Current Affairs Television: Then and Now conference Monday 21 ...

Current Affairs Television: Then and Now conference Monday 21 January 2013, School of the Arts, University of Liverpool Speakers’ abstracts and biographies Steve Boulton has worked as executive producer on documentaries and current affairs for all of the main broadcasters – BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five – as well as digital channels More 4 and al Jazeera English as well as non-broadcast outlets. Steve started his career as a journalist, and spent 14 years on the iconic Granada TV series World in Action, the last four as editor, where he was responsible for films including the documentary which famously brought down the Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken. Steve has won numerous awards, including a BAFTA in 2002 for Young, Nazi & Proud, a Dispatches film about the leader of the BNP’s youth wing. Contact: [email protected] Paul Brighton: ‘"What About My 'Goodnight'?": The role of the current affairs presenter’ This paper seeks to address some of the issues concerning the evolution of presentational styles in current affairs television. In particular, it seeks to draw on both academic and practitioner perspectives to analyse the changing role of the presenter in current affairs television programmes. There is some existing literature available on the current affairs television presenter role. Though there is relatively little academic analysis of this specific aspect of current affairs television, there is a somewhat neglected range of biographical and autobiographical material published by or about figures such as Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day and Trevor McDonald. The paper will utilise this and other material to trace the evolution of the relationship between presenter, format and content on programmes like Panorama, World in Action and Tonight. In particular, it examines the oscillations between presenter-led and reporter-led formats, and the implications of such changes of perspective for the programmes’ contents and effectiveness. Where appropriate, industry debates about the importance or irrelevance of “personality” presenters within the genre will also be examined, and their implications traced. Paul Brighton grew up in Wolverhampton and attended Wolverhampton Grammar School, from where he won an Open Scholarship to Trinity Hall, Cambridge. After gaining a First in English, Paul embarked on Ph.D. research there, before starting a media career that involved 20 years as a BBC News and Current Affairs Radio Presenter. Since 2003, he has lectured at University of Wolverhampton. He is currently Head of Media, Film, Deaf Studies and Interpreting. His book News Values was published by Sage in 2007. Original Spin: Prime Ministers and the Press in Victorian Britain will be published by Tauris in July, 2013. Contact: [email protected] Tom Cannon: ‘“Maybe It’s Because I’m a Londoner”: The London-centric orbit of current affairs television’

This paper will seek to explore the changing nature and sources of “expert” opinion over the last quarter century as expressed through current affairs television programmes. The hypothesis being tested is that the "expert", academic, “think-tank”, consultant or lobbyist opinions used on these programmes have become increasingly "London-centric" over the last 30 years. London is broadly defined as the area stretching from Brighton in the South, up to Oxford and Cambridge and from Essex in the East to Reading in the West. At the heart of the study is detailed analysis of the “location” either personal or institutional of those invited to comment on policy issues. Particular attention will be paid to comment on economic and social issues. It is noticeable that over the last quarter century the role and number of “think-tanks”, consultants and lobbyists have grown while reductions in the internal research resources available in the major media companies have coincided with far greater use of independent companies. This study will largely use secondary data to explore the extent of this change in the profile of the expert opinions used. Alongside this, the impact of changes in the array of programmes e.g. unification of ITV and the demise of programmes like World in Action - based in Manchester - in 1998. Besides this, the paper will consider the impact of related developments - notably the greater use of independent production companies and specialist organisations like the Bureau of Investigative Journalism many of who are concentrated in Greater London. Tom Cannon is Professor of Strategic Development at the University of Liverpool. Tom’s career is unusual in embracing the public and private sectors, academe and new ventures. He has held senior academic appointments in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, directorships in UK companies, and has run his own business for a number of years. Tom has strong links with policy makers in government and industry in the EC, UK, Australia, USA, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, China, India and Pakistan. He is considered to be one of the Europe’s leading experts on entrepreneurship and small business development. More by accident than deliberate choice, Tom has developed an interest and related research in the business, economics and finance of sport which has led to him being featured regularly in broadcast and print media in the UK, USA, Europe and China. Contact: [email protected] Tom Giles is editor of the BBC’s Panorama, having been associated with the series as producer and deputy editor since 1998. His ‘In The Line Of Fire’, about the friendly-fire incident in the Iraq War involving the BBC's John Simpson, won the RTS International Current Affairs award in 2004. Later, he produced the BAFTA-winning Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain. Tom has also worked on the BBC’s Nine O'Clock News, Horizon, Newsnight, where he won two RTS Awards including for the infamous Newsnight interview with Home Secretary Michael Howard, and as an Executive Producer for BBC Current Affairs. Contact: [email protected] Peter Goddard: ‘British current affairs television: Crisis averted?’ It is now fifteen years since 1998, a pivotal year for current affairs television in Britain, and this is a good moment to take stock. 1998 saw the demise of World in Action and dire

