jack, survive him.<\/p>\n

Dermot John Murnaghan, news presenter, born 26 December 1957; died 11 July 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dermot Murnaghan, who has died of cancer aged 68, was one of British television\u2019s leading news presenters during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-687077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}