Playing While she enjoyed playing Will such ideas, Ann Leslie 'secretly liked her parents and their lifestyle' because she and her friends 'felt in our heart of hearts that the system was secure'. Thus she concludes that it's really all a game of "defection' to the other side to assert one's grown-unness. and that the other side' likes boasting of their middle class conquests too. The 'fascination' is double-edged.
But Ann Leslie, like the writers of two other major articles in the Daily Mail on the subject, never once talks about Antonia eviaence is oven to subport such assumEDis concerned with is describing Ms Bennett's relationship to her Tory father and her get out of flirting with revolution? of the dons and undergraduates at th University and the workers at Cowley or their families in Blackbird Leys is either a fool or a bigot. Antonia Bennetf is neither. Ann Leslie is quite obviously both. VAL COULTAS the start chose to present it as a health hazard, yet it was six weeks before the Corporation of Glasgow itself declared one. Despite 20 interviews, not once did a striker get to state their case nationally in interview The cause of the strike was mentioned 11 times out of 40 items on BBCI, six (19 on BBC2, and 19 times out of 43 on 11 Be of the strike was the Corporation rcuiscuss pay ing HOV drivers a com drivers in the public sector after a c I0 of further discussions if a national setti ment failed to meet their claim. When the strike leaders were finally able to express their sense of betrayal at the end of the strike, this must have been meaningless for those 60 percent of viewers who get their news solely from television But although it produces much evidence to discredit the news. Bad News lacks theoretical framework to punch the message home. It has 244 pages of mind-boggling tables and text before the book gets down to the cases described here. That might be justified if the work attempted to develop a theory of television within which to view the news. But it doesn't.
Instead it fluctuates between two levels of analysis with not much connecting them. One level deals with the 'internal' workings of television news, with vast statistical breakdowns, descriptions of various film techniques, use of the 'great God graphics', right through to the social composition and outlook of the news producers.
Little is said of how the ideological framework - that unspoken set of assumptions which the authors themselves say underline the internal workings — is itself produced. The book, therefore, hangs in mid-air.
Nevertheless, if the authors' limited aim is to discredit the news, then it gives us a singularly appropriate comment from News al ten usen. Keginald bosanguet introa uced a report on the Liverpool and Glasgow dustcart drivers" strike as follows: And now, rubbish.
Bad News, Glasgow University Media