Barack Obama’s hugely experienced aide David Axelrod – who advised Ed Miliband on his campaign – was unequivocal about the press hostility which he faced in the run-up to this election: “I’ve worked in aggressive media environments before but not this partisan.” Continue reading
Two surveys published in the last two months confirm in stark terms what other surveys and polls have been telling us: the public doesn’t trust the press. Continue reading
A number of newspaper groups have, today, proposed their own “Royal Charter” for the “Independent Self-Regulation of the Press” [pdf] to incorporate a “recognition panel” to determine applications for recognition from Regulators. The proposal comes from the national newspapers – not including the Guardian or the Independent. Continue reading
‘Democracies require an unlovable press. They need journalists who get in the face of power’. So says Michael Schudson, one of America’s foremost media scholars, in a recent collection of essays, and most journalists would wholeheartedly agree. Such sentiments were much in evidence in the pre-emptive nuclear strike mounted by the press in the run-up to the publication in November 2012 of Lord Justice Leveson’s report into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press. Continue reading
In his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry last week, Sir John Major put his finger on one of the central difficulties raised by the political role of the British press. When discussing Rupert Murdoch, he said:
‘I think the sheer scale of the influence he is believed to have, whether he exercises it or not, is an unattractive facet in British national life, and it does seem to me an oddity that in a nation which prides itself on one man, one vote, we should have one man who can’t vote with a large collection of newspapers and a large share of the electronic media outlet.’ Continue reading