Breaking The News

When TV restarted after the Second World War it was the poor relation of radio and cinema. This first programme shows how, in the fifties, television became the most popular source of information.

In the sixties reporters enjoyed unprecedented power. In America a critical report on Vietnam by Walter Cronkite helped persuade President Johnson to retire. In Britain rock stars were taken as seriously as politicians and the BBC's future Director-General John Birt fixed an interview with Mick Jagger on 'World in Action'. Even the Soviet Union adopted a more liberal approach and covered Miss World forthe first time.

TV news programmes themselves made the headlines in the eighties. America's news departments were embroiled in disputes over how to broadcast current affairs, and Margaret Thatcher criticised the BBC's handling of important events. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union saw journalists producing programmes of great resonance.

The nineties saw a dramatic acceleration in the pace of change affecting broadcast journalism, as deregulation, new technology and foreign competition took their toil on network news. American magazine programmes found that sex and violence boosted their ratings, Russian journalists learned that disaster seiis, and British reporters were stifled by the infiexibitity of the very technology that was meant to help them.