warnings in various academic and industry surveys about the ‘dumbing down’ of television, including claims that ‘documentary is dead’ on ITV, and that ‘current affairs is in crisis, and is possibly in terminal decline’. The same year saw the launch of digital television, heralding an explosion of channels, new uses for television and media convergence. And, simultaneously, the internet was beginning to establish itself as a popular medium/ platform, a rival or even successor to television. It was difficult to predict a bright future for television current affairs in Britain, and particularly for long-running series such as Panorama. Things initially got worse rather than better, with Panorama moved to a Sunday night graveyard slot in the early 2000s, and Tonight, ITV’s successor to World in Action, focusing on emotion and popular appeal at the expense of the more thoroughgoing approach to public affairs that had for so long been the hallmark of its predecessor. But now, with Panorama restored to Monday evening prime-time alongside C4’s Dispatches, the longrunning current affairs series seems to have beaten the odds, capable at its best of producing urgent, vital and agenda-setting journalism. Alongside them, Exposure – responsible for the extraordinary Jimmy Savile revelations (claimed by the Guardian to be the most publicly influential TV programme since Cathy Come Home!) – is fast establishing itself as a worthy rival and re-establishing ITV’s reputation for ‘serious’ current affairs programming. This paper looks into this ‘crisis’ period in television current affairs, examining its various causes and consequences, and makes some tentative comparisons with the situation now. Even despite well-publicised problems with BBC current affairs journalism over the Savile and McAlpine cases in 2012, Panorama, Dispatches and Exposure each seem to have had excellent years. So what should researchers conclude about the current health of current affairs and of public service television? How have long-running current affairs series changed and developed over the past fifteen years to maintain their significant public role, and with what consequences? Peter Goddard is a Senior Lecturer and teaches and researches broadcasting history, documentary, news and current affairs in the Department of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool. He is co-author of Public Issue Television: World in Action, 1963-98 (2007) and Pockets of Resistance: British News Media, War and Theory in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq (2010) and editor of Popular Television in Authoritarian Europe (2013). Peter is currently embarking upon a project to investigate changes and developments in the form, content and contribution of the long-running television current affairs series in Britain over the past forty years. Contact: [email protected] 0151-794 2993 Roger Graef OBE is CEO of Films of Record, a high end documentary company which produces a wide range of films and series for television, including contributing editions to Panorama (BBC), Dispatches (C4) and Exposure (ITV). He is a renowned documentary filmmaker, criminologist, and writer, best known for his unstaged observational films in normally closed places like board rooms, ministries, prisons, probation, family therapy, special schools, and social work. His films, including the BAFTA-winning Police series, have influenced policing and criminal justice policy.

Contact: [email protected] Gary Horne: ‘Called to Account?: Can Current Affairs Still Speak Truth to Power?’ World in Action was often criticised for its visual journalism based on a repertoire of guilty buildings, guilty documents and guilty people. However, it produced many seminal investigations as did First Tuesday, This Week and Panorama in the 1980s which became the benchmark of fourth estate journalism calling power to account with clear targets. Have today’s current affairs TV strands changed their approach to the type of programmes they make and are their targets more indirect, preferring to confront social issues rather than expose political corruption? This paper will consider this thesis and explore the following contributory factors:    

squeeze on budgets and resources which hinders the production of long form TV journalism lack of competition among programmes fear of complaint and legal action increasing reliance on visual revelation through undercover filming

