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PURVIS DERIDES ‘FOX NEWS EFFECT’ ON US TV JOURNALISM
Posted on: 2003-10-21
A gulf has opened up between the US news networks and those elsewhere around the world, former Independent Television News chief executive Stewart Purvis told News World International 2003.

Delivering the conference's keynote address, Purvis said Fox News' patriotic coverage of the Iraq War had "shaken the nerve of the other networks".

Purvis said what he called the "Fox News effect" was partly the result of news organisations being acquired by giant corporations.

When challenged over the style of their reporting "the American networks' response seems to be simply 'what is the fuss all about?'"

Purvis deplored the denial of combat zone access to broadcasters from non-coalition countries. He said Germany's ARD had only been granted two embedded reporter placements, both on an aircraft carrier stationed in the Mediterranean.

Purvis – now professor of television journalism at London's City University – said while the "giant deployment" of reporters in the field would be recognised in the winning of several awards, "there were cock-ups, conspiracies, a fake, and journalists lying dead in the sand".

Many news teams were "concerned and down right angry in media terms about what happened during the war". Later, in a live satellite interview, ITN Baghdad correspondent John Irvine told Purvis that some journalists in Iraq were now encountering problems after asking US officials "too many difficult questions".

Read the full unedited speech HERE

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