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The tabloid Times strikes me as more interested in consumer stories than politics

FORM drives content. Thus newspaper coverage of the progress of the Prevention of Terrorism bill through the Commons and the Lords has shown a significant divide between the remaining broadsheets on the one hand (The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph) and the new quality tabloids (The Times and the Indy) on the other.

When the Government majority on a key amendment fell to 14, The Independent instead put a Baghdad bombing on its front page and The Times led with the guilty plea by a young Muslim from Gloucester to charges of conspiracy to endanger an aircraft.

Yesterday, when the Lords had wrecked the Government's bill, the two papers again did something else. The Indy invited us to consider whether President Bush had been right about the Middle East after all (though it quickly concluded that he had not).

The Times thought its readers would be more interested in credit card fraud.

By conventional standards, both parliamentary occasions were exciting and important. On the first, the Government almost lost a major vote in spite of its crushing majority, MPs vociferously complained about the shambles Labour had made in tabling amendments and the Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, along with several colleagues, failed to vote. Next morning, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph led their front pages with full accounts.

On the second occasion, Labour rebels in the Lords were led by no less a figure then Lord Irvine, the former Lord Chancellor and family friend of the Blairs. Again The Guardian did its stuff and The Daily Telegraph made Lord Irvine's betrayal a strong second lead. In contrast, Times readers found the news on page six while the Independent carried a short story on page two.

The Indy and The Times are thus setting aside one of the fundamental rules of serious journalism as it has been conducted during the past 150 years.

This states that the weight the editor gives to a story by its position, length and headlines precisely indicates the newspaper's assessment of its importance to readers. By this criterion, I can't see, for instance, that an item on credit card fraud can ever overtake a Government plan to remove the right of habeas corpus.

The Independent and The Times, however, seem to be working on different assumptions. The Independent uses its most important page, the one which people see first, to make readers think for themselves, to provoke them. I declare an interest as a founder and continuing columnist, but I have often rejoiced at the creative use of its front page.

When the paper was launched in 1986, its advertising slogan was "I am, are you?".

Now it has reinvented itself under a new motto - "I think, do you?".

The Times has taken a different route as a tabloid. It doesn't so much treat its readers as well educated, with wide interests and concerns - which they are.

It treats them primarily as consumers of goods and services. Thus, in the past week it has also splashed on internet music pirates, on a computer tax that may replace the TV licence fee, on a possible rise in the cost of home loans and on plans to extend maternity rights. Forty years ago, The Times used the slogan: "Top People Take The Times."

Now it's a jungle out there and The Times fights your corner. At least I think that is how the paper is positioning itself.

A tricky question for the censor

I SHALL see a preview of Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs later today.

It is the 18-rated, uncut film, which is said to take sexual explicitness in the British cinema further than ever before.

I shall be interested to see whether it is pornography or not.

After my years as chief film censor, I am clear what constitutes pornography.

Pornographic films have no artistic merit and their only purpose is sexual arousal.

Professional makers of films of the type sold in licensed sex shops know these rules well. They wouldn't dream, for instance, of importing any artistry into their productions.

One reviewer, however, said that 9 Songs is not porn and is not acting. Oh dear, that will give a film classifier like me real difficulty.

Not acting, not porn, and we are promised masses of real sex - what can it be? It sounds like an animated sex manual.

The BBC's error of judgment

THE weaknesses in the BBC's editing processes exposed by the Hutton inquiry still remain. As illustration, take the decision to pay a fee to the convicted burglar Brendon Fearon, one of the intruders into Tony Martin's Norfolk farmhouse, who was wounded by Mr Martin.

Fearon's testimony is required for a dramadocumentary about the incident which turned on householders' rights to selfdefence.

A BBC explanation cites "exceptional public interest ... where there is no other way of obtaining such a contribution ...", the need for a full account of the event and requirement for balance in any such treatment.

# posted by Medical Information : 4:14 AM