Mark Thompson gives a solid and on the whole acceptable establishment perspective on the plurality of news and information in the UK and a fine statement of public interest:
...and yet and yet .....
John Pilger has a view of the public interest pretty identical to Thompson but differs as to whether it is delivered:
do i recall a time for example when the industrial correspondents ruled the roost in the newsrooms and now it is the gossip reporters et al .... much of the misdemenaours of the press were /are in pursuit of gossip .... where can we look to for holding the media to account for ignoring and masking the kind of substance to which Pilger refers and Thompson alludes ...
They are all people for whom the 'public interest' is not some infinitely elastic concept to justify any intrusion or journalistic malpractice, but it means something precise: the civic benefit, not just in terms of the public's right to know, but also – at least in principle - in terms of better policies and laws, and better conduct by public and commercial bodies alike, that may be derived by exposing the kinds of serious wrong-doing, deception, hypocrisy and unjustified secrecy that go beyond the private to have real and significant public ramifications.
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John Pilger has a view of the public interest pretty identical to Thompson but differs as to whether it is delivered:
These true stories are told in declassified files in the Public Record Office, yet represent an entire dimension of politics and the exercise of power excluded from public consideration. This has been achieved by a regime of uncoercive information control, from the evangelical mantra of advertising to soundbites on BBC news and now the ephemera of social media.
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do i recall a time for example when the industrial correspondents ruled the roost in the newsrooms and now it is the gossip reporters et al .... much of the misdemenaours of the press were /are in pursuit of gossip .... where can we look to for holding the media to account for ignoring and masking the kind of substance to which Pilger refers and Thompson alludes ...
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