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What The Papers Say
Apologies. This is one of those vanity posts where I tell you what a jolly time I had. But hell, it is Christmas. At the What The Papers Say awards lunch today, I found myself sandwiched between two journos called Peter Allen. What are the chances of that? Allen one is the excellent former ITN…
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TV news in 2008…
In 2007, Mark Thompson Peter Horrocks apparently walked into a meeting of top BBC talent and declared – not untruthfully – “There is no market for newsreaders.” Unfortunately “even a dead cat bounces” (as finance types say) and the market promptly leapt back into action and Natasha Kaplinsky and Dermot Murnaghan both left the BBC…
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The BBC: focus groups and phoney accountability
After talking to 96 people for three hours, the BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons writes: Performance in News and Current Affairs is rightly seen to be strong but the BBC is not always serving everyone on the audience as it should, with those who fall within the category of ‘low BBC approvers’ perceiving a…
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The biggest stories you won’t see headlined
The biggest stories you won’t see headlining the news are Germany and southern Europe’s growing dependence on Russia. And China’s advance into Africa. Where four decades of Warsaw Pact weaponry failed, gas and oil pipelines are succeeding. Russia’s influence runs right up to the Rhine – and where communism couldn’t win converts, cash and a…