Volume 16, Number 4, 2005 |
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ContentsEditorial - Reclaiming the Awards 3New OrleansMatt Frei - Life and death in a city unhinged 5Kim Fletcher - Myths in the making 12 Tom Stoppard - My love affair with newspapers 19 John Cole - Playing with politics 31 Heather Brooke - FOI: turning the tide of secrecy 39 John Sweeney - Bucking the system 47 Stephen Whittle - Journalists as citizens 54 Bill Hagerty - Hall of Fame 58 Deborah Orr - Floundering in the macho media 61 James P Rubin - Putting the world back on the map 66 Gregor Gall - Hard labour 72 Peter MacKay - Editors from A to B 79 BOOK REVIEWSMichael Leapman on James Curran/Ivor Gabor/Julian Petley 84Cal McCrystal on David Randall 86 Stewart Purvis on Tony Grant 88 Mark Bolland on Chris Hutchins 90 Anthony Howard on Richard Ingrams 93 The way we were 38 
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Matt Frei - Life and death in a city unhinged“Try to get to New Orleans at least once,” one of my predecessors urged me before I took up the job of Washington correspondent for the BBC in 2002. “But it won’t be easy,” he added. “Your bosses always suspect you’ve gone to have a good time!” At least that is one charge they won’t be making about my trip this summer... [Read full article]
Tom Stoppard - My love affair with newspapersUntil I was 16 or 17 I had no idea what I wanted to do. Then, when the idea of journalism came up, I thought: “That’s it!” It was instant and final. It made everything else look boring. My headmaster at the time had very lofty ideas, he thought going into journalism meant getting a degree and going to The Manchester Guardian. But I was sick of education really, and keen to get out of going to university, and to do stuff and start earning a living. I did A-levels a bit early and left school when I was 17... [Read full article]
John Cole - Playing with politicsThe quarrel between the Government and the BBC is a farce that risks sliding into tragedy. With the licence-fee negotiations adding spice to the sauce, two groups of vain men and women – No 10 and its hangers-on and the BBC higher-ups – are willing to risk the future of a worthwhile British institution, and have already sullied the face of British politics. Yet both are so wrapped in self-righteousness that they seem incapable of escaping from this corrosive quarrel... [Read full article]
John Sweeney - Bucking the systemIn all the best fairy stories there is a sweet innocence, a force for evil and a curse or spell that locks up the innocent. The narrative climaxes with a breaking of the spell. The British criminal justice system and the secret Family Court system – which has the power to take your children from you, forever, on the balance of probability – are in danger of becoming fairy stories that would rather do without the bit about breaking the spell. A bleak history of false accusations against innocent mothers has now emerged – summed up in the appeal of cot-death mother Angela Cannings, when Lord Justice Judge said: “The question is not, ‘who murdered these babies?’ but ‘was there a crime?’”... [Read full article]
Stephen Whittle - How not to defend your sourceIn the previous British Journalism Review, the editorial began to set out some of the challenges for journalism posed by the bomb attacks on London in July. As this issue went to press, the BBC found itself between a rock and a hard place, caught in the middle of what it regards as a fundamental journalistic principle and the requirements of the Terrorism Act. The outcome is unclear as yet, but the issue goes to the heart of Joseph Pulitzer’s understanding of the role of journalism. He wrote about it as a privilege... [Read full article]
Deborah Orr - Floundering in the macho mediaI love Deborah Ross’s recent musings in The Independent on why it is that women never really tell the truth about the pain of labour: “If you were to ask me what it is truly like I, too, would fudge and say something along the following lines: ‘OK, imagine someone has stuffed a vast shipment of hand grenades up your uterus, timed to go off at increasingly frequent, increasingly violent intervals over a 17-hour period but, hey, it’s all worth it at the end when they hand you a little baby and you think: fucking hell, what have I done? I can’t love this. Put it in a home! Give it to a nice couple that can’t have children of their own!’ So that is what I would say because, of course, if you did actually spell out how bad it is there is no way women would ever have babies.”... [Read full article]
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