Matt Barbet
A reputational incident now plays out on a faster clock than the leadership team can convene. Executives are asked to be visible, accurate and human within hours, often with incomplete information and a watching newsroom. The capability to absorb pressure, choose words carefully and stay credible on camera has become a senior leadership requirement, not a communications function.
Matt Barbet is a Sky News anchor and former Freuds partner who hosts conferences, moderates senior panels and speaks to organisations on crisis communications and reputational risk.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Matt Barbet
- A current Sky News anchor who can chair a CEO panel, run a town hall or moderate a board offsite at the standard of a national broadcast interview.
- Inside view from Freuds, where he advised executives and global figures on storytelling and on managing crises in real time, not in theory.
- Two decades of frontline reporting across BBC, ITV and Channel 5, including coverage of elections, conflict and natural disasters, which gives him a credible voice on how reputations break and recover.
- A second keynote on artificial intelligence that focuses on human judgement and authentic communication as the variables that matter when AI takes over routine output.
Biography highlights
- Sky News anchor, hosting the Sunday 10am to 2pm programme since February 2024.
- Partner at Freuds, the London public relations firm, since 2018.
- Former anchor of Channel 5’s 5 News flagship 17:00 programme and co-presenter of ITV Breakfast’s Daybreak.
- Reporting career across BBC News, BBC Radio 1, ITV News and Channel 5 spanning more than twenty years.
- Covered major international stories including the 2010 Haiti earthquake and embedded reporting in Afghanistan.
- Cardiff University and Cardiff School of Journalism graduate.
Biography
A reputational crisis used to be a press office problem. It is now a board problem, with a clock measured in hours and an audience that includes regulators, investors, customers and staff watching the same feed at the same time. The leaders who navigate this well tend to share one quality, the ability to think clearly and communicate plainly while the noise is at its loudest.
This is the territory Matt Barbet has worked in from both sides. As a Sky News anchor, and previously across BBC News, ITV and Channel 5, he has spent more than twenty years interviewing senior figures during the moments that define their organisations. As a partner at Freuds since 2018, he has sat on the other side of the table, advising executives and high-profile clients on how to prepare for those moments and how to recover from them.
The dual vantage point is what makes him useful to a serious audience. He can describe what a newsroom sees during a developing story, what makes a spokesperson credible on camera, and where leaders most commonly lose control of a narrative. The reporting gives him the field examples. The Freuds work gives him the language of strategy and reputational risk.
For most clients the commercial product is hosting. Barbet chairs conferences, moderates panels of senior executives and runs awards ceremonies and town halls at broadcast standard. The keynote material on crisis communications and on artificial intelligence sits alongside that work, anchored in the same craft of listening carefully and speaking clearly under pressure.
Key speaking topics
- Crisis communications and reputational risk
- Leadership communication under media scrutiny
- Storytelling for senior executives
- Artificial intelligence and the human side of communication
- Conference hosting and panel moderation
- Frontline journalism and how news is made
Ideal for
- CEOs, CCOs and communications directors preparing for reputational incidents
- Senior leadership teams running town halls, conferences or investor events that need broadcast-quality hosting
- Boards and executive committees commissioning a moderator for high-stakes panel sessions
- Awards ceremonies and flagship industry conferences
Audience outcomes
- A clearer view of how a newsroom processes a developing story, and what that means for the speed of a corporate response.
- Specific examples of how senior figures hold or lose credibility on camera.
- A practical sense of how communications, legal and operational decisions interact during a live crisis.
- A point of view on where AI raises the value of direct human communication rather than reducing it.
Talks
A keynote on managing reputational risk drawn from frontline reporting and senior PR practice.
Key takeaways:
- How news organisations decide what becomes a story and how fast it moves
- What separates a credible response from a damaging one in the first 24 hours
- How leaders rebuild trust with staff, customers and regulators after a public incident
A keynote on what human communication needs to look like as AI absorbs more routine output.
Key takeaways:
- Where AI strengthens communication and where it weakens it
- Why judgement, empathy and authenticity become higher-value capabilities, not lower
- Practical implications for leaders thinking about how their teams communicate internally and externally
Videos
Testimonials
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |
| Asia Pacific | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Europe | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| South America | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| United Kingdom | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |