Broadcast magazine: Alastair Stewart interview
By David Rowan
Had things gone a little differently, Alastair Stewart would have been the story, rather than storyteller, in the forthcoming general election. Beaten by Charles Clarke to the National Union of Students presidency, he spent two years as deputy president in the mid-seventies and by now fully intended to be in Downing Street.
"I have absolutely no doubt at all I'd have been Chancellor of the Exchequer," the ITN newscaster says, his smooth anchor's delivery unblemished by any hint of self-doubt. "That was the one I wanted, and these things were discussed. I'd studied economics at Bristol, had a place at the LSE to do law, I'd even lined up a pupillage. I'd mapped out that the law would pay the bills while you'd do a bit of light politicking."
That was until Stewart appeared on a local television news programme, Southern TV's Day By Day, to berate Margaret Thatcher's "appalling" education cuts. "Afterwards, the editor phoned me up and said, 'That went terribly well - have you ever considered working in television?' He offered me a job there and then."
Three decades on, he is preparing to cover his sixth ITN general election. The open-plan basement in Gray's Inn Road is in advanced rehearsal mode for what we're promised will be the "most exciting yet" election-night coverage, based around "groundbreaking" graphics and greater "clarity of analysis" than ever. As part a core team once again led by Jonathan Dimbleby, Stewart will provide live analysis and commentary on the night, promising "quite a few surprises" that he wants to keep from the opposition.
Stewart, 52, is still wearing his make-up after presenting his live daily two-hour morning show on the ITV News Channel, and will shortly return to the studio to front the regional evening news programme, London Tonight. He recently won a Royal Television Society award for his work on the news channel, praised as a "formidable presenter of rolling news" whose interviews "properly tested his subjects". Off camera, too, he seems keen to control the conversation, steering discussion firmly away from controversy ("You're not going to get me into the whole Paxman-Vine debate" about interview styles), and limiting the flow of questions by flying into long anecdotal rifts. Maybe it is just the politician inside him.
Although he is naturally reluctant to suggest which party he might now have been representing ("I'm very sympathetic to all politicians," he insists), Stewart is concerned that the impartiality of television news faces imminent threat of what he calls "Foxification ". "Fox News seems to me to have thrown a gauntlet down to broadcasters right across the world when it comes to politics," he says. "It is now the most watched television news programme in the USA, and there will be a very powerful argument that, if that's what people want to watch, are we going to be able to sustain the argument that that's not the way we do it here?
"In the digital era it would just amaze me if somebody didn't come up with a proposition to try and produce a news offering here that was as overtly partisan as Fox. That would fundamentally alter the contract between the broadcaster and the viewer."
Ofcom's current strictures against partisan news, he suggests, will face such challenges within five or ten years. But change, he warns, is inevitable. "We used to read the news wearing dinner suits and bow ties. We used to have a bulletin only at 5.45pm and 10pm. We don't any more."
He speaks as a veteran. Having started out at Southern 29 years ago, he joined ITN in 1980 as industrial correspondent, and was reading the news a year later. He reported and presented for Channel 4 News, and in 1986 became anchor of ITN's early evening news. He began fronting News at Ten in 1991, having been in Washington and the Gulf, but left for Carlton-Granada’s London News Network after losing out to Sir Trevor McDonald as the main presenter. He has also presented a range of other shows, including GMTV's Sunday programme, and, until he received a drink-driving ban in 2003, ITV's Police Camera Action.
The key to political interviews, he says, is "to do your homework first", as well as having the capacity to listen - "one of the most scarce resources in my trade". This allows the interviewee to offer "an intelligent and full answer", he says. "Quite often listening to the answers may sow the seeds of somewhere else where you want to go. And if you're not listening, you can't then tear them apart should that be appropriate."
When pressed on the contrasting approaches of Jeremies Vine and Paxman, and the relative merits of a confrontational approach towards politicians, he pauses for eight seconds before saying carefully: "The over-aggressive style of interviewing can cut off your nose to spite your face. If you pursue any political interview on the basis that he or she is lying to you, you're going to end up not listening. If you don't get a straight answer, it's then up to you to pursue it with absolute determination. You may have to say, well, it's perfectly clear we're not going to get an answer. But that's entirely different to sitting down, saying, 'Delighted to see you, minister', but thinking, 'You lying, shrivelling, dissembling bastard'. Those of us in our trade do the world of politics no service when we occasionally seem to hold it in contempt."
His more specific concern about BBC News is what he sees - for obvious competitive reasons - as its ill-executed news channel. "The BBC does not know why it does rolling news, and that is clear day after day," he says. "Sky does brilliant rolling news, with some accomplished presenters and reporters - most of whom learned their trade here - but unlike the BBC, they don't have an appointment-to-view bulletin that's even worth considering. But ITV is on the threshold of having a unique proposition: well-resourced, authoritative, but enormously watchable appointment-to-view bulletins, woven into a rolling news service that can employ the journalistic talents of people like me, Mark Austin, Katie Derham. Calibre people." Its anchors certainly display no risk of self-deprecation.
Yet the numbers tell another story, with the ITV News Channel still trailing in the ratings. "I'm keenly aware of that," Stewart replies, "but we're up sharply within only a year of rebranding. I don't dispute that Sky has a bigger audience, and on occasion they can hit a breaking story faster. But there are others we hit faster - we hit Blunkett before they did, and Boscastle. And now the ITV regions are all part of the same team."
But what of Charles Allen's recent comments about ITN's future in the ITV network? Doesn't the uncertainty bother him? "I'm not remotely worried," Stewart says, with a Cabinet minister's certainty. "Whether you call it ITN or the ITV news division is a passé debate. I wouldn't go to the wall for three letters. But I would for ITV plc retaining a high-quality and well-funded holistic news offering - and I've absolutely no doubt that that's safe."
(Broadcast magazine, March 24 2005)
Had things gone a little differently, Alastair Stewart would have been the story, rather than storyteller, in the forthcoming general election. Beaten by Charles Clarke to the National Union of Students presidency, he spent two years as deputy president in the mid-seventies and by now fully intended to be in Downing Street.
"I have absolutely no doubt at all I'd have been Chancellor of the Exchequer," the ITN newscaster says, his smooth anchor's delivery unblemished by any hint of self-doubt. "That was the one I wanted, and these things were discussed. I'd studied economics at Bristol, had a place at the LSE to do law, I'd even lined up a pupillage. I'd mapped out that the law would pay the bills while you'd do a bit of light politicking."
That was until Stewart appeared on a local television news programme, Southern TV's Day By Day, to berate Margaret Thatcher's "appalling" education cuts. "Afterwards, the editor phoned me up and said, 'That went terribly well - have you ever considered working in television?' He offered me a job there and then."
Three decades on, he is preparing to cover his sixth ITN general election. The open-plan basement in Gray's Inn Road is in advanced rehearsal mode for what we're promised will be the "most exciting yet" election-night coverage, based around "groundbreaking" graphics and greater "clarity of analysis" than ever. As part a core team once again led by Jonathan Dimbleby, Stewart will provide live analysis and commentary on the night, promising "quite a few surprises" that he wants to keep from the opposition.
Stewart, 52, is still wearing his make-up after presenting his live daily two-hour morning show on the ITV News Channel, and will shortly return to the studio to front the regional evening news programme, London Tonight. He recently won a Royal Television Society award for his work on the news channel, praised as a "formidable presenter of rolling news" whose interviews "properly tested his subjects". Off camera, too, he seems keen to control the conversation, steering discussion firmly away from controversy ("You're not going to get me into the whole Paxman-Vine debate" about interview styles), and limiting the flow of questions by flying into long anecdotal rifts. Maybe it is just the politician inside him.
