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When I started out journalism was an anonymous trade Anthony Howard - WriterI mean, Polly Toynbee is an outstanding example of a journalist who’s basically concerned, I think she wouldn’t take it amiss, with giving her own views, and they’re trenchant views, and they’re strong views, and I think she has as much influence as a cabinet minister, perhaps more than most women cabinet ministers, anyway. And it’s not just her. I mean, there’s a lady been writing for many years in the Daily Mail called Ann Leslie. Now Ann Leslie is very trenchant in what she has to say. Of course, nowadays, which journalists didn’t have in the past, they all have the opportunity of appearing on television. I was very struck the other day; I was looking through a list of some sort of trade paper called All Politics [sic] or something, of the 100 best-known political correspondents. And I read it with some interest. And I suddenly realised that on it didn’t once appear the doyen of all political correspondents, Alan Watkins. Why? Because Watkins does very little broadcasting. On it didn’t appear Bruce Anderson. Well, Bruce Anderson doesn’t do much broadcasting, he wasn’t on it. So now if you’re going to make your name as a political journalist, you really have, I think, to have a regular spot or something, at least to be... appear on Newsnight, appear on at least News 24 [sic] on BBC, appear on Sky Television. People like Michael White appear on Sky all the time, The Guardian’s Michael White, and that’s what gives them their kind of public identity. And I think newspaper managements realised that, and I’ve often wondered about this, why did they move from anonymity to absolutely glorying by-lines, and I think it was because they thought this was a way of getting free advertising off the airwaves, and every time you say, and with me is so-and-so of such-and-such paper, and that is considered free advertising for the paper. And therefore they had no choice but to give up the whole discreet thing, and certainly, as I say, when I went to The Guardian, one by-line used to appear every day. If you wrote the leader page article, which was on the page which had the leaders on it, and had the letters down below, you actually got your by-line. It would say, by Anthony Howard. That was the only place in the paper, when I started, where a name of a journalist appeared, and the prize of writing the LPA was that you saw your name in print. Otherwise, it was always, 'By our own reporter'. |
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