In London for a meeting with colleagues on a non-journalism project, I’ve been devouring the British press — noting, not for the first time, that the papers here do something that U.S. media folks do too little: tough media criticism.
For example, the BBC is taking some serious lumps over an astonishing internal ethical mess, and the Beeb’s head is dealing with a “new struggle to pick up the pieces,” the Observer reported yesterday. The newspaper — and all the others, as far as I can tell — are beating the daylights out of the BBC, and for the very good reason that the transgressions noted are truly bad news for what has been the world’s greatest journalism organization.
Meanwhile, the Guardian took the Observer, its sister newspaper, harshly to task as it thoroughly debunked an Observer article on autism, saying the “real villains” of scare stories about vaccinations are the media.
Good show, as it were…
on Jul 24th, 2007 at 9:13 am
I fear your brief exposure to the British media may have given you a distorted impression. It is not much good at tough self-criticism – excepting the BBC and, occasionally, the Guardian. The newspapers are, however, very good at laying into the BBC whenever the opportunity presents itself.
A little more toughness spread an awful lot wider would be a very good thing.