A journalist of fifty years standing offers a personal and independent assessment of the often troubled relationship between public figures and the British news media.
My aim is to try to monitor events and issues affecting the ethics of journalism and the latest developments in the rapidly-changing world of press, television, radio and the Internet.
Expect too an insight into the black arts of media manipulation. So spin-doctors, Beware!
Television and radio documentaries commemorating the 40th anniversary of the 1984-85 miners’ strike have been welcomed for providing a much-needed correction to the news media’s original portrayal of the dispute.
“At last people are seeing the strike from a different perspective” says former South Wales miners Ron Stoate.
His praise for a series of newly commissioned documentaries drew wide support at a conference in Cardiff held by the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data.
Previously unseen footage in a Channel 4 documentary about the Battle of Orgreave was confirmation if any was needed that heavy handed policing of a mass picket outside the Orgreave coke works in June 1984 descended into unprecedented brutality.
Battered and bloodied pickets were captured on camera by two officials from the National Union of Mineworkers who carried on filming amid the mayhem – footage that had been left for years locked in a cupboard and which was broadcast for the first time.
Devoting an entire programme to the tumultuous events in the divided mining village of Shirebrook was an inspired choice to open a season of radio and tv documentaries commemorating the 40th anniversary of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.
Flashing back and forth between past and present – seeing and hearing archive tv footage of young miners in their twenties and thirties and then listening to them again in their sixties and seventies as they relived their experiences – provided gripping reportage.
Remaining at ease in front of camera, and fearless in the face of hostile questioning, is a tough call when caught in the eye of a media storm, a challenge that did not unsettle the rail union leader Mick Lynch.
His skill in standing his ground while forcing several renowned television presenters on to the back foot won him many plaudits during the 18 months of strike action in the RMT pay dispute with the rail operators.
Taking on all comers at impromptu doorstep news conferences was a strategy that helped to establish Lynch as a media personality, a transformation that did not happen just by chance.
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Perhaps the best comparison when looking back at the hundreds of cartoons printed in newspapers and magazines during the 1984-5 miners’ strike is that they were the equivalent of today’s postings on social media, often provocative, abusive, and sometimes downright cruel, intended to prompt comment and debate.
The miners’ struggle against pit closures divided the country. Cartoonists from right to left offered their take on an unfolding and unyielding polarisation between the state and the mining communities.
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