Many years ago, when television was a series of black-and-white images viewed reverently on 10-inch screens in darkened rooms, the icons of the documentary were Armand and Michaela Denis, those intrepid travellers among the great beasts of the savannah. Armand was the one with the camera, the spectacles and the Belgian accent. Michaela was the one with the jodhpurs, the fluting voice and the lipstick. To hear her tell it, and she did most of the talking, they were alone on the trackless veldt with no twolegged company except the occasional ostrich. But it didn't take long for even the most naïve viewers to work out that if they could see Armand filming Michaela, someone had to be filming Armand. In truth, according to one contribution to the internet, the Denises travelled with an entourage that included six cameramen, the entire available complement in East Africa. (It is probably too late now to discover why the BBC, as it continued to buy the Denises' films, did nothing to disturb the pretence that they were alone or, for that matter, to dispel the exotic aura around Michaela by disclosing that she was born in London and that her maiden name was Holdsworth.)

As time went on audiences acquired more knowledge of the methods of television, though not every viewer of news broadcasts is likely to be aware even today that interviews are routinely conducted in the presence of only one camera, trained on the interviewee: the reactions of the interviewer seen by the audience are shot afterwards and intercut. New technologies provide new opportunities: the title sequence of the travel series Mountain shows Griff Rhys Jones silhouetted against a sunset in what the BBC admits is a computer-generated graphic, although it denies it was intended to mislead. Other enhancements of actuality are likely to escape the notice of even the most wary, as Broadcast magazine revealed in the issue in which it posed the question: "Can we regain trust in TV?" A feature about Foley artists, the backroom experts who enhance and create sound effects, quoted one who worked on a BBC documentary that included pictures of spiders fighting each other thus: "We used sword-fight sounds on that one." Well, who knows what fighting spiders sound like? Only spiders, one suspects, and they won't complain to the BBC Trust or Ofcom or MediaWatch.

Just to be clear: there are standard methods in the reporting and editing of print journalism that are similarly hidden from the reader and are potentially equally misleading. The process through which news goes before it drops through the letterbox is not transparent to the public simply because it has a long pedigree with roots in prehistory. The press has no right to gloat over the problems of trust which are now facing the broadcasters: it has long been under public suspicion itself.

In the current series of problems that have assaulted the television industry — faked phone-ins and the misinformation concerning Annie Leibowitz's photographic session with the Queen, both rather more serious than the Denises' simplistic scam — some executives have been quick to point accusatory fingers at independent producers. But experienced practitioners say that the independents can operate only with commissions from the networks, which often are obsessed not with innovation or quality, but simply the size of the audience a show can attract. Executive producers are being accused of trying to take control of the shows from the independent makers, and then hurriedly departing when the shows run into trouble.

There are also issues of governance. The House of Lords Communications Select Committee hit a nail on the head at the beginning of August by pointing out that it is no longer clear who is ultimately responsible for the BBC, or what the role of the Chairman of the BBC Trust is. He has regulatory responsibilities towards the Corporation while also being expected to act as its chairman, and the new Charter says that "Chairman of the BBC" is an honorary title. The committee also wants a parliamentary body to select future Chairmen, rather than allowing ministers to appoint a selection group, alter the shortlist, and make the choice between candidates.

The recommendations, desirable though they obviously are to the public and the BBC, are not likely to be adopted by this or any later government. Politicians of many parties have long feared that the BBC provides an alternative to themselves as a rallying-point for British society, and they resent it.

The contributions in this issue of the BJR by two distinguished veterans of the media, Denis Forman and John Cole, plus some of the comments made by former newscaster Anna Ford, make it clear that an uphill task faces practitioners who want to earn renewed trust from the public. They will try various ways of achieving it, but cannot ignore what has become so fundamental a problem in the business that it appeared in the first episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the American series about a TV show transmitted here on More 4. One character told his boss: "I have no reason to trust you and every reason not to," and when asked why, answered succinctly: "You work in television." At present, that's a wry joke for insiders: in future, it might just be the voice of public opinion.