Volume 14, Number 2, 2003 |
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ContentsEditorial - Catastrophes of war 3Iraq, the notorius war Phillip Knightley - History or bunkum? 7 Tim Franks - Not war reporting – just reporting 15 Hilary Andersson - The wow factor 20 Michael Kelly - Letter from Kuwait — a tribute 25 Jim Dougal - Living with press eurotrash 29 Nick Martin-Clark - When a journalist must tell 35 News Forum David Nicholas - The greatest stories ever told 41 David Puttnam - News: you want it quick or do you want it good? 50 Chris Shaw - TV news: why more is less 58 Bryan Rostron - But is it cricket? 65 Gerald Kaufman - Power of the pen 70 Victor Davis - The stars look down 75 BOOK REVIEWSDavid Aaronovitch on Ian Hargreaves 83Geoffrey Goodman on King and Cudlipp 85 Roy Greenslade on Bernard Donoughue 88 Cal McCrystal on Joseph Roth 91 Anthony Delano on Victorian sensation 94 
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Editorial - Catastrophes of warSo far as the British press was concerned, the exclusive of the war was probably Sir Peter Stothard’s intimate portrait in The Times of the 30 days he spent with the Prime Minister between 10 March and 19 April. If it did not have quite the military-political significance of Napoleon at Waterloo or Lincoln at Gettysburg, it nevertheless provided readers with an insight into processes that are usually concealed from the public... [Read full article]
Phillip Knightley - History or bunkum?The Pentagon made it clear from the beginning of the war against Iraq that there would be no censorship. What it failed to say was that war correspondents might well find themselves in a situation similar to that in Korea in 1950. This was described by one American correspondent as the military saying: “You can write what you like – but if we don’t like it we’ll shoot you.” The figures in Iraq tell a terrible story. Fifteen media people dead, with two missing, presumed dead. If you consider how short the campaign was, Iraq will be notorious as the most dangerous war for journalists ever... [Read full article]
Tim Franks - Not war reporting – just reportingIt was only when I was standing naked in the Iraqi desert that I realised how far I’d sunk. We were queuing for the showers at our neighbouring regiment’s encampment. The cold lawn-sprinkler could take four at a time. Journalists and soldiers stood – very distinctively – side by side. Ahead of me in the line, two equally clothesless officers greeted each other warmly and began catching up on lost times. In cut-glass accents, they sighed and tutted as one of them, a major, recalled a mutual friend who hadn’t been the same since he’d caught some metal in the head in the Falklands... [Read full article]
Hilary Andersson - The wow factorThe Iraq war was a good war for women war reporters. We were there in force. That’s not to say we outnumbered the men – far from it – but our profile was high, and that was no accident. The role of women war reporters has changed significantly. Not only are there more female foreign correspondents now than ever before in high-profile reporting jobs, but women reporting wars seems almost to be a vogue... [Read full article]
Jim Dougal - Living with press eurotrashEver since the UK joined the Common Market in 1973, tales have abounded of an overweening bureaucracy attempting to wrest control of Britain into its own hands. Continual warnings of “barmy EU edicts” issued by “faceless eurocrats”, which have surreptitiously impinged upon British life to deleterious effect, have been the mainstay of EU reporting in much of the UK press. Indeed, were every portentous prediction to have come to fruition we would now be living in a kind of Orwellian dystopia, with many aspects of British life, from the minutiae to the monumental, pre-ordained by the abstract monolith known as “Brussels”... [Read full article]
Nick Martin-Clark - When a journalist must tellThere can be few worse nightmares for a journalist than to appear in the witness box giving evidence against a former source for having committed a brutal murder. But that was the position I found myself in earlier this year when Clifford George McKeown, a notorious loyalist with a long history of involvement in Northern Ireland terrorism, came up for the murder of 37- year-old Michael McGoldrick, a part-time Catholic taxi-driver from Lurgan, Co. Armagh... [Read full article]
David Puttnam - News: you want it quick or good?Over this past year, I’ve spent an enormous amount of time engaging with the issues raised by the Communications Bill, now making its way through Parliament and likely to receive Royal Assent in July. One of the things that has concerned me, perhaps more than any other single issue, is that the agenda of so-called economic liberalism which governs so much of the Government’s approach to the Bill is likely to have serious if unintended consequences for the plurality and diversity of UK media, and therefore for the quality of British journalism... [Read full article]
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