Everything about World In Action totally explained
World in Action was an investigative
current affairs series produced by
Granada Television in the
United Kingdom from
1963 to
1998. It frequently took risks that other similar series wouldn't have taken, and gained a reputation for unorthodox thought and campaigning
journalism.
The first of the ground-breaking
Seven Up! programmes was shown as part of
World in Action in 1964, and
World in Action also broadcast the famous meeting between
Mick Jagger and several senior British establishment figures in 1967, arranged by the future
BBC Director-General John Birt.
The
Political Studies Association, honouring the programme in its 50th Anniversary Awards, said: "
World in Action thrived on unveiling
corruption and highlighting underhand dealings.
World in Action came to be seen as hard-hitting investigative journalism at its best."
(External Link
)
World in Action's demise in favour of the more populist
Tonight with
Trevor McDonald was criticised by some as part of a "dumbing-down" of
ITV, although the decision was praised by others as a necessary response to the increasing commercial pressures on British TV.
Origins
World in Action was the pre-eminent programme among a number of significant current affairs series produced by the
ITV Network in its first 50 years. Along with other notable shows, including
This Week,
First Tuesday,
Weekend World,
The Big Story and
The Cook Report - and the news-gathering of
ITN -
World in Action gave ITV a reputation for quality broadcast journalism to rival that of the
BBC.
For the first 35 years of its existence, ITV had a near-monopoly of television
advertising revenue.
Roy Thomson, who ran
Scottish Television famously described ITV as a "licence to print money".
(External Link) In return for this income, the broadcasting regulator insisted that the ITV companies broadcast a proportion of their programmes as
public service TV. Out of this was born the network's reputation for serious current affairs.
Some of the dominant figures in 20th century British broadcasting helped to create
World In Action, among them
John Birt,
Jeremy Isaacs,
Gus Macdonald,
David Plowright and
Michael Parkinson; it also trained generations of journalists and film-makers.
Michael Apted worked on the original 'Seven Up'. The award-winning film director
Paul Greengrass, who spent ten years on
WIA, told the BBC: "My first dream was to work on
World In Action to be honest. It was that wonderful eclectic mixture of filmmaking and reportage. That was my training ground. It showed me the world and made me see many things."
(External Link)
Although its rivals produced many memorable films, it was
World in Action which consistently gained a reputation for the kind of original journalism which made headlines and won major awards. In its time, the series was honoured by all of the major broadcasting awards, including
Bafta, the
Royal Television Society and the
Emmy Awards.
World in Action's style was the opposite of the urbane BBC programmes which were its rivals.
Gus Macdonald, an executive on the programme, said it had been "born brash".
(External Link) Steve Boulton, one of its last editors, wrote in
The Independent that the programme's ethos was to "comfort the afflicted - and afflict the comfortable."
World in Action out-lasted all of its contemporaries in ITV current affairs; they were killed off as the commercial pressures on the network grew with the arrival of multi-channel TV in the UK. Eventually
WIA, too, was removed from the schedules by its own creator,
Granada TV, following pressure from the ITV Network Centre, and replaced with
Tonight.
Investigative legacy
From the beginning, and especially from the 1970s, the programme broke new ground in investigative techniques. Landmark investigations included the
Poulson Affair, corruption in the
West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, the exposure of the shadowy and violent far-right group
Combat 18 and, most notably, a long campaign which resulted in the release from prison of the
Birmingham Six, six Irishmen falsely accused of planting
Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombs in
Birmingham pubs.
World in Action's appetite for controversy created tension with the official
regulators, especially in the early decades, when the regulator had the power to intervene before broadcast. Sir
Denis Forman, one of Granada's founders, wrote that there was "
trench warfare" between the programme and the industry regulator, the
Independent Television Authority (ITA), in the years between 1966 and 1969 as
WIA sought to establish its journalistic freedoms.
The most celebrated dispute was in 1973, over the banning of
The Friends and Influence of John L Poulson, the definitive film about the
Poulson Affair, itself one of the defining scandals of British political life in the 1960s. Poulson was an architect, who was jailed a year later for
corrupting politicians and civil servants to advance his construction business. The regulator, which was by then the
Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), banned the film without seeing it and without giving official reasons other than "broadcasting policy". In retaliation, Granada broadcast a blank screen in protest (which bizarrely recorded the third highest TV audience of that week). After a public furore which saw newspapers as different as the
Sunday Times and the
Socialist Worker unite in condemnation of "
censorship", the IBA held a second vote, having by then seen the film. By a single vote, the ban was lifted and the programme, retitled
The Rise and Fall of John Poulson, was transmitted on April 30, 1973, three months after it was first scheduled.
