Channel 4 News chief correspondent Alex Thomson has stood down from co-hosting Wednesday night’s Rory Peck awards due to health and safety concerns following his recent return from covering the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone.
Thomson was supposed to co-present the annual awards for freelance journalists with Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford, but will be replaced by his colleague, international editor Lindsey Hilsum. The award was set up in 1995 in memory of freelance cameraman Rory Peck, who was killed in Moscow in 1993.
Despite the nature of the event, honouring those who typically take risks to report difficult stories and the precautions Thomson took, it is understood that because he only returned from Sierra Leone at the weekend it might have been difficult to get the approval of all the audience.
Although it is likely that the majority of those attending would know about the risks and details of Ebola incubation, the fact Thomson would have to shake hands with the award-winners might have caused some concern.
Opinion remains divided over the 21-day incubation period, with some news organisations keeping staff returning from affected areas of Africa in quarantine. It is thought that Thomson will be off for about a week to 10 days.
Co-host Alex Crawford has also reported on Ebola – filing a report from Liberia in which her and her team went out with recovery teams collecting the bodies of dead victims – but is now out of the incubation period.
In a recent interview with the Guardian, Crawford warned of scaremongering over Ebola and hoped her reports would help educate audiences about the disease: “I think the fear in America, Britain and everywere else is out of proportion because they will get cases of Ebola, absolutely. But will it spread like it has done in Liberia? Really unlikely. You need to be alert, but do you think it’s going to take over and kill half of Reading? No.”
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@theguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.
• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.
.jpg?w=600)
