Media

It is with much sadness and regret that I have been asked by family and friends to announce the death of Sir Alastair Burnet. He passed away peacefully in the middle of the night at the Beatrice Place Nursing Home in Kensington, where he was being cared for after suffering several strokes. He was 84. Alastair was one of the greatest journalists of his generation, as much at home in print (he edited The Economist and the Daily Express) as TV news and current affairs, where he was a legendary figure as Britain’s premier newscaster and anchorman. He played a pivotal role in the rise of ITN as Political Editor,

A few years back the radio disc jockey John Peel died. Some public sorrow was expressed and soon Tony Blair issued a press release explaining his personal sadness. A little while later someone else who was popular died and the same thing happened. A few days later still and hundreds of thousands of people were killed and many more made homeless by a Tsunami out East. For several hours Blair was silent. Some media jumped on this and whipped up public expressions of shock. ‘Why has our Prime Minister not expressed sadness about the Tsunami deaths?’ and so on. I don’t know why Blair took a few more hours than

There is plenty of nostalgia around in this Jubilee Weekend. Any look back on 60 years brings temptation to think that the past was better than the present. This is what Woody Allen calls ‘golden age’ fallacy, which is defined (in his Midnight in Paris) as an age-old and ‘erroneous notion that a previous time period is better than the one one’s living in.’ This disorder was on show during BBC 2’s Review Show last night, where guests were bemoaning the death of protest music.   The panel (dominated by Kirsty Wark and music critic Paul Morley) were discussing BBC 4’s 3 part documentary, Punk Britannia. The first part of

It has become the conventional wisdom in Westminster that Jeremy Hunt’s career will turn on his appearance before the Leveson Inquiry tomorrow. Friends of Hunt have today been arguing that the Inquiry’s focus should be on how he carried out the quasi-judicial role. They are saying that once appointed to it, Hunt behaved — unlike Vince Cable — properly. They concede that Hunt’s texts to Fred Michel were overly familiar. But they maintain that, unlike Adam Smith’s texts, they gave away nothing about the state of the bid process. On the charge that Hunt misled Parliament, when he told it on the 25th of April that ‘I made absolutely no

Michael Gove’s appearance at the Leveson Inquiry has set the heather alight in Tory and journalistic circles. There is, among those who fret about the dangers to free speech created by the current mood, relief that someone has set out the case for liberty so clearly and without apology. While among Tories there is a delight at seeing one of their ministers articulate a Conservative worldview so clearly. Gove was, in some ways, at an advantage going before the inquiry. His department has no responsibility for the press and so he knew that the focus would be on his work as a journalist and his attack on Leveson, saying that

Fred Michel’s testimony this morning at the Leveson Inquiry was embarrassing but not devastating. The texts between him and Jeremy Hunt are cringe-worthy but my read is that the Culture Secretary is not in a weaker position than he was this morning. More important for Hunt’s survival prospect is the appearance of his former spad Adam Smith this afternoon. The question is, did Hunt not know of the extent of contact between Smith and Michel? Everything going on at Leveson, though, is a sideshow compared to the economic news and the storm brewing on the continent. On that note, it does seem odd that Nick Clegg is suggesting that the

I doubt that many votes will be moved by the split report on hacking of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee. This is not a subject that sets the public’s pulse racing. But all this hacking talk does create political problems for David Cameron. First, it obscures his attempt to talk about other things that matter more to the electorate. This was rather summed up yesterday when the News at Ten led on him facing questions in parliament about Jeremy Hunt rather than the speech he had had to cancel about the economy. This is a particular problem given that the next six weeks at least are going to