Thomson Reuters boss Tom Glocer has a frank posting from Sun Valley (your own private Idaho). Glocer, who was based in London until recently, is now back in the US and tells it like it is on the real value of the “special relationship”:
The US has pursued a unilateralist approach to world affairs over the past seven years (if one ignores the strong-arming of super ally and “lapdog” the United Kingdom which all but cost Tony Blair his position). Continue reading
CNN bills itself as the most trusted name in news. Director-General Mark Thompson reckons public trust is the life-blood of the BBC. Politicians and TV presenters wail and tear their clothes in public at the public’s loss of trust in the media. “Woe is us,” wails the collective cry from the journalism profession, “they don’t believe.”
Media organisations want to wallow in trust like hippos in mud. They want to roll in it until they’re covered from head to toe. When it dries up, thanks to dodgy editing on a royal documentary promo or phoney competitions, the mud cracks and it’s a “crisis”. Continue reading
Lord Hutton has published an article on media reaction to his report.
Let’s ignore the fact that his footnotes on page one spell Freedland as Friedland. Typo!
He’s obviously one unhappy bunny. Which is a shame. I teach the Hutton Inquiry to postgraduate students. And I happen to think – in hindsight – that he did a pretty good job.*
Hutton is about the most instructive lesson students could receive in how to get into trouble.
Starring:
A reporter who puts stories up late in the day (he’d been sitting on it for a week) and then sends them in under the wire, so they get minimum editorial scrutiny.A live programme dominated by its main presenter’s genius for extemporaneous verbal assault, but for whom ‘editorial management’ are somehow made accountable.
And an editorial command chain that is overstretched and out of touch in an organization where management means policing internal rivalries and fending off the outside world.
The most compelling quote in the whole inquiry came from Susan Watts’ testimony – it’s a transcript of what Kelly told her. Given how many people Kelly spoke to, what’s the betting it’s pretty much what he told Gilligan?
“… there were lots of people saying that – I mean it was an interesting week before the dossier was put out because there were so many things in there that people were saying well … we’re not so sure about that, or in fact they were happy with it being in but not expressed the way that it was, because you know the word-smithing is actually quite important and the intelligence community are a pretty cautious lot on the whole but once you get people putting it/presenting it for public consumption then of course they use different words. I don’t think they’re being wilfully dishonest, I think they just think that that’s the way the public will appreciate it best. I’m sure you have the same problem as a journalist, don’t you, sometimes you’ve got to put things into words that the public will understand.”
Let’s hope for the sake of Gilligan’s conscience, it is not.