Media as Official Opposition
I just caught an interesting discussion on the BBC show "This Week" hosted by Andrew Neil. Aside from Michael Portillo and Clare Short on the couch (thankfully Diane Abbott was missing) the guest was Jon Snow of Channel 4 News.
I only caught part of it but Jon's comment on the implications of Hutton for the media was interesting; roughly what he said was that after the collapse of the Tory Party, and with the political arena essentially existing in an ideological void, the media had become extremely negative. In effect the media became the opposition to the government rather than simply being a neutral commentator.
He, like the lady on Newsnight last night who used to be a BBC executive, seemed to be pretty upbeat about the opportunities for the beeb and the news media as a whole to smarten up their act in the wake of Hutton.
Posted by Paul at January 30, 2004 01:25 AM |