Volume 10, Number 3, 1999 |
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ContentsEditorial - Barbarians at the GatePeter Riddell - A shift of power – and influence |
Editorial - Barbarians at the gateThe BBC is fighting for its life: no one, least of all its new Director General, Greg Dyke, should be in any doubt about that. The Davies report on the future of BBC funding which has caused such convulsions in virtually every sector of the media is only the tip of the iceberg. But it has concentrated minds, focused all the prejudices, assembled the opposing armies of public sector broadcasting v. commercial enterprise et al, and, inevitably, produced an interesting mix of the two groups with various "Third Way" voices trying hard to find a bridge between the two extremes... [Read full article]
Peter Riddell - A shift of power – and influenceLobby correspondents have always had an ambivalent position in journalism. Regarding themselves as an elite, at the sharp end of getting stories, lobby correspondents have been vulnerable because of their closeness to those in power. Even when a formal list of accredited lobby correspondents was first drawn up in the 1880s, they were according the Jeremy Tunstall’s classic 1970 study, The Westminster Lobby Correspondents – "less accepted than debate or sketch writers and were treated with suspicion on at least two major grounds – first, they tended to be regarded as the politically partisan agents of partisan newspapers, and, secondly, their integrity – and willingness to protect confidences was doubted". Sounds familiar... [Read full article]
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