(External Link)
WIA was prepared to take on even the highly-secretive British
intelligence services. It broke the stories of
whistleblowers from
GCHQ(External Link) and the
Joint Intelligence Committee(External Link). Perhaps its most explosive coverage of the secret state was
The Spy Who Never Was, about the former
MI5 officer
Peter Wright, an extended edition aired in July 1984; Wright's subsequent, controversial book
Spycatcher, banned in the UK by the government of
Margaret Thatcher, was co-authored by one of the programme's producers,
Paul Greengrass.
The series was rarely away from the courts and the threat of legal action. In 1980, members of the programme's staff and senior executives at Granada TV announced that they'd be prepared to go to prison rather than submit to a
House of Lords ruling
(External Link) that the programme reveal the identity of an informant who had supplied
WIA with 250 pages of secret documents from the then state-owned steel company
British Steel(External Link). British Steel was at the time locked in a controversial industrial dispute with its workforce.
In 1995, Susan O'Keeffe, a
World in Action journalist, was threatened with prison in
Ireland for refusing to reveal her sources. She had investigated scandals within the Irish meat industry in two films in 1991, setting in motion a three-year
Tribunal of Inquiry in
Dublin, which found that much of her criticism of the industry was substantiated. The Tribunal, though, demanded that she name her informants, and when she refused to do so, she was charged by the Irish
Director of Public Prosecutions.
(External Link) The case became a
cause célèbre in the
Republic of Ireland, and in January 1995 she faced trial for
contempt of court but was cleared of the charge.
(External Link) She was honoured in the 1994
Freedom of Information Awards for her stand.
(External Link)
In its last few years, the programme was involved in two high-profile
libel cases. It won the first (along with
The Guardian) against the former
Conservative Cabinet Minister Jonathan Aitken, and lost the second, against the
high street chain
Marks & Spencer.
(External Link)
On April 10, 1995, Jonathan Aitken (himself a former journalist for
Yorkshire Television) called a televised press conference three hours before the transmission of a
World in Action film,
Jonathan of Arabia, demanding that allegations about his dealings with leading
Saudis be withdrawn.
(External Link) In a phrase that would come to haunt him, Aitken promised to wield "the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play... to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism."
(External Link) Aitken was subsequently sentenced to 18 months in prison for
perjuring himself in the libel case.
(External Link).
World in Action followed the collapse of Aitken's libel case with a special edition whose title reflected the MP's claim to wield the "sword of truth". It was called
The Dagger of Deceit.
Television techniques
Although the series' lasting reputation is for its investigative work, it also led the way in introducing other techniques to mainstream TV. In 1971, years before
reality programming became the staple diet of the TV schedules,
World In Action challenged the
Staffordshire village of
Longnor to quit smoking
(External Link)(External Link), a forerunner of many of the popular-challenge documentaries which enjoyed success in the 21st Century reality boom.
In 1984,
WIA caused a sensation by challenging a rising young
Conservative Member of Parliament,
Matthew Parris, to live for a week on a £26
unemployment benefit payment to test the reality of his own critical views on the unemployed.
(External Link) (Parris subsequently abandoned
Parliament for a distinguished career as a broadcaster and writer.) The same year,
WIA revealed the tricks behind political
oratory by coaching a complete beginner, Ann Brennan, to deliver a speech which won a standing ovation at the annual conference of the
Social Democratic Party, using techniques developed by Professor
Max Atkinson. The eminent political commentator
Sir Robin Day, covering the conference for
BBC television, described Mrs Brennan's performance as "The most refreshing speech we’ve heard so far."
WIA helped to pioneer the current fashion for using miniature
covert cameras, not just in investigative work, such as
Donal MacIntyre's award-winning programmes in October 1996 on the
illegal drug trade, but also in social
documentary, including the future
Conservative MP
Adam Holloway's disturbing reports on the reality of life among the
homeless in 1991.
World In Action gave rise to a number of spin-off series, most famously the
Seven Up! documentaries which have followed the lives of a group of British people who turned seven years old in 1963. The most recent,
49 UP, was shown in 2005.
Michael Apted directed most episodes; parallel series have also started in the last decade in South Africa, the USA and Russia. ITV's popular consumer series,
House of Horrors, in which shoddy builders are invited to carry out minor repairs to a house festooned with covert recording devices, originated on
World In Action.
