'Good news' call wins support

(First Edition)

MARTYN LEWIS, the BBC newscaster, has received more than 500 letters and numerous telephone messages of support this week since he renewed his campaign for more 'good news' on television, writes Michael Leapman.

Addressing a lunch of the Media Society in London yesterday, he said: 'There is now much more understanding of the argument I am actually making rather than what people think I said.'

He began his campaign for a 'more balanced news agenda' in April, in an article in the Independent, and returned to the attack in a speech to the Royal Society of Arts last Monday when he said he was not arguing for the elimination of bad news, only that it should not take automatic precedence over good. Yesterday, he added that reports of truancy from inner city schools should have been balanced that morning by stories about agencies tackling the problem.