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!
Strike action at a rate unprecedented for recent years and the prospect of another severe tightening of restraints on trade union activity are reawakening demands for more informed news reporting about pay disputes and employment issues.
The lack of in-depth coverage was highlighted at a fringe meeting at the Labour Conference in Liverpool, organised by The World Transformed, which discussed the reasons why workers’ grievances get such short shrift in the news media.
For a young reporter on the political and industrial beat, the 1970s never let up. There was a cascade of political shocks, unexpected world crises, and a series of grave, self-inflicted wounds by governments of the day.
No wonder I seem to be living in a time warp. Five decades later there is that same relentless pace of events, impacting each other, and again a domino effect.
From the start of the Conservative leadership contest there was a bidding war on new policy initiatives with Liz Truss way out in front in offering what her supporters believed was a true Thatcherite agenda.
She promised the party membership she would implement a raft of punitive restraints on workers’ rights – a shopping list that was so far reaching and malevolent that it would have delighted Norman Tebbit.
Potential disruption of the rail network had been looming for several weeks when the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers finally announced the go-ahead ahead for three days of strike action in late June.
The threat of confrontation became a valuable prop for Conservative-supporting newspapers which tried to divert attention from the government’s woes by trashing and tormenting the rail union leadership with alarmist story lines and ever more desperate personal attacks.
“Repeated failure to be impartial” … “in built bias” … these are the favoured lines of attack for Conservative-supporting newspapers as they seek to galvanise the BBC’s opponents for what might become a final, make-or-break assault on the licence fee.
Battle lines were drawn when Nadine Dorries fired the starting gun in January with her infamous tweet that the most recent “licence fee announcement will be the last”.
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