Media: The Word on the Street

KOSOVO IS a state that The Observer is not going to be in, thanks to editor-in-chief, Will Hutton.

There were heated negotiations at the Newspaper Publishers' Association last week when competing newspapers were battling to get their journalists voted on to the small pool that will accompany British ground forces into Kosovo.

Those on the pool have to share everything with everyone else. That might seem self-evident, but it was a concept that defeated Mr Hutton. After seeing some tabloids, The Times and The Daily Telegraph get their reporters on the pool, Hutton was battling for the last place against The Independent.

The Guardian reluctantly agreed to back Hutton's man Peter Beaumont, rather than their own choice, only to watch Hutton's plea for votes grind into the ground thanks to the assurance he gave that Peter "will do fantastic stuff for The Observer", if he got the nod. That fell a little short of pool etiquette.

The Indy is sending a photographer and a writer. C'est la guerre.

MORE JOURNALISTIC licence from the Folkestone Herald - the delightful newspaper, whose group editor has already been quizzed by the police because of its articles about refugees on the south coast.

On 20 May, the unbowed Herald ran the headline "The Frontline in Folkestone" above a picture of police in riot gear with the sub-heading: "They are not genuine asylum seekers, they are like the Mafia. Tonight when the riot police arrived it was the FINAL STRAW."

In fact, the photograph on the front page was revealed, on page eight of the paper, to be "from another incident", but the Herald needed it to illustrate "what Folkestone faced on Tuesday". The story related to the arrest of six refugees as "little children looked on" by police officers, some of whom were wearing protective helmets and riot shields. This allowed the Herald to spew out a page of rumours about crimes supposedly committed by refugees, none of which was backed with evidence.

EDUCATION IS the BBC's big new idea and BBC Knowledge, a new digital channel, its big new way of promoting it. Unfortunately, those promoting BBC Knowledge could do with an education. The press release giving details of the schedule misspelled such challenging words as "people", "way", "fruity", "glass" and "eclair".

MELVYN BRAGG reacted surprisingly quickly to the revelation that Sir John Birt had been a member of the Labour Party. Sir John should have made this public, Lord Bragg scolded publicly. Lord Bragg, you will recall, lost his Start The Week programme on his elevation to the peerage because of his clear links with a political party. It rankled considerably.

Sir John, it seems, will not be allowed to forget it.