Interview: Peter Barron, Newsnight editor (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
WATCH out, Michael Howard: Newsnight is about to become "dangerous" again. Howard, you may recall, was famously skewered on the programme by Jeremy Paxman, who asked 14 times if he had threatened to overrule the prisons boss. But that was back in 1997 - since when, in some critics' eyes, Newsnight has ceded television's analytical crown to a sparkier Channel 4 News.
In the past year, BBC2's flagship current-affairs show has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. The Hutton Inquiry revealed that its science editor, Susan Watts, had dismissed as "glib" David Kelly's concerns about Downing Street's role in the Iraq weapons dossier, and failed to follow up the story - only later to attack her bosses' "misguided and false" attempts to make her back Andrew Gilligan's account.
Then there was its refusal to air Michael Crick's "Betsygate" investigation, its apology to Humbers ide's pol ice chief for a "misleadingly" edited interview, and continuing questions over Kirsty Wark's refusal to cooperate with Lord Fraser's inquiry into the Holyrood Parliament building. No wonder Paxman has lately seemed even tetchier than usual.
But with a new director-general, and a new programme editor, we are promised a shake-up. Peter Barron, former deputy editor on Channel 4 News and ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald, wants Newsnight to become unpredictable again. "If it isn't a risk-taking, troublemaking, awkward programme," he says, "then you might as well pack up and go home."
Barron, 41, avoids criticising the previous regime: a question about whether departing editor George Entwistle has bequeathed a "tired" programme elicits a 15-second pause, an anxious glance at the press officer, and an anodyne response about it being "in very robust form". He then adds delicately: "My role would be to build on that and try to inject more creativity and sense of surprise. I want to capture the exciting and dangerous things happening in the programme's window." We can expect a "broadening of the agenda", for a start. "I think that journalism generally, and Newsnight, has concentrated too much on Westminster politics when there are vast forces that are much more powerful," Barron says - issues such as those he explored in If ... , the BBC2 drama-documentary series he edited.
"If Newsnight's role is to probe and make accountable politicians, then it should also hold to account the other big forces that affect our lives - business, the huge shifts in science and technology, the people who run huge organisations who get away with being very lightly scrutinised." Former colleagues say he cares little for party politics - "if anything he's a little bit Conservative, but you wouldn't know", says one.
His aversion is not to Westminster's "men in suits", he stresses, but "to programmes which go through the motions and do things lazily. To my mind, Newsnight is at its worst if it's just a longer version of the 10 O'Clock News." Barron faces a more pressing reason to rethink the show. "It has to be more surprising because of ITV rescheduling its news to 10.30pm," suggests Jeremy Vine, a former presenter. "If it's just the top stories you want, you'll go to ITV. The big question for Peter is does Newsnight have to change in response."
JIM Gray, editor of Channel 4 News, insists that it does need to change - partly by being "less predictable", but also by confronting more directly the big breaking stories. "Newsnight is more reflective than Channel 4 News, and they should address that," Gray advises.
Barron accepts that the programme needs to be more distinctive, avoiding crossover with other BBC news programmes. Last week, for instance, Newsnight carried an East Timor package barely different from one broadcast 30 minutes earlier on The World Tonight. His answer is that Newsnight should "step back" and provoke the viewer into thinking about bigger issues.
Yet after Hutton, questions remain over how provocative the BBC can be. Hadn't Michael Crick recently identified "almost a paralysis" in editorial decision-making, with endless calls for "an extra opinion, an outside lawyer, an extra source"? "Michael is one of the best people in TV journalism, and he will continue to be on Newsnight," Barron replies. "But I don't agree.
Newsnight's role is to be challenging and to take risks. And that's going to continue." Mark Thompson's appointment, he adds, "augurs well" for this approach.
He will not say if he would have broadcast Crick's "Betsygate" film, nor if Susan Watts will return after maternity leave. He also professes to knowing "nothing about" allegations that Kirsty Wark's authority may have been compromised over the Fraser Inquiry. But he does believe that the BBC's new complaints procedure will give Newsnight the confidence to pursue "challenging" journalism.
