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By The Drum Team, Editorial

October 5, 2012 | 1 min read

Sky News anchor Kay Burley has been accused of crashing insensitivity after breaking the news to volunteers live on air that the search for April Jones has now become a murder inquiry.

The presenter was slammed on Twitter after telling two distraught volunteers - one believed to be April's godmother - that police now did not expect the missing five-year-old to be found alive.

#KayBurley became one of the top trends on Twitter this morning as angry viewers took to the social networking site to complain about Burley's blunder.

Among those to speak out was the Labour MP Tom Watson, who branded Burley as "insensitive bordering on cruel" before adding: "Is breaking news so important that you have to forget your humanity?"

UPDATED: According to a straw poll by The Drum on Facebook, 46 per cent think that it was wrong of Burley to have revealed the information that way; 46 per cent thought it could have been handled better; and 8 per cent thought that Burkey did the right thing, considering the volunteers had asked what was happening.