Talk:Newsnight

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On the Newsnight episode of Thursday, 18th of November 2005, during a discussion of journalism and blogs (in relation to the Iraq war) the presenter Jeremy Paxman made reference to Wikipedia!

Comparing Wikipedia with blogs, he stated something like "...Wikipedia where lots of people contribute to an online encyclopedia which is often better than the published thing". Not totally sure if that is a correct word-for-word quote but it should be close. Still, its good to get a compliment from one of Britain's most respected journalists and someone who is definatly not known for handing out complements too frequently! 80.195.168.97 00:53, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

He complimented Wikipedia on University Challenge a few months back as well. --Bonalaw 09:50, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Criticism of Newsnight 2 "Recent-cruft" 3 "Current Reporters" 4 Main Presenters in the 80'S

[edit] Criticism of Newsnight

I have been looking at some entries for a number of so called "alternative media" related topics such as that of the Medialens website, and journalists such as John Pilger, George Monbiot and political commentator and linguist Noam Chomsky. I notice these all have some sort of section, however big or small, broaching the issue of criticism of these sources. I wondered why no one has added anything relating to criticisms of Newsnights reporting of stories, the stories covered, guests chosen etc? I shall be checking entries for other more mainstream news sources and commentators to see if this is also the case. I understand that criticism for criticisms sake cannot be allowed under the neutrality conditions of Wikipedia but it is interesting to see how information is presented to the public. Does anyone else have any views on this?

I suppose the main criticisms tend to be about the individual presenters' styles. Some people think Paxo is too harsh, some have criticised Wark for having friendships with politicians, personally I think Esler has drifted into an attitude that he must attempt to stir up confrontation even at the expense of sense, I don't think anyone has a bad word to say about Kearney though. --Bonalaw 19:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Newsnight sometimes faces the same accusations that the BBC as a whole gets sometimes of not censoring themselves in their reporting of events in iraq. Newsnight has done segments on several of the coalition-forces' warcrimes, including interviewing some US soldiers about how they were killing non-combatants and then planting shovels and weapons on the corpses so it looked like they were insurgents planting IEDs. But this sort of thing doesn't really get critisized outside some of the crazier right-wing blogs. To have a criticism section we really need to find a notable and reputable source giving voice to those criticisms. Until then it's just better for NPOV to leave it out. Elmo 14:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Recent-cruft"

I noticed this edit describing a recent one-off variant on the playout music.

Is this really important in the large scheme of things, or just part of the combined tendency to (a) Add factoid cruft to Wikipedia and (b) Consider anything that happened in the last six months worthy of inclusion? Don't get me wrong; my criticisms aren't solely concerned with this one edit, it just seems to be symptomatic.

I appreciate that any programme article will (and should) have slightly more weight on its recent/current status, but this concentration on recent minor issues seems to be a bit silly. Fourohfour 15:06, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Current Reporters"

Any Wikipedians think it is a good idea to improve the article by mentioning the current reporters, as well as the presenters. I recommend adding Justin Rowlatt, the recent Ethical Man.

[edit] Main Presenters in the 80'S

The article as it stands implies that previous to Paxman Peter Snow was the main presenter for most of its history. 'Newsnight has been running since 30 January 1980, with Peter Snow presenting the programme for its first 17 years.' As far as I can remember the two main presenters for much, if not most,of the 80's were actually John Tusa in the 'Paxman' No.1 spot and Donald McCormick as the Esler/Wark sidekick. (I can very clearly remember this because I enjoyed watching the 'Tomorrows Headlines' piece each night - Tusa always showed the next day's Morning Star, and McCormick never did). I'm sure Peter Snow must sometimes have been lead presenter, but if it was anyone's show in the way that it is now Paxman's it was definitely Tusa's.

Even the BBC's own site just has Peter Snow moving 'to the BBC to become one of the regular presenters of Newsnight in 1980'. (My italics)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/presenters/peter_snow.shtml

I think the article needs reworded to remove the individual emphasis on Peter Snow, but am not confident enough about the facts of the case (dates and so on) to do so. Do we have any BBC staff among our contributors who might want to set the record straight?

Liamcalling (talk) 19:50, 18 March 2008 (UTC)