This paper will try to unpick and evaluate these individual influences set against the backdrop of a changed regulatory framework and political and economic landscape. Gary Horne was a Producer/Director at Yorkshire Television documentaries from 1987 – 1999 making programmes for ITV, C4 and the Discovery Channel and a member of the First Tuesday team. He has also worked for Granada TV’s Tonight with Trevor, Meridian’s That’s Esther and BBC’s Kenyon Confronts and Panorama, where he still works as a “Second Chair” on undercover investigations. He has run the MA Journalism (Investigative Documentary and Print/Online pathways) at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts, for the past ten years. Contact: [email protected] David McQueen: ‘Who’s blocking the view? Panorama, current affairs and its blind spots’ Panorama’s role was once thought to be providing the ‘big picture’ missing in news. With an expansion in the range and choice of broadcast and online news coverage, 24 hours news channels, analysis and backgrounders this role has been challenged by fast moving, wellresourced and innovative competition. This paper examines the shrinking space for traditional current affairs in a digital, multi-channel, broadcast landscape and considers how news and documentary have encroached on space previously reserved for current affairs. It also shows how these changes have challenged the primacy of long-running current affairs series such as Panorama and produced a series of ‘blind spots’ for programme makers which undermine the relevance of the form. Is there a future for Panorama in this new, more restricted role, or can the world’s longest running current affairs series re-invent itself again and claw back a more relevant and broader view of domestic and world affairs for British audiences? What are the risks of taking on such a challenge and which blind spots could Panorama address first?

David McQueen is a lecturer at the Media School at Bournemouth University where he is coordinator of the Politics and Media degree programme. His research interests include public relations, news and current affairs, conflict and terrorism coverage, political communications, ‘spin’, and media management. In 2010 he successfully completed his PhD research entitled BBC TV's Panorama, Conflict Coverage and the Westminster Consensus. Contact: [email protected] Daniel Pearl became editor of Channel 4’s Dispatches at the beginning of 2012. Prior to that, he was at the BBC where he was Deputy Editor of Panorama. Altogether, he has more than fifteen years experience producing, editing and commissioning news and current affairs television, including as Deputy Editor of Newsnight and of the BBC Ten O’clock News, where he won the RTS News Programme Award in successive years. Daniel also edited the BBC’s first Prime Ministerial Election Debate in 2010. Contact via: [email protected] 0207 306 8524 Chris Roberts: ‘Current Affairs, mediatisation and representation of complex political decision making and activity: Discursive formations and the appropriation of the dramatic in Panorama’ This paper sets out to discuss the notion that representations of complex and politically contentious activities and decisions in the ‘extended’ journalism of current affairs broadcasting, represented in this instance by the purported exemplar of the form Panorama, are constrained by a discursive logic, the apparatus and machinery of television journalism and representation. Being an eminently visual medium, television excels at constructing powerful meanings, at creating vivid impressions, associations and eliciting emotional involvement. It is not so good at presenting lots of facts and the kinds of messages where attention to nuances, reservations and contradictions is vital ... The medium lends itself to aesthetically appealing and dramatic representations but is less appropriate for logical and factual argumentation, discriminating descriptions of reality and in-depth analyses. (Ekstrom, M 2002.) Panorama is of particular significance inasmuch as it remains the established current affairs television text, the standard bearer against which other contemporary television current affairs broadcasts are measured. This broadcast strand is perhaps the key signifier of serious journalism on television. The public service values are figuratively, aesthetically and discursively displayed by the Panorama “brand”. The paper will pay particular attention to the techniques and tropes appropriated from other modes of representation. In this instance, attention will be paid to the representational modalities of drama – character, casting, narrative, non-diegetic score – to assess the extent to which these tropes are evident in current affairs broadcasting; to assess the role these modalities play in the discursive formation of current affairs broadcast journalism; and to assess the extent to which such forms absent alternative narratives and frames of understanding, and whether in so doing, establish a media logic that reproduces normative assumptions.

