Completely and utterly unthreatening

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said in a speech recently:

“Other newspaper groups have deeper pockets, which we sometimes envy. But I suspect that all my colleagues in editorial chairs have at some point turned an envious eye on the complete and utter freedom Guardian editors have, and have always had, thanks to its Trust ownership.”*

"Complete and utter freedom"?! Well, yes, if you like. If you manage to get to the editorial chair, then it's highly likely that you've already proved that you're not going to do anything too dangerous with that freedom.


(*Hugo Young Lecture, ‘What are newspapers for?’, Alan Rusbridger, Editor of The Guardian, Sheffield University, March 9h, 2005, The Inaugural Hugo Young Lecture and third University Centenary Lecture)


Wednesday, May 04, 2005, 18:58

"Enhanced impartiality": another media myth gets an airing

Tim Luckhurst is a former Today reporter/producer and was - very briefly, if I recall - editor of The Scotsman. He's a media pundit cropping up in all kinds of corners. In the Daily Mail yesterday he opined:

"Political Editor Andrew Marr has dismayed licence-payers with apologias for New Labour in general and Tony Blair in particular. His repeated insistence that the Prime Minister did not lie about the legal advice he was given on the Iraq War has taken political coverage to a new low.

"Such conscientious rewriting of history deserves a place in George Orwell's 1984, not on a national television station funded by the taxpayer."

(Tim Luckhurst, 'As John Humphrys announces his retirement . . . The giant the BBC hasn't got the guts to replace', Daily Mail, 3 May, 2005)

Nice touch to lean on George Orwell, a great hero of Marr's apparently. That will have stung - possibly.

Of course, Luckhurst does rather shoot himself in the foot when he goes on to describe Jeremy Paxman in the same article as: "the only other BBC presenter [along with John Humphrys] to have emerged from the election campaign with his reputation for impartiality enhanced."

That will be the great rottweiler who somehow couldn't manage to expose Blair's war crimes when interviewing a Prime Minister steeped in the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (and other unpeople in Afghanistan, Serbia, Kosovo, ...)