Although he is naturally reluctant to suggest which party he might now have been representing ("I'm very sympathetic to all politicians," he insists), Stewart is concerned that the impartiality of television news faces imminent threat of what he calls "Foxification ". "Fox News seems to me to have thrown a gauntlet down to broadcasters right across the world when it comes to politics," he says. "It is now the most watched television news programme in the USA, and there will be a very powerful argument that, if that's what people want to watch, are we going to be able to sustain the argument that that's not the way we do it here?
"In the digital era it would just amaze me if somebody didn't come up with a proposition to try and produce a news offering here that was as overtly partisan as Fox. That would fundamentally alter the contract between the broadcaster and the viewer."
Ofcom's current strictures against partisan news, he suggests, will face such challenges within five or ten years. But change, he warns, is inevitable. "We used to read the news wearing dinner suits and bow ties. We used to have a bulletin only at 5.45pm and 10pm. We don't any more."
He speaks as a veteran. Having started out at Southern 29 years ago, he joined ITN in 1980 as industrial correspondent, and was reading the news a year later. He reported and presented for Channel 4 News, and in 1986 became anchor of ITN's early evening news. He began fronting News at Ten in 1991, having been in Washington and the Gulf, but left for Carlton-Granada’s London News Network after losing out to Sir Trevor McDonald as the main presenter. He has also presented a range of other shows, including GMTV's Sunday programme, and, until he received a drink-driving ban in 2003, ITV's Police Camera Action.
The key to political interviews, he says, is "to do your homework first", as well as having the capacity to listen - "one of the most scarce resources in my trade". This allows the interviewee to offer "an intelligent and full answer", he says. "Quite often listening to the answers may sow the seeds of somewhere else where you want to go. And if you're not listening, you can't then tear them apart should that be appropriate."
When pressed on the contrasting approaches of Jeremies Vine and Paxman, and the relative merits of a confrontational approach towards politicians, he pauses for eight seconds before saying carefully: "The over-aggressive style of interviewing can cut off your nose to spite your face. If you pursue any political interview on the basis that he or she is lying to you, you're going to end up not listening. If you don't get a straight answer, it's then up to you to pursue it with absolute determination. You may have to say, well, it's perfectly clear we're not going to get an answer. But that's entirely different to sitting down, saying, 'Delighted to see you, minister', but thinking, 'You lying, shrivelling, dissembling bastard'. Those of us in our trade do the world of politics no service when we occasionally seem to hold it in contempt."
His more specific concern about BBC News is what he sees - for obvious competitive reasons - as its ill-executed news channel. "The BBC does not know why it does rolling news, and that is clear day after day," he says. "Sky does brilliant rolling news, with some accomplished presenters and reporters - most of whom learned their trade here - but unlike the BBC, they don't have an appointment-to-view bulletin that's even worth considering. But ITV is on the threshold of having a unique proposition: well-resourced, authoritative, but enormously watchable appointment-to-view bulletins, woven into a rolling news service that can employ the journalistic talents of people like me, Mark Austin, Katie Derham. Calibre people." Its anchors certainly display no risk of self-deprecation.
Yet the numbers tell another story, with the ITV News Channel still trailing in the ratings. "I'm keenly aware of that," Stewart replies, "but we're up sharply within only a year of rebranding. I don't dispute that Sky has a bigger audience, and on occasion they can hit a breaking story faster. But there are others we hit faster - we hit Blunkett before they did, and Boscastle. And now the ITV regions are all part of the same team."
But what of Charles Allen's recent comments about ITN's future in the ITV network? Doesn't the uncertainty bother him? "I'm not remotely worried," Stewart says, with a Cabinet minister's certainty. "Whether you call it ITN or the ITV news division is a passé debate. I wouldn't go to the wall for three letters. But I would for ITV plc retaining a high-quality and well-funded holistic news offering - and I've absolutely no doubt that that's safe."
(Broadcast magazine, March 24 2005)
posted by David Rowan at Thursday, March 24, 2005
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