Dog eats man whole

It's not surprising that Paul Dacre's comments about the BBC and privacy have not gone down well at the Guardian. Polly Toynbee calls Dacre "the nation's bully-in-chief" and "a coward".

Peter Wilby's analysis is equally harsh:

He argues, with truly astonishing sophistry, that "the freedom to write about scandal" is essential to "the democratic process" because, otherwise, newspapers like his wouldn't sell copies and therefore wouldn't exist.Dacre says that "it is the duty of the media to take an ethical stand." Pick up the Daily Mail and you will see that his idea of ethics includes running stories that are, at best, distorted and, at worst, plain wrong.

Fair enough

As usual Peter Wilby has a thoughtful column in Media Guardian. He says that Andrew Gilligan's reports about Ken Livingstone "show meticulous investigative journalism of the sort that is all too rare nowadays" and criticises Livingstone's blustering response to them.

But Wilby says that he will be unhappy if the Evening Standard's campaign against Livingstone hands victory in the London Mayor election to Boris Johnson.

Some devils are better than others

Peter Wilby has an interesting blog piece on the Index on Censorship site exploring the ethics of newspapers and magazines accepting adverts from dodgy sources. Arms companies, tobacco manufacturers, but what about the BNP, as one local newpaper recently did?

Say no more

In the Media Guardian today, Peter Wilby asks

How can journalism truly reflect society when entry to the profession relies on wealth, geography, and parents prepared to pay the wages that employers will not?

I think the answer is, it can't and it doesn't.

Wilby and the war

Media Workers Against the War have posted Peter Wilby's plenary speech from their conference last month. It's worth a read.