The paper will undertake a critical analysis of Panorama: Britain’s Secret Health Tourists as case study and critically interrogate Panorama’s discursive role in the shaping of public understanding of political decision making. It is suggested that the journalistic forms and discursive formations of television aesthetics and television journalism mitigates the ideas the genre so often claims to cherish and champion. Chris Roberts is Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at University of Roehampton, London. His research and teaching include broadcast news media and journalism; current affairs broadcasting and journalism; representations of class identity; critical discourse analysis. He is currently engaged in doctoral research leading to a PhD thesis entitled: ‘The Appropriation of ‘the dramatic’ in contemporary British current affairs broadcasting: Narrative and Characterisation tropes, Critical Discourse Analysis [CDA] of Panorama’. Contact: [email protected] 020 8392 5036 Marcus Ryder: ‘Are my Current Affairs programmes any good? A reflexive analysis from a BBC Editor’ Understanding how Current Affairs editors know they are doing a “good job” is central to understanding the current affairs programmes that are commissioned, the shape the programmes take, and the ultimate effect they have on the public. The paper will address these issues, based on a critical reflexive analysis of the author’s current experience as a Senior Editor of Current Affairs in BBC Scotland as well as feedback from other BBC editors including the editor of Panorama. The BBC is the largest producer of current affairs content in Britain. It heavily influences the shape of Current Affairs content throughout the UK. Examining the criteria that BBC Current Affairs editors use to judge their own performances, and the criteria that they think they are being judged by, provides a valuable insight into their editorial decisions and the resulting content. The paper will identify a range of criteria that editors use to judge their performance and commission programmes. It will argue that these criteria are more weighted towards treating viewers as consumers rather than citizens. This has long-term implications on the ability of Current Affairs to deliver journalism as a public good. Marcus Ryder is the Head of Current Affairs for BBC Scotland. He executive produces all of the television and radio current affairs output produced by BBC Scotland for both Regional and Network output including “Scotland Investigates” and “Panoramas”. He is an honorary lecturer in journalism at Sussex University and is currently undertaking a PhD examining why Current Affairs commissioners, commission “bad” programmes. Contact: [email protected] 07970 600845 Justin Schlosberg: ‘Covering the Cover Up: The Hutton Report and the death of David Kelly in current affairs TV’ The Hutton report of 2004 was the outcome of an inquiry set up to examine “the circumstances surrounding and leading up to the death of Dr David Kelly”, a government intelligence analyst and biological weapons expert. Kelly was the identified source for an

allegation made on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme that sparked one of the most vociferous and public attacks on the BBC from a sitting government in its 80-year history. Whilst the report sparked allegations of ‘whitewash’, the controversy surrounding Kelly’s actual death was to remain marginalised for the best part of seven years. During this time evidence accumulated casting increasing doubt over the safety of Hutton’s explanation. This paper presents findings from a study of television news coverage of the controversy between 2004 and 2010, based on qualitative and quantitative content analysis of news texts, and supplemented by in-depth interviews with key journalists and sources. It will include a critical analysis of the single current affairs edition dedicated to the case and address the failure of broadcasters to give due attention to conflicting evidence. This raises important questions concerning the core objectives of the liberal democratic project. In particular, to what extent are the news media able to hold authority to account when nonmedia institutions of accountability fail to do so? Justin Schlosberg is a lecturer in journalism and media at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of Power beyond Scrutiny: Media, Justice and Accountability (Pluto Press, 2013) which examines television news coverage of scandals involving systemic political corruption and argues the case for a new understanding of ideological functionalism. His research has an activist bent and since 2011 he has worked with academics at Goldsmiths to help build the Media Reform Coalition – a network of civil society and campaigning groups seeking to challenge concentrated media power. Contact: [email protected] Mark Williams-Thomas: ‘Making 'Exposure: The Other Side of Jimmy Savile' for ITV’ Mark Williams-Thomas is a former police detective turned investigative reporter who has far-reaching experience working at the centre of high profile investigations. During Mark’s police service, he specialised in major crime and child protection. Mark’s recent programmes include the ITV1 expose ‘The Other Side of Jimmy Savile’ - followed a month later with a one-hour ‘Update’ programme. He also presents the ITV1 programme On the Run in which he tracks down wanted criminals. Contact: [email protected]