Marr-the verdict

On question time last night,the Andrew Marr interview came up and Ben Bradshaw for the Labour party said that it demonstrated "part of the trivialisation and degradation of our political discourse".

Strong words from the culture secretary.

I have to say that I am torn between the rights of the electorate to know if their leaders are suffering medically with the intrusion of privacy for the Brown family.

One must also question Marr's motivations behind a question that had its roots in right wing blogging's rumour mill.

Marr has gone down in my estimation,I have to say.

I think that this piece from the Economist's Bagehot may sum up the issues

I THINK Andrew Marr was wrong to ask Gordon Brown about the rumours concerning his use of anti-depressants.

Yes, the prime minister's health is a matter of legitimate public concern. And Mr Marr would have been right to raise the subject had there been serious grounds to believe the rumours were true—a briefing from a Number 10 official, say, or some mysteriously cancelled prime ministerial engagements. But the basis for the question seems to have been bloggers' speculation. Now Mr Marr has asked it, it will never go away. I think it was a mistake, and maybe a worrying sign of a new kind of lowest-common-denominator journalism.

Marr savaged by the prince of spin

Watching Andrew Marr come up against the prince of Darkness this morning was a lesson to all political journalists when conducting a serious interview.

Marr was,for want of a better expression taken to the cleaners by the man who invented spin.

He missed several opportunities to score hits instead resorting to a diatribe of rumour and innuendo which Mandleson was easily able to brush aside.

To be sat opposite the interviewee being told,quite bluntly "right next question" must have been an excruciatingly awful experience for Marr who has lost his political bite since being propelled out of his political role at the Beeb and becoming 'mainstream.'

Marr's gloomy journalistic future.Who's going to pay?

To me Andrew Marr is one of the most respected journalists around at the moment and it's worth reading the comments that he has given to the Independent of which he was the former editor.

He voices his concerns about journalism to Ian Burrell this morning and its the question that has been aired on this blog many times

The thing that worries me most at the moment about the condition of journalism is, frankly, who's going to pay for the journalists and the journalism in 10 years' time? Teenagers, people in their twenties, even in their late twenties, have now got to the position where they wouldn't pay for news. They expect their news to be free, they expect it to be in a free newspaper on the underground or at the bus station or, more often, they expect it to be a free good on their laptops. My kids wouldn't dream of buying a newspaper – and we are a newspaper household."

If journalism disappears then it affects all society.His thoughts on blooging are also interesting

In the blogging world there is a vast, swirling typhoon of comment, grandly called analysis. A reporting journalist is someone who is paid to spend lots of time asking questions, reading, going back again. Anyone can produce words but you need a system which pays journalists to spend time to find stuff out."

and that is an important distinction between the ameteur and the professional.It's your time against the organisations.

His comments about political reporting are also poignant

"We've had huge numbers of stories about the extent to which Gordon Brown is depressed, gloomy, not sleeping. We have had lots of analysis of David Cameron's media strategy and style, all of which is interesting and important up to a point – but I worry how much is being slipped through in terms of policy changes

Marr gets it wrong

Andrew Marr has managed to upset Sky News in his evidence to a House Of Lords committee

This from Telegraph co.uk

Giving evidence to the House of Lords Communication Committee, Mr Marr also took a swipe at Sky News, BBC TV's principal news competitor. He faintly praised Sky by suggesting that it was only "frequently right".
"I do think (the BBC is) different and we have to stay different," he told the committee.
"This is most acute in the age of 24-hour news because the desperate journalistic desire to be first is felt so intensely.
"Our main competitor, Sky News, always trumpets that it is first with this, first with that.
"Well, we are the BBC and we have to be sure that we are right. We must not, therefore, get into the culture of first with this, first with everything - first and frequently right."

Oops as Adrian Monck points out

Lest Marr forget, on July 7, 2005 it was Sky News, with their refusal to slavishly accept the official line, who told Londoners what was really going on in the capital, whilst the Corporation steadfastly regurgitated what it was told.

And let us not forget whilst still the political reporter at the BBC,he reported from outside Downing Street after Baghdad had fallen

"Tony Blair,said they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both of those points he has been proved conclusively right. And it would be entirely ungracious, even for his critics, not to acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result."

Journos on the attack against Marr

Interesting article in this morning’s pages of the Press Gazette by David Rose and, Dominic Ponsford.

Gordon Brown has certainly upset the media by releasing the news of the non election to the Andrew Marr show only.I described Marr as perhaps being a poodle for Brown in an earlier post.

The Gazette suggests that

Gordon Brown has been advised to scrap proposals to scupper the Freedom of Information Act if he wants to win journalists back over after the bungled handling of his election announcement on Saturday.
The Society of Editors is planning to make a formal complaint to the Government in protest at the way Brown exclusively gave news that the November election was off to the BBC’s Andrew Marr.
Sky News has made an official complaint over Brown’s “unfair and highly irregular” handling of the election announcement and ITV has also voiced its strong disapproval.

Is Marr a poodle?

Andrew Marr must have thought that his Sunday AM programme had the political scoop of the year when he interviewed Gordon Brown on Saturday who announced that there wouldn't be an election.

However the clamour for news in our 24 hr society meant that by the time,the interview was shown the news was out,the Sunday papers were full of it and the leader of the opposition had already given his comments on Tv.

The BBC were forced to show clips of the interview on its news programmes on Saturday night.

On top of that Marr comes in for critisism,and not for the first time over his handling of the big interview.


Guido in particular is rather scathing,refering to Marr as Gordon's poodle

Many of Marr's journalist colleagues are irritated with him but some are laughing at him. The Brownies called in Marr yesterday for the usual exclusive self-declamatory love-in with Gordon that they book whenever he is in trouble