World in Action's hard-hitting style and undercover techniques are sometimes cited as a template for 21st century British current affairs series, especially the MacIntyre series on the
BBC and
Five; and
Channel 4's
Dispatches strand, which is commissioned by Dorothy Byrne, a former
WIA producer.
WIA and popular culture
One of the programme's hallmarks was its willingness to embrace
popular culture, at a time when its competitors preferred a more
highbrow approach. One of the very earliest editions reported on overspending at the
Ministry of Defence in the style of a contemporary gameshow,
Beat The Clock. The programme was so controversial it was banned from being shown on
ITV by the then regulatory body, the
Independent Television Authority (ITA); instead, ten minutes of it were shown on the BBC as an act of journalistic solidarity. The gameshow device re-emerged in 1989, when an academic study of the uptake of tax-funded
benefits by the middle-class was transformed into a mock quiz show named
Spongers, fronted by a well-known star of game formats,
Nicholas Parsons.
Popular music played a significant role in
WIA's history. An early edition, in 1966, carried a
fly-on-the-wall account of daily life aboard one of the then
pirate radio ships,
Radio Caroline, at a time when the British Government was determined to preserve the radio monopoly of the BBC by driving the "pirates" off the air.
In 1967, a young researcher named
John Birt established his early reputation by persuading the rock star
Mick Jagger to appear on
World in Action(External Link) to debate youth culture and his recent drug conviction, with Establishment figures, including
William Rees-Mogg of
The Times, who had written a famous editorial defending the singer. Jagger so enjoyed the experience that he invited the Granada team to film
The Rolling Stones at the band's famous 1969 free concert in
Hyde Park, London. The resulting film,
The Stones In The Park,
(External Link) was one of the iconic concert films of the Sixties. John Birt rapidly moved on to edit
World in Action and eventually run the
BBC as its Director-General.
The rise of
Thatcherism and the misery of mass unemployment saw
WIA examining the phenomenon through the eyes of another emerging band,
UB40, in
A Statistic, A Reminder (1981), a line taken from one of the band's songs. Six years later, a special edition of the programme was devoted to the Irish rock band
U2 and their charismatic front man
Bono. Like The Rolling Stones before them, U2 allowed
World in Action to film one of their classic concerts in 1987 in
Ireland. This footage, shot by the future
Hollywood director
Paul Greengrass, was shown only once on ITV because of
copyright restrictions, although it circulated among fans of the band as a
bootleg. A small section of the film was posted on
YouTube in 2006
(External Link). The full documentary was made available on the
itv.com website in 2008
(External Link).
In 1983,
Stevie Wonder, at the height of his popularity, gave the programme a musical exclusive when he agreed to let a
World in Action crew record him performing an unreleased song, written to help the
Democratic politician
Jesse Jackson's electioneering, for
The Race Against Reagan.
(External Link) Another popular singer,
Sting, appeared in a more critical
World in Action episode, which questioned the effectiveness of his
Rainforest Foundation.
(External Link)
Perhaps the most bruising encounter between
WIA and popular entertainment was the 1995 film
Black and Blue which featured a covert recording of a performance by the veteran comedian
Bernard Manning as the star of a charity function organised by the Manchester branch of the
Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers. Manning's racist and homophobic performance, loudly applauded by those present, caused outrage when
WIA broadcast excerpts, sparking an intense debate about the willingness of British police officers to embrace a
diverse culture.
(External Link)
Leading contributors
Journalists
World in Action employed many leading journalists, among them
John Pilger;
Michael Parkinson;
Gordon Burns; Nick Davies,
Ed Vulliamy and David Leigh of The Guardian; Alasdair Palmer of the
Sunday Telegraph; John Ware, BBC
Panorama's leading investigative reporter;
Anthony Wilson, whose second career as a music impresario was immortalised in the feature film
24 Hour Party People; Michael Gillard, creator of the
Slicker business pages in the satirical magazine
Private Eye;
Donal MacIntyre; the writer Mark Hollingsworth; Quentin McDermott, since 1999 a leading investigative reporter for the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Tony Watson, editor of the
Yorkshire Post for 13 years and editor-in-chief of the
Press Association from December 2006; and
Andrew Jennings, author of
Lords of the Rings, who has campaigned vigorously for more than a decade against corruption in international sport.
Two former
World in Action journalists uncovered one of the biggest broadcasting scandals of the 1990s.