"I'm sure we will occasionally make a mistake," he says, "but if you've got a good safety net, you can do somersaults on the high wire." The new boss certainly has Newsnight in his blood. The son of a Belfast electricity worker (his mother died when he was young), he joined the programme as a BBC trainee 15 years ago, having "wanted to edit it ever since I first saw it". Barron worked his way up to assistant editor, "playing in every position, like Terry Venables", and even married a production colleague, Julia Stroud.
HE EARNED a reputation for sharp, lateral news judgments: a former staffer recalls how he interrupted a high-minded morning meeting in February 1993 to berate colleagues for missing the day's "real" story, about a boy who had gone missing in a shopping centre.
The boy's name was James Bulger.
When Jim Gray left Newsnight to edit Channel 4 News in 1998, he took Barron along to help reinvent the programme. "What he'll bring is inventiveness, originality, good sparky ideas, and a truer sense of original journalism," Gray says. "If he's up to causing sensation and shock, then good on him. He knows what works." But Barron, a BBC loyalist once more, refuses to cede any ground to Channel 4. "Newsnight is the best programme for serious analysis," he insists. It also offers "the only real commitment in daily news and current affairs to serious filmmaking" - although he admits to wanting more of the independent films that have made Channel 4 News distinctive. But if people insist on seeing the programmes as competitors, "then quite simply I'm looking forward to the fight".
He becomes most animated when defending the populist appeal of Tonight, which he joined in 2002.
"There is a huge amount of complacency, at the BBC and in the industry, about what Tonight does," he says. "It's easy for people to say it uses chequebook journalism and is obsessed by obesity.
But it breaks a huge number of controversial stories. I'm proud of Tonight and will bring to Newsnight a lot of that determination to win." He then cites a string of Tonight exclusives during his 10-month tenure, from Living with Michael Jackson ("which sold to 120 countries") to "a fantastically controversial" discussion between Tony Blair and antiwar women. "I produced that myself," Barron says.
"The Prime Minister said afterwards, 'Who the f*** set that up?' That was something Newsnight should have done." Can he list Newsnight's scoops over the same period? "I've been busy doing my own programmes," he says, a little uncomfortably.
Let's see if there is more to remember this time next year.
(Evening Standard, May 26 2004)
WATCH out, Michael Howard: Newsnight is about to become "dangerous" again. Howard, you may recall, was famously skewered on the programme by Jeremy Paxman, who asked 14 times if he had threatened to overrule the prisons boss. But that was back in 1997 - since when, in some critics' eyes, Newsnight has ceded television's analytical crown to a sparkier Channel 4 News.
In the past year, BBC2's flagship current-affairs show has made headlines for all the wrong reasons. The Hutton Inquiry revealed that its science editor, Susan Watts, had dismissed as "glib" David Kelly's concerns about Downing Street's role in the Iraq weapons dossier, and failed to follow up the story - only later to attack her bosses' "misguided and false" attempts to make her back Andrew Gilligan's account.
Then there was its refusal to air Michael Crick's "Betsygate" investigation, its apology to Humbers ide's pol ice chief for a "misleadingly" edited interview, and continuing questions over Kirsty Wark's refusal to cooperate with Lord Fraser's inquiry into the Holyrood Parliament building. No wonder Paxman has lately seemed even tetchier than usual.
But with a new director-general, and a new programme editor, we are promised a shake-up. Peter Barron, former deputy editor on Channel 4 News and ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald, wants Newsnight to become unpredictable again. "If it isn't a risk-taking, troublemaking, awkward programme," he says, "then you might as well pack up and go home."
Barron, 41, avoids criticising the previous regime: a question about whether departing editor George Entwistle has bequeathed a "tired" programme elicits a 15-second pause, an anxious glance at the press officer, and an anodyne response about it being "in very robust form". He then adds delicately: "My role would be to build on that and try to inject more creativity and sense of surprise. I want to capture the exciting and dangerous things happening in the programme's window." We can expect a "broadening of the agenda", for a start. "I think that journalism generally, and Newsnight, has concentrated too much on Westminster politics when there are vast forces that are much more powerful," Barron says - issues such as those he explored in If ... , the BBC2 drama-documentary series he edited.
