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!
“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”.
There was not the same power in his voice or velocity in delivery, but Arthur Scargill lacked none of the drive or passion of the past as he rolled back the years to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Saltley Gates.
Reliving his greatest victory, which was at the height of the 1972 miners’ strike, is a narrative that he knows off by heart.
When disruption and shortages started to get out of hand earlier in the autumn even loyal Conservative newspapers had to report the realities facing the country as ministerial competence was seen to be draining away.
No wonder the front pages began predicting a ‘Winter of Discontent’ – a handy headline for pulling together the horrors associated with the prospect of a beleaguered government losing control.
With the party conference season likely to kick off a challenging autumn and winter for Boris Johnson, the Labour Party is in desperate need of some sustainable media strategies to try to keep the government on the back foot.
A five-paragraph news story in one of the few Labour-supporting national newspapers might seem an insignificant start but it was an illustration of what could become part of a wide-ranging campaign to exploit a myriad of failings and missed opportunities in the Brexit small print.
Amid what for so long has been a dearth of regular in-depth news coverage in the mainstream media about employment and trade union issues, there is one positive development.
Drivers and couriers in the gig economy, who are challenging the working practices of online innovators such as Uber and Deliveroo, are winning a sympathetic hearing on radio and television, and especially in the national press.
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