Category: “Media”

Stuart Prebble is a soon-to-be 60 year old TV programme maker of considerable repute. Of the telly things I have done, the ones I felt had the greatest depth and integrity were the ones I did with Stuart’s Liberty Bell company – including a three part series on The Blair Years,  and, best of all [...]

It never ceases to amaze me how media organisations, so sharp and skilful in covering other people’s crises, are often so poor at handling their own. I have been saying here since well before the last election that the only way for News International to deal with the phone-hacking scandal is to get everything out [...]

There is a very interesting little dance taking place in Scotland at the moment between Alex Salmond’s SNP and Rupert Murdoch’s Sun. Not obvious bedfellows you might think, but it looks increasingly likely the Sun will come out for the Nationalists, or certainly personally endorse Salmond, in advance of the Scottish elections next month. The [...]

As I blogged earlier in the week, I was recently in South Africa advising the government there on communications issues. The Independent group of newspapers asked me to write about my visit, and some of the issues we discussed. Here is the article I did for them. For a political romantic – and despite the [...]

I was at a conference most of yesterday, at a dinner in the evening and so missed both the march and most of the coverage. Fiona kept me in touch with a few text messages, mainly saying how big the crowds were and how good the mood. When I did catch the odd glimpse either [...]

It’s fascinating to watch liberal commentators say how blindingly obvious it is that military action should be taken to deal with a fascist dictator killing his own people (aka Gaddafi) … in many instances the same liberal commentators who remain so angry at the action taken to deal with a fascist dictator who had been [...]

It says something for the insularity of the UK media that The Guardian makes such a big deal of the idea of special reports from our European neighbours. Too often, the editor rightly says, the countries of Europe are reported purely in terms of their relations with Britain. This was something of a bugbear of [...]