"If Newsnight's role is to probe and make accountable politicians, then it should also hold to account the other big forces that affect our lives - business, the huge shifts in science and technology, the people who run huge organisations who get away with being very lightly scrutinised." Former colleagues say he cares little for party politics - "if anything he's a little bit Conservative, but you wouldn't know", says one.
His aversion is not to Westminster's "men in suits", he stresses, but "to programmes which go through the motions and do things lazily. To my mind, Newsnight is at its worst if it's just a longer version of the 10 O'Clock News." Barron faces a more pressing reason to rethink the show. "It has to be more surprising because of ITV rescheduling its news to 10.30pm," suggests Jeremy Vine, a former presenter. "If it's just the top stories you want, you'll go to ITV. The big question for Peter is does Newsnight have to change in response."
JIM Gray, editor of Channel 4 News, insists that it does need to change - partly by being "less predictable", but also by confronting more directly the big breaking stories. "Newsnight is more reflective than Channel 4 News, and they should address that," Gray advises.
Barron accepts that the programme needs to be more distinctive, avoiding crossover with other BBC news programmes. Last week, for instance, Newsnight carried an East Timor package barely different from one broadcast 30 minutes earlier on The World Tonight. His answer is that Newsnight should "step back" and provoke the viewer into thinking about bigger issues.
Yet after Hutton, questions remain over how provocative the BBC can be. Hadn't Michael Crick recently identified "almost a paralysis" in editorial decision-making, with endless calls for "an extra opinion, an outside lawyer, an extra source"? "Michael is one of the best people in TV journalism, and he will continue to be on Newsnight," Barron replies. "But I don't agree.
Newsnight's role is to be challenging and to take risks. And that's going to continue." Mark Thompson's appointment, he adds, "augurs well" for this approach.
He will not say if he would have broadcast Crick's "Betsygate" film, nor if Susan Watts will return after maternity leave. He also professes to knowing "nothing about" allegations that Kirsty Wark's authority may have been compromised over the Fraser Inquiry. But he does believe that the BBC's new complaints procedure will give Newsnight the confidence to pursue "challenging" journalism.
"I'm sure we will occasionally make a mistake," he says, "but if you've got a good safety net, you can do somersaults on the high wire." The new boss certainly has Newsnight in his blood. The son of a Belfast electricity worker (his mother died when he was young), he joined the programme as a BBC trainee 15 years ago, having "wanted to edit it ever since I first saw it". Barron worked his way up to assistant editor, "playing in every position, like Terry Venables", and even married a production colleague, Julia Stroud.
HE EARNED a reputation for sharp, lateral news judgments: a former staffer recalls how he interrupted a high-minded morning meeting in February 1993 to berate colleagues for missing the day's "real" story, about a boy who had gone missing in a shopping centre.
The boy's name was James Bulger.
When Jim Gray left Newsnight to edit Channel 4 News in 1998, he took Barron along to help reinvent the programme. "What he'll bring is inventiveness, originality, good sparky ideas, and a truer sense of original journalism," Gray says. "If he's up to causing sensation and shock, then good on him. He knows what works." But Barron, a BBC loyalist once more, refuses to cede any ground to Channel 4. "Newsnight is the best programme for serious analysis," he insists. It also offers "the only real commitment in daily news and current affairs to serious filmmaking" - although he admits to wanting more of the independent films that have made Channel 4 News distinctive. But if people insist on seeing the programmes as competitors, "then quite simply I'm looking forward to the fight".
He becomes most animated when defending the populist appeal of Tonight, which he joined in 2002.
"There is a huge amount of complacency, at the BBC and in the industry, about what Tonight does," he says. "It's easy for people to say it uses chequebook journalism and is obsessed by obesity.
But it breaks a huge number of controversial stories. I'm proud of Tonight and will bring to Newsnight a lot of that determination to win." He then cites a string of Tonight exclusives during his 10-month tenure, from Living with Michael Jackson ("which sold to 120 countries") to "a fantastically controversial" discussion between Tony Blair and antiwar women. "I produced that myself," Barron says.
"The Prime Minister said afterwards, 'Who the f*** set that up?' That was something Newsnight should have done." Can he list Newsnight's scoops over the same period? "I've been busy doing my own programmes," he says, a little uncomfortably.
Let's see if there is more to remember this time next year.
(Evening Standard, May 26 2004)
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