ABSTRACT
What part have current affairs programmes played in the area of peace, defence and disarmament questions? We take as our point of departure two short articles by Peter Fiddick: ‘Is TV properly reflecting the public concern with nuclear weapons?’ and ‘Doomsday debates that fit their pigeonhole’. The second of these is essentially an updating and amplification of the first. Fiddick reviewed the way in which the nuclear issue has come back on to the agenda of television since 1979 and raised a number of questions as to what it all signified. We take matters a step further by considering some more recent current affairs programmes and the formats and formulae within which they tend to operate.
