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Archive on 4: When Reporters Cross the Line

When Reporters Cross the Line

03/12/2011

BBC Radio 4 - Archive on 4, When Reporters Cross the Line

Stewart Purvis explores the history of impartiality in broadcast news.

Stewart Purvis explores the history of journalistic impartiality - through archive and through interviews with some of the best-known names in 20th-century broadcast news.

How did the notion of journalistic impartiality develop? Former ITN editor Stewart Purvis explores how the line that separates reporting from opinion - and even propaganda - has been drawn and redefined over the past 80 years. Through rare archive and through interviews with some of the twentieth century's best-known correspondents, he charts the move from wartime censorship and Cold War clashes between broadcasters and the Government to more authored styles of reporting including Martin Bell's famous 'journalism of attachment'.

Stewart Purvis is Professor of Television Journalism at City University, London. Newsreel historian Jeff Hulbert helped with the archive research for this programme. The producer is Helen Grady.

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