Volume 18, Number 3, 2007 |
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ContentsEditorial - Trust or bust 3Bill Hagerty - Anna Ford: Try a little tenderness 7 Denis Forman - Where are the new Carlton Greenes? 17 Charles Spencer - Foodie? Or not foodie? 25 Maurice Neill - The media as peacemakers 33 John Cole - Feral? Why Blair wasn't all wrong 38 Heidi Kingstone - Life and death in party city 45 Heidi Kingstone - Action Replay 51 Andy Bull - Training: a matter of degrees 54 Thembi Mutch - Sex, lies and audio tape 61 Hugh O'Shaughnessy - Media wars in Latin America 66 Victor Davis - Nightmare on Oxford Street 73 BOOK REVIEWSJoe Haines on Alastair Campbell 81Geoffrey Goodman on Brenda Dean 83 Martin Rowson on Mark Bryant 86 Don Murray on Thomas Rid 89 Donald Trelford on Meryl Aldridge and Jackie Harrison 91 Brian Winston on Jean Aitchison 93 Cal McCrystal on Kemsley 95 Quotes of the Quarter 6 Ten years ago - The way we were 24 Richard Stott dedication - Outside back cover 
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Editorial - Trust or bustMany 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... [Read full article]
Bill Hagerty - Anna Ford: Try a little tendernessAnna Ford is anxious that her views on contemporary broadcasting and, in particular, the BBC, are not seen as being "a rant". They are far from that. Since walking away from presenting the lunchtime news on BBC1 some 15 months ago, she has watched with the concern of a caring mother for her offspring as the Corporation lurched from one calamity to another. She has monitored, too, what she sees as the increasing ageism of British television, the downward spiral of journalistic standards, and the shabby treatment of young professionals setting out along medialand's streets of adventure. But she has kept such thoughts largely to herself... [Read full article]
Denis Forman - Where are the new Carlton Greenes?First a little history. The advent of commercial television was contemplated with horror by the British establishment. Broadcasting would be debased to American standards. Lord Reith compared it to an outbreak of bubonic plague. The House of Commons was told that in California an advertisement featuring a chimpanzee named J Fred Muggs had appeared adjacent to a programme about the Queen of England. This would never do in Britain. When in 1955 Independent Television appeared on the nation's screens it did not fulfil these Cassandrian prophecies... [Read full article]
Charles Spencer - Foodie? Or not foodie?Theatre critics have been receiving a ferocious roasting of late. Nicholas Hytner, the director of the National Theatre, called us a bunch of dead white males who were deeply prejudiced against lesbians and experimental theatre, then AA Gill joined the fray, insisting, in what looked suspiciously like a job application, "that no aspect of the culture is as badly served by its critics as the theatre". Worse still, he was shocked to discover that drama reviewers wear old macs, shiny-buttocked suits and almost certainly wouldn't know how to behave at a dinner party... [Read full article]
John Cole - Feral? Why Blair wasn't all wrongThe job of a political leader is to chip away at the prejudices of his or her own supporters. Admittedly, a recent, obsessive, example of this has produced unhappy results. Nevertheless, one task of a journal like this is to chip away at the prejudices of its own readers — media practitioners, academics and students — rather than to massage their egos. So here goes, with the acknowledgement that I am now a media veteran, even a grumpy old man, to whom yesterday often appears better than today... [Read full article]
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