http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/2009/04/17/steve-buttry-can-there-be-freedom-of-a-press-without-a-press/ Online journalism news Thu, 24 May 2012 14:01:29 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/2009/04/17/steve-buttry-can-there-be-freedom-of-a-press-without-a-press/comment-page-1/#comment-12190 Winchester Student Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:41:04 +0000 http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/?p=9626#comment-12190 It is a mind-bending question. But can we really say that the press in recent years has been doing a vital service in terms of 'speaking power to authority'. I was at a talk with Kate Adie from the BBC and she was saying what a great job they did - in I though a smug way - and how the world would be safe for dictators, etc, if it wasn't for the BBC and its foreign reporters. But half of those people just work for the intelligence services anyway. And they didn't do such a great job of on the biggest story of the last century (biggest story of our times) which was the the Iraq war and the wholesale swallowing of the official line on WMD. Much could also be said of the credit crunch with every broadcast news operation and every newspaper falling overthemselves to hype the commerical culture, popular capitalism, property speculation and what have you. The fact isthat we have not had a brave or campaigning popular press for thirty years, so this is not really a new problem. Or am I wrong? It is a mind-bending question. But can we really say that the press in recent years has been doing a vital service in terms of ‘speaking power to authority’. I was at a talk with Kate Adie from the BBC and she was saying what a great job they did – in I though a smug way – and how the world would be safe for dictators, etc, if it wasn’t for the BBC and its foreign reporters. But half of those people just work for the intelligence services anyway. And they didn’t do such a great job of on the biggest story of the last century (biggest story of our times) which was the the Iraq war and the wholesale swallowing of the official line on WMD. Much could also be said of the credit crunch with every broadcast news operation and every newspaper falling overthemselves to hype the commerical culture, popular capitalism, property speculation and what have you. The fact isthat we have not had a brave or campaigning popular press for thirty years, so this is not really a new problem. Or am I wrong?

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