Sky News Defends Correspondent James Matthews After Viral Clash With Senator-Elect Abdul El-Sayed

Sky News has thrown its support behind U.S. correspondent James Matthews after a heated confrontation with newly elected Senator Abdul El-Sayed went viral, telling Variety the journalist "was doing his job."

The exchange, filmed outside a Detroit polling station on Tuesday, spread rapidly online this week, racking up more than 12 million views on Twitter in under 48 hours. The clip shows the two men talking over one another as El-Sayed holds Matthews by the shoulders and repeatedly refuses to take his questions because he works for an international media outlet.

"You're a journalist in the U.K.," El-Sayed told Matthews. "You know how many votes I want to get in the U.K.? Zero. I am never running for office in the U.K. So I absolutely do not care what you think or the questions you ask." When Matthews countered that Sky News reaches a large international audience, the senator-elect replied: "Like five people."

El-Sayed also accused the correspondent of "chasing me around," a charge Matthews rejected on camera, telling him: "Abdul, I'm not chasing you. I'm asking you questions."

Following the latest confrontation, an older video of the pair also resurfaced online. In it, Matthews asks El-Sayed to respond to Donald Trump's claim that he is "full of shit." That footage was first posted on Sky News' social platforms two months ago.

In a statement to Variety, Sky News said: "We're proud of our correspondent James Matthews, who was doing his job: covering the election campaign and asking straightforward questions on behalf of our audiences." The broadcaster added: "The outcome of U.S. elections has ramifications globally, including in the U.K. and across the 138 countries worldwide where millions of people consume Sky News."

Matthews gave his own account of the encounter in a piece for the Sky News website, writing that it had been a "challenge for Sky News to reach El-Sayed" and that he had not had "the chance to ask him any questions before he began to quiz me." He added: "What ensued, in public, wasn't pretty. For a politician typically sure-footed in his dealings with the media, it felt like a misstep."

Matthews, a BAFTA-winning journalist, has served as Sky News' U.S. correspondent since 2022 and has worked at the broadcaster for more than two decades. After the clip went viral, several British journalists voiced support for him, among them Sky News colleagues Alex Crawford, Cathy Newman and Jayne Secker.

"Bravo to our colleague @jamesmatthewsky for always asking the pertinent question and putting into context just why what happens in Michigan, and America, doesn't stay in Michigan," Crawford wrote on X, adding that the election "most certainly matters elsewhere" and that "non-voters have a significance of their own."

Newman wrote that it was "incredible how @jamesmatthewsky keeps his cool here. Top journo," while Secker praised him for "doing his job admirably, politely asking questions of those seeking power," calling the exchange "an interesting insight into the character of @AbdulElSayed, a man who we will all be hearing a lot more about over the next two years."