Independent Television News is expected to announce Steve Scott as its new sports correspondent, to work across ITV1’s news output.
An experienced news reader, Scott – the brother of TV sports presenter Angus Scott – has recently been presenting ITN news bulletins at weekends while fronting the local news segment in ITV South West.
He has previously worked as ITN’s Africa correspondent based in Johannesburg, experience which undoubtedly will be useful at this year’s football World Cup in South Africa. Between 1997 and 2000, Scott anchored Five’s live sport coverage, including more than 100 live European football matches.
For the past year, he has also presented a late-night documentary series, Nightwatch with Steve Scott.
Scott is believed to have been chosen from a shortlist of three candidates for the ITN sports correspondent’s job, which will have wide-ranging responsibilities in the next couple of years through the World Cup and to the 2012 London Olympics.
When announcing the recruitment for the post, Robin Elias, ITN’s managing editor, told sportjournalists.co.uk, “It’s a high profile role in an area of news we think is very important to the News at Ten audience.”
The ITN sports correspondent’s post will look after the news provider’s output on ITV1, and is a replacement for Richard Pallot.
The ITN appointment comes after the BBC named David Bond as its second Sports Editor, while Orla Chennaoui was appointed by Sky News last year as its first Olympics reporter.
Last month, Scott launched a libel action against the Daily Mail over the way it had reported his involvement in a controversy surrounding his erstwhile West Country Tonight colleague, Lisa Aziz.
Former Sky News presenter Aziz, 47, had alleged racial, sexual and age discrimination against colleagues after she lost her £160,000-a-year job on the programme last July. She pursued £5 million in damages to the employment tribunal, but Aziz has since withdrawn her complaints against the channel and her colleagues, saying that she made them when “angry and unwell”.
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