There’s a short answer when people ask what our latest prime minister brings that his predecessor did not. He’s good at communication. We have little idea what Andy Burnham stands for and no sense of where he plans to lead the country. But we have glimpsed a lively,...
For the first time in his life, King Charles got the reviews he deserved. His performance in the United States in April was by general acclaim a tour de force, particularly in his delivery of a nicely crafted speech that had his audience rising repeatedly in ovation....
Say what you like about social media, it tells you what people think. When Michael Crick invited journalists to remember occasions on which Peter Mandelson had tried to get them sacked, X – formerly Twitter – buzzed with memories of his attempts to unseat the...
Allegations of bias are hard to prove. A breach of editorial rules is not. The BBC crisis came to a head because Panorama’s elision of words by Donald Trump was impossible to ignore. When the BBC’s own television comedy show Have I Got News For You played a section –...
Given the anger from his own supporters that would inevitably follow, the prime minister must have had good reasons for appointing David Dinsmore as head of government communications. The 57-year-old Scot, who moves in this November, has done three wicked things. He...
For a moment, we were back in the late 80s, that dizzy period when the print unions were broken and the internet was a distant dream and new newspapers were popping up all over the place. Except the excitement this spring wasn’t over a new title, but a relaunch of an...
We spoke too soon. In September 2023, we promised here that we were about to learn what an elderly UK national newspaper was worth in a world dominated by the new media companies. Eighteen months on, we are still waiting to find out. The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday...
The word incorrigible could have been coined for our popular newspapers. With practised chutzpah, they report the growing number of women lodging complaints about the conduct of the late Mohamed Fayed as if his sexually predatory activities were a surprise. The...
Perhaps the trouble with television newsreaders began almost 50 years ago, when a familiar face made a guest appearance on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. Britons over the age of 60 will remember Angela Rippon high-kicking her way across the stage. For...
Given we are already knee-deep in stories about elections, how shall we cope when the prime minister gets round to calling one? Journalists pride themselves on knowing what their readers, listeners and viewers want: in believing they share their excitement about...