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Tony Blair and press dictatorship
Tony Blair got a predictably poor reception to his speech yesterday. In it he quoted former prime minister Stanley Baldwin. Baldwin’s oft-cited speech came in the context of a long-running campaign against his leadership of the Conservative Party by Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere. The two men were owners of the Daily Express and Daily Mail…
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An audience with Tony Blair
As the photo above aptly demonstrates, I’m completely at home with using my BlackBerry’s camera to newsgather. Or not. The middle blur is Tony Blair, fresh from the latest of his suite of valedictory speeches – this one about the media. The Prime Minister attacked “the confusion of news and commentary” in journalism. “Opinion and…
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Dispatches on extraordinary rendition
In what is little more than a shameless plug – my mate Stephen Grey has his latest extraordinary rendition film out on UK Channel 4 tomorrow night at 8pm. Stephen has been way out in front on this story in the face of public apathy and institutional indifference – you’ll probably have seen his reporting…
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What don’t journalists need to know?
Do journalists need to know programming code? In all the blogospheric excitement, it’s easy to imagine that young journalists are empty vessels into which statistics, programme code, audio-visual editing, camera-work, law, and – most important – fake sincerity can be poured before being squeezed into the 24/7 roster moulds that managing editors have waiting for…