ABSTRACT

It took them a little time to grasp what was going on. Many if not most in the media welcomed the election of Tony Blair and co. There is the famous and oft repeated story of the manager at the BBC who announced that questioning politicians was now out of date:

Just after the 1997 general election, Peter Horrocks, the editor of Newsnight, told his staff that the days of digging up facts that might disconcert the powerful had passed. ‘Labour has a huge mandate,’ he wrote. ‘Our job should not be to quarrel with the purpose of policy but question its implementation. Ennui is over for now.’ In the unlikely event of his minions mistaking his meaning, Horrocks deployed the English establishment’s most condescending put-down to get them on message. ‘Clever-clever’ questioning of the warm, new consensus was inappropriate. Newsnight’s tradition of skeptical inquiry was mere ‘tricksiness and world-weariness’. What the show needed was a ‘lighter feel’. And, by God, it quickly got it.