Category: News

As you may or may not know, a US TV presenter (journalist?), Katie Couric, is takeover the anchor job on the CBS Evening News in September. This is seen as something of a big thing in the states, since she’s a woman, and they’ve not actually had a solo female network news anchor in the…

Wow. ITN and the Daily Express spent £65,000 on a mobile phone video clip of the police entering an East London house in a raid this morning. To say that the quality is dreadful really doesn’t do it justice. It’s not even as though it reveals anything substantial apart from the fact that a lot…

Tragically, on the day that John Simpson put up a sterling defence for journalists doing real work out in Iraq, and not just being holed up in the Green Zone in Bagdhad, two British journalists working for CBS television have been killed by a roadside bomb. Simpson was responding to complaints from Rageh Omaar, quoted…

This being the end of May, it also marks the end of the so-called Everest season. It’s that brief window when the weather allows climbers to attempt to ascend the world’s highest mountain. But this year an awful lot of climbers have died on the mountain. Every year, the number of parties attempting to summit…

It was sad to hear about the death of Val Guest. He died last week, but no newspaper (perhaps with the exception of the subs only Variety) has yet run an obituary. He had a fabulous career, working with Will Hay in his early days, through to directing the Hammer versions of the Quatermass films…

Because I stay up far too late all too often, over the past few weeks, I’ve caught a few editions of ABC television’s World News Tonight when it’s shown on BBC News 24 at 1.30am every morning. It’s very easy to hear the words “World News” in the show’s title, and then see that the…

The guns are really out for Ruth Kelly at the moment. We’re into the second week of a scandal that threatens her job as Education Minister with plenty of people and papers awaiting the claiming of her scalp. Here’s the big spread in today’s (well yesterday’s now) Observer detailing her week and the developments. But…

(OK, that headline’s a little misleading) [Update: I’ve completely changed my mind – that headline is utterly correct] Thank goodness the news has come through that in Dover, Pennsylvania schools cannot teach “Intelligent Design” because it’s really just Creationism. Hey, I’ve no problem if people want to believe the world was made in seven days.…

I see that BBC correspondent Caroline Hawley’s leaving Baghdad at the end of the year after two and a half years. There’s a nice piece by John Simpson in the BBC’s Newswatch section of their website. There are critics of “roof-top” journalism that can see correspondents stuck in the Green Zone just regurgitating stuff that…

I didn’t take my digital camera out and about with me today, but if I had, I could have taken some slightly unclear photos of a smoke filled northern sky. I didn’t hear an explosion at 6am this morning, although I did hear an alarm clock sometime around that time. Disappointing, since the explosion was…

Isn’t Associated Newspapers taking an interesting line over the new pub opening hours that have just started? Today’s Mail has “Thanks Tessa” accompanied by a series of pictures of young people pissed on the streets of Britain. In actual fact, this has happened every day of the week for years and years. In fact, I’m…

Whilst not in any way wanting to belittle the tragic loss of life in hotels across Amman, Jordan tonight, I’ve got to feel sorry for the BBC’s Caroline Hawley. Fresh from the nervousness of Baghdad, she ends up in one of the bombed hotels in Jordan – hitherto relatively safe.