What the media pages are saying

Katie Allen in the Guardian asks whether the media are whipping up a storm over the economic crisis

It is fair to say headlines from the past week have made fairly grim reading for anyone banking on more surges in house prices. When a closely followed property market survey came up with its weakest result on record, newspapers splashed the story across their front pages and TV news reporters interviewed crestfallen homeowners with tales of financial woe. "More gloom as house prices plummet," said Sky News. The Guardian declared: "House prices fall at fastest rate since 1978."

But is it simply making the situation worse?

Such negativity may not be proven to influence market movements, but it does highlight an inherent tension for the media between trying to inform and wanting to entertain, says Martin Weale, director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research thinktank:

Meanwhile in the same paper Peter Wilby looks at the London Standard's possible influenve on the London mayor hustings and in particular former BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan

If Boris Johnson becomes mayor of London next month, he may well, like John Major in 1992, thank friends in the press. This time, however, it will be the Evening Standard, not the Sun, wot won it. Since December, London's only paid-for evening newspaper - and the only paper of any sort to give the mayoral election campaign substantial coverage - has published many stories that have been highly damaging to the incumbent, Ken Livingstone.

In the Independent Stephen Glover takes a close look at the Barclay Brothers at the Telegraph saying that

There are times when it is entirely right for proprietors to intervene

What the media columnists are saying

The Guardian looks this morning at the media coverage of the Tibet crisis.

Steven Sarkur reports on a familiar aspect of China

The jammers, the plug-pullers and the internet blockers are hard at work in Beijing. The strategy is crude but effective and this is how it works. As I watched my colleagues on BBC World report on the riots in Tibet two weeks ago, the television in my Beijing hotel suddenly went dark. No test card, no patriotic music, just a blank screen and silence. When the Tibet report was done, back came the picture.

Pointing out that in the next few months

hundreds of journalists will head to China in the run-up to the Beijing Games. As the last couple of weeks have illustrated, the Olympics represents not just an opportunity for China to showcase its achievements and global status, but also for opponents of the dictatorship to garner unprecedented attention. Covering the former will be straightforward; reporting the latter, and putting it in context, will be anything but.

And in the same paper,Jonathan Watts tells of the hardships of repoting

The pitfalls are enormous. Political sensitivities over Tibet can hardly be greater than in Olympics year. The two sides - the Chinese leadership in Beijing and the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India - are projecting vastly different interpretations of what is happening. Casualty figures, arrests, riot-damage and paramilitary violence are all disputed. The only way to be sure of anything is to see it with your own eyes. But even that has been impossible for most journalists most of the time.

Steven Glover at the Indy looks at the controversial remarks of Bill Deedes over the Barclay's brothers and the Telegraph's handling of it

Coming from anyone this would be inflammatory. Coming from Bill, a natural courtier who had cheerfully adapted to previous changes of regime in journalism and politics without demur, it was absolutely amazing. The Daily Telegraph had a choice. It could denounce the book, and in particular his remarks about the Barclays, as the ravings of a senile old fool. Or it could buy it for serialisation, ensuring that no other newspaper would run the embarrassing bits. Wisely, it did the latter, paying a handsome sum for first, second and third rights, so that no one else could have a further bite.

The newspaper'shandling of another incident is frowned on by Peter Wilby in the Guardian

Most newspapers virtually ignored the extraordinary apology by Express Newspapers' four national titles to the parents of Madeleine McCann. I am not surprised. The sin to which the Express titles confessed - presenting gossip and hearsay as hard news - has become the staple of downmarket journalism and is infecting upmarket papers too. It is accompanied by casual cruelty and a highly judgmental tone.

and the PCC comes in for critisism

The PCC also lacks teeth: it has no power to fine papers, call for resignations, or act without a specific complaint from a directly aggrieved party.

Andrew Keen writes that

Today, we are all teetering on the precipice of life after television – our media habits being radically transformed by devices like the notebook PC, the video mobile phone and the high-resolution iPod touch. New platforms like the internet and mobile are breaking television's monopoly on the distribution of home entertainment. Even today's television – with its set-top box, its pay-per-view programming and web-browsing functionality – no longer resembles the old telly that we grew up with.

but says

It is hard to think what comes next.

Finally it is 40 years since the birth of satirical comedy and Andrew Fettis in the Independent says

Many people are claimed to have changed the face of British comedy. Forty years ago, aged only 27, David Frost actually did.

And Frost is interviewed in the Guardian

Are there any interviewees who have eluded him? "I had been trying to get Fidel Castro forever, really. I don't know how ill he is now, but I would love to interview Castro before he goes," he says. "And at the moment, the new Russian leader is somewhat interesting."
He also wonders what he would do if he secured an interview with Osama bin Laden. "Your citizen's duty and your journalist's duty clash. You should try and carry out a citizen's arrest really, but you might not last very long. If you did the interview and conspired not to reveal where it was, that would be a disservice to freedom."

A blast from the grave?

This morning's Independent claims that the late Bill Deedes did not hold the owners of the Telegraph in high regard.

Quoting from Stephen Robinson's biography, The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes, to be published on 27 March it claims,

he was so disillusioned following the arrival in 2004 of the reclusive Barclay brothers, Sir David and Sir Frederick, as owners, that he considered resigning, believing the new regime to be "a stinking mob" and "bullying".

And speaking of their plans which included staff cuts and bringing in staff from the Mail,

"This was a newspaper they were ready to pay £660m for but it was being produced by an unsatisfactory staff. "Not a word of encouragement or praise came the way of the journalists who produced this high-value newspaper, though reason suggests they must have had something to do with what the Barclays had paid."