(External Link) Laurie Flynn, a central figure in the British Steel papers case, and Michael Sean Gillard revealed that large parts of a 1996
Carlton TV documentary,
The Connection, about drug trafficking from
Colombia, had been fabricated. Flynn and Gillard's exposé in
The Guardian in May 1998 led to an inquiry and a record £2 million fine for Carlton from the then regulator, the
Independent Television Commission (ITC),
(External Link) as well as provoking a passionate debate about truthfulness in broadcast journalism.
(External Link) (External Link)
Presenters
Unusually for a current affairs programme,
WIA's standard format was as a
voice-over documentary without a regular reporter although a handful of
WIA journalists did appear in front of camera, including
Chris Kelly,
Gordon Burns, John Pilger, Gus Macdonald, Anthony Wilson, Nick Davies,
Adam Holloway, Stuart Prebble (who later became the programme's editor), Mike Walsh, David Taylor and
Donal MacIntyre. Guest presenters were used on rare occasions, among them
Jonathan Dimbleby,
Sandy Gall, Martyn Gregory,
Sue Lawley and
Lynn Faulds Wood. Perhaps its most celebrated guest presenter was the distinguished
American anchorman Walter Cronkite, who came out of retirement to cover the
1983 British General Election for the series.
(External Link)
A small group of narrators delivered the vast majority of
WIA's voice-overs. The science presenter
James Burke did a number of commentaries on early editions of the programme. Other main contributors included
Chris Kelly, Jim Pope, Philip Tibenham and Andrew Brittain. Among the guest narrators who contributed occasional commentaries were the popular actors
Robert Lindsay and
Jean Boht.
Directors
The series was known for its gritty visual style, and a number of its directors went on to work on major projects. Those working on the series in its early years included
Michael Apted, later to direct
Coal Miner's Daughter,
Gorillas in the Mist and the
James Bond film
The World isn't Enough, as well as the
Seven Up! documentaries, and
Mike Hodges, who went on to direct
Get Carter and
Flash Gordon, among other films. Later,
Paul Greengrass, director of the feature films
United 93,
The Bourne Supremacy and
The Bourne Ultimatum and of the drama-documentaries
Bloody Sunday and
The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, cut his directing teeth on the series, as did John Smithson
(External Link) and David Darlow, who set up the production company responsible for the feature films
Touching the Void and
Deep Water(External Link).
Leslie Woodhead, director of
The Stones In The Park and the award winning
A Cry From The Grave, and regarded by many as a founder of the
drama-documentary movement,
(External Link) worked on the series as a producer and executive.
Among the most recent generation of film-makers to emerge from
World in Action were Alex Holmes
(External Link), who became editor of the
BBC2 documentary strand
Modern Times and went on to write and direct the
Bafta-winning dramatised documentary series
Dunkirk for the BBC; and Katy Jones, a former
WIA producer, who became a key collaborator with the celebrated screen writer
Jimmy McGovern as a producer on his award-winning drama-documentaries
Hillsborough and
Sunday.
Broadcasters
WIA was a starting point for several key programme-makers who went on to major roles in British broadcasting. The most famous,
John Birt, became Director-General of the BBC, having also been Programme Controller of the former
London ITV franchise
LWT, where he created another iconic current affairs series,
Weekend World.
(External Link)
Several
WIA staffers were promoted to significant roles in
Granada Television, among them
David Plowright(External Link), who became its chairman and later went on to become deputy chairman of
Channel 4. Steve Morrison became chief executive at Granada.
Gus Macdonald held the same role at another ITV franchise,
Scottish Television.
Stuart Prebble, a former editor, became chief executive of ITV, and Steve Anderson became Head of News and Current Affairs for that channel. Both have since moved on to the independent production industry. Ian McBride, who led the team which made the
Birmingham Six programmes, became Managing Editor of Granada TV and is now Director of Compliance for ITV.
Dianne Nelmes, who worked as a researcher and executive producer of
WIA, was the founding editor of Granada TV's hugely successful
This Morning with
Richard and Judy and went on to head daytime and factual programmes at ITV.
Dorothy Byrne, a former
WIA producer, is Head of News and Current Affairs at Channel 4. Julian Bellamy
(External Link), who worked as a young researcher on one of
WIA's last big foreign investigations - about
arms deals between Britain and
Indonesia(External Link) - later headed up Channel 4's entertainment channel
E4 and was programme controller of the BBC digital channel
BBC Three before re-joining Channel 4 as its Head of Programming in the spring of 2007.
