Volume 17, Number 2, 2006 |
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ContentsEditorial - Listen to the Lord 3Bill Hagerty - Kinnock: Where Clarke was right 7 Close-up on the BBCWill Wyatt - Stand up and be counted 15Michael White - Grumpy Humpy should bow out 21 Tim Luckhurst - Sabotaging a star 27 Francis Jezierski - Unequal war of the web 33 Jane Brown - Fast stalker 39 Roger Bolton - Mind your language 44 British Museum - Gone and (largely) forgotten 50 Stephen Bax - Beware the press in times of war 53 John Campbell - Why papers of record are history 59 Stewart Purvis - Clean sweep in the Ukraine 65 BOOK REVIEWSAnthony Delano on Dennis Griffiths 70Martyn Gregory on Patricia Holland 72 Michael Leapman on Angela V John 74 Liz Vercoe on Julia Hobsbawm 76 Martin Rowson on Mark Bryant 78 The way we were 32 
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Editorial - Listen to the LordBuried in the debris after the storm that re-arranged the Cabinet and drove Charles Clarke on to the back benches was a speech he made about the media while he was still Home Secretary. Although not ignored, as we recall below, it was lost to sight as Clarke struggled to escape from the problem of the convicted criminals who might have been deported if they could have been found, and as Tony Blair manoeuvred to protect his Government... [Read full article]
Bill Hagerty - Kinnock: Where Clarke was rightIt’s only fair that Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty should have strong views on the media. After all, throughout his long political career the media have had strong views about him. Criticism and ridicule marched hand-in-hand to attack him in the pages of a largely Conservative-supporting press during the then Neil Kinnock’s tenure as Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. Famously, on the morning of the 1992 general election The Sun produced what has become a frequently-recalled front page: “If Neil Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights.”... [Read full article]
Will Wyatt - Stand up and be countedEvery decade we have a mighty debate about whether the BBC has a future in whatever is the new world of broadcasting. In the 1980s it was the multichannel era that Sky was introducing, and in the 1990s the multi-multi channel environment that digital television was about to create. This time we are on the brink of what Mark Thompson, Director-General of the Corporation, has called “the second wave of digital” and once again the corporation has thought hard about its role... [Read full article]
Michael White - Grumpy Humpy should bow outIs Radio 4’s John Humphrys a national treasure? Of course he is. BBC research tells us he remains the listeners’ perennial favourite among the Today programme’s presenters. Myself, I always imagine him broadcasting not from that airless first-floor studio at Television Centre in White City, but leaning over a village gate: farmer Humphrys, opinionated and cantankerous as he buttonholes his neighbours (it must be a smart village since many of them seem to be Government ministers) to share a piece of his mind on great issues of the day. So I am always slightly disappointed when I switch on the radio and find he is not in the morning’s line-up, ready to pick a fight with passers-by. And yet and yet... [Read full article]
Tim Luckhurst - Sabotaging a starOf the Today programme journalists directly responsible for Andrew Gilligan’s fateful early morning interview about the so-called dodgy dossier, only one remains in post. Presenter John Humphrys was the other half of that poorly-choreographed duet, and there are not a few senior executives in BBC Radio and BBC News who wish Humphrys had joined Gilligan and, subsequently, Today’s then editor Kevin Marsh in exile from frontline broadcasting... [Read full article]
Roger Bolton - Mind your languageFor a large part of my early life the most offensive word I knew was “diddums”. Its use, by my older sister, reduced me to paroxysms of anger and quivering emotions. As I was, and hope still am, a pretty calm sort of person, it still baffles me why I used to allow her to wind me up so easily and why, emotion being recollected in tranquillity, I still hate the word. After all, in my somewhat chequered journalistic career, I have been called a “traitor” and accused of being “lower than a snake’s belly”, and was one of those BBC hacks blamed by Paul Johnson 20-odd years ago of “raping for the Revolution” and lying – “The BBC not only lies, it lies for the Left”, he wrote. That was water off a duck’s back... [Read full article]
Gone and (largely) forgottenThe centenary of the Newspaper Publishers’ Association is not receiving quite the attention given to the Queen’s 80th birthday, but it’s a close-run thing. A British Library exhibition, Front Page: Celebrating 100 Years of the British Newspaper (1906-2006) and featuring a remarkable display of front pages from the 150,000-strong collection of newspaper enthusiast John Frost, runs until October 8. In addition, the Library is organising debates and workshops and publishing both Fleet Street: Five Hundred Years of the Press, by Dennis Griffiths (reviewed on page 70) and the Newspaper Headlines Quiz Book... [Read full article]
John Campbell - Papers of record are historyNewspapers are a vital but deeply frustrating source for contemporary historians. They are vital, obviously, because for most of the 20th century they were the principal public record of events both great and small, from war and diplomacy to crime and scandal as well as business, sport, fashion and the Arts. They were also the principal vehicle of opinion, speculation and debate at every level of sophistication from the clubs of Pall Mall to the Clapham omnibus. Of course, we historians know as well as anyone that you cannot believe everything you read in the papers, and a great deal is not in the papers. Even with that proviso, they are an indispensable source of period flavour. There is no subject – political, social or economic – that one can study seriously without needing to read the contemporary press... [Read full article]
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