Media

  • 5 Jul 2011

    Is there a conspiracy anywhere within the hacking scandal?

    “This is a matter which touches many aspects of our public life – politics, policing, and media ethics – and potential conspiracies between several of them.”

  • 20 May 2010

    Pedalling away from 'one way street' media

    In a hurry – this morning I have to give a lecture to the Westminster Media Forum and am still thinking about what I need to say…but Europe is on my mind.

  • 11 Dec 2009
  • 30 Sep 2009

    What is the cost of the Sun's backing?

    The Sun’s associate editor, Trevor Kavanagh has confirmed that Rupert Murdoch was central to the Sun’s decision to switch horses in British politics. Should we care?

  • 24 Sep 2009

    Get ready for Fourplay

    Block yer ears. Shut yer eyes. Krishnan and I and our able friend Mara Carlyle, are in preparation for tonight’s Newsroom’s Got Talent competition (no danger of any of us winning – we’re just ensuring that we can actually appear at all at Vinopolis in the Borough Market). It’s a contest between the BBC, Sky,…

  • 23 Sep 2009

    It’s a bit of a cheap shot – to ask any of the world leaders at the climate change summit whether they think the 15 car motorcades they drive around in, blocking the streets of Manhattan, send the right message at a summit on global warming. But of course someone asked it anyway.

  • 3 Sep 2009

    Newsreading's a piece of cake, eh?

    So Terry Wogan considers newscasters as “self-important” and the job a “piece of cake“. He’s quite right.. or nearly right. It’s a piece of cake so long as you can absent yourself from any involvement in generating the material that you are reading. The moment you combine newsreading with actual journalism, going after stories, trying…

  • 2 Sep 2009

    Shock jocks – scaring punters and scaring off sponsors

    Soon after arriving on holiday in the States, I was standing in a friend’s kitchen in which the telly happened to be on. Suddenly an expensive-looking ad came on sporting a British cancer specialist, Karol Sikora. His message was simple: Britain’s NHS is a failure that the United States should not attempt to emulate.

  • 24 Aug 2009

    Our team have been blogging all last week from Afghanistan on the elections, but they’re not the only ones commenting. Soldiers who know the front line only too well have been posting their comments on our blogs, including Lt Col Brown on Nick Paton Walsh’s reports from his embed at Camp Keating. Read, digest and feel…

  • 28 Jul 2009

    All the BBC news that's fit to embed…

    I was intrigued to hear BBC Radio News this morning using its own airwaves to “report” its decision to supply video content to a number of newspapers for free. Not a corporate announcement, of course, but a news story of sufficient importance to warrant its place midway through the main bulletin during the peak period…

  • 1 May 2009

    Google UK: white walls, free food, nice people

    I have had the delightful experience of visiting the piston-less, wire-less, valve-less, transistor-less headquarters of Google UK. Yes, I’ve been right inside www.google.co.uk. And it is a quite extraordinary experience, verging on cultish. But very benign.

  • 3 Apr 2009

    A selection of newspaper front pages from G20 countries on the day after the London summit. Barack Obama is a prominent theme.