TV production companies
A number of
WIA veterans went on to set up and run their own independent television production companies. Claudia Milne founded twentytwenty tv, which made a successful current affairs strand for ITV, The Big Story, as well as popular factual series such as Bad Boys' Army' on ITV and
That'll Teach 'Em on Channel 4. David Darlow and John Smithson founded the Darlow Smithson company, responsible for
Black Box,
The Falling Man and
Touching the Void, among many factual programmes. Brian Lapping set up the much-garlanded Brook Lapping company, which made
The Death of Yugoslavia and many other landmark contemporary history programmes. Stuart Prebble, a former editor of
World In Action, runs Liberty Bell, best known for the popular
Grumpy Old Men series on the BBC. Another former editor, Steve Boulton, started an
eponymous company, which made
Young, Nazi & Proud, a
Bafta-winning profile of the young
British National Party activist
Mark Collett.
One of the biggest new independent production companies is All 3 Media, which controls several other leading companies, including
Lime Pictures, formerly
Mersey Television, makers of
Hollyoaks. It is run by Steve Morrison, a former
WIA producer.
Political connections
A number of British
Parliamentarians have
World In Action on their
curriculum vitae. The most recent is the Conservative MP
Adam Holloway, elected to the
House of Commons in 2005. The British
Cabinet Minister Jack Straw worked on
World in Action as a researcher, as did
Margaret Beckett who served as
Tony Blair's last
Foreign Secretary.
Chris Mullin, Labour MP for
Sunderland South, played a major role in the programme's campaign on behalf of the
Birmingham Six.
Gus Macdonald, now Baron Macdonald of Tradeston, and from 1998 to 2003 a Government Minister, was formerly an executive on the programme.
John Birt (by then ennobled as Baron Birt), was personal advisor to the British Prime Minister
Tony Blair between 2001 and 2005.
Editors
Editors of the programme (sometimes with the title of Executive Producer) were, successively, Tim Hewat, Derek Granger, Alex Valentine,
David Plowright, Jeremy Wallington, Leslie Woodhead,
John Birt,
Gus Macdonald, David Boulton, Brian Lapping, Ray Fitzwalter,
Allan Segal, Stuart Prebble, Nick Hayes, Dianne Nelmes, Charles Tremayne, Steve Boulton and Jeff Anderson. Anderson also became editor of
World in Action's replacement
Tonight, before becoming Head of Current Affairs at ITV in 2006. Mike Lewis, a former
WIA producer, was appointed editor of
Tonight in October 2006.
Academic connections
Professor
Brian Winston, Pro-Vice Chancellor (External Relations) at the
University of Lincoln, who has also held leading posts at the Universities of
Westminster,
Cardiff,
Pennsylvania State and
New York, was a researcher and producer in the early series of
World in Action.
Ray Fitzwalter,
WIA's longest-serving editor and the man behind the ground-breaking
Poulson investigations, became a Visiting Fellow at the
University of Salford School of Media, Music and Performance.
Gavin MacFadyen, who worked on early series of World in Action as a producer-director and was best known for his under-cover human rights films, was made a Visiting Professor at City University in 2005. He is also Director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism. David Leigh, who made
Jonathan of Arabia, the film which provoked Jonathan Aitken's self-destructive libel action,
(External Link) was made Britain's first Professor of Reporting at
City University, London, in September 2006.
Camera work
Although a great many producers, journalists and editors passed through the programme, one
cameraman played an overwhelming role in shaping the appeal of the series. George Jesse Turner, born on the
Lancashire coast, close to Granada's roots, served on the programme from 1966 until its end. By his own count, he shot the principal footage for some 600 of its 1,400 editions, as well as filming all of Michael Apted's documentaries in the
Seven Up! series. Turner was shot himself - in the backside - by an Israeli bullet whilst he and
Allan Segal were filming a clash between
Fatah guerrillas and the
Israeli Army in 1969. Shortly before he retired from Granada, Turner was honoured by
Bafta in 1999 for his work as a documentary cameraman.
Among the many cameramen who also contributed to
WIA was
Chris Menges(External Link), who went on to become a distinguished cinematographer -
Kes,
The Killing Fields and
The Mission are among his credits - and a film director in his own right, on features such as
A World Apart.
Title sequence
The programme's distinctive identity owed much to its striking
title sequence. The music, based on a descending series of
organ chords, was called
Jam for World in Action and was written by Jonathon Weston. The programme's logo, and the centrepiece of its titles, was the famous
Leonardo da Vinci drawing, the
Vitruvian Man.
Further Information
Get more info on 'World In Action'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://world_in_action.totallyexplained.com">World in Action Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
