Nicholas Jones on The Death of Spin, by George Pitcher (John Wiley, £16.99).

Once the city desks of the national newspapers were dispersed around London, their reporters became easy prey for the public relations consultants who sought to exploit the take-over battles and privatisation share issues of the Thatcher era. The mass exodus from Fleet Street, which gathered pace in the late 1980s, cut financial journalists adrift from their regular haunts and contacts in the City of London and their vulnerability was exploited by the pr industry.

George Pitcher, former industrial editor of The Observer, gives an insider’s account of the way he believes ‘the operator and the spiv’ took advantage of city journalists who were tied to their desks but who were being asked to fill the extra pages which became available through the growth in financial advertising and news coverage.

Public relations executives toured the city desks offering exclusive stories in return for favourable treatment. This was the era of the infamous ‘Friday night drop’ when sensitive financial information would be traded with Sunday newspaper journalists in the hope of influencing share prices before the opening of the markets on Monday morning.

Hard-pressed journalists found it difficult to resist the ‘exclusives’ which were on offer. A further unforeseen consequence of the technological revolution in newspaper production was that there were fewer checks on reporters: they could often input their copy directly onto the page, another factor which paid handsome dividends for those seeking to manipulate the news media.

Pitcher believes that many of the techniques developed by financial public relations consultants were copied by political spin doctors, first under the Conservatives for Margaret Thatcher and John Major and then for Tony Blair by the spinmeisters of New Labour. Where I parted company with his analysis of the crossover from the heady days of the 1980s was in his confident assertion that Blair has turned his back on spin and that Alastair Campbell & Co have been ‘unjustly marked as irredeemable components of the old spin-culture’.

On reaching the final chapter of The Death of Spin I came to the conclusion that Pitcher was guilty of wishful thinking. He seemed to have swallowed New Labour’s gospel hook, line and sinker in giving the Blair government the benefit of the doubt because there is ‘little is can do.... about a spin culture that it didn't create.'

Nicholas Jones, a BBC political and industrial correspondent for 30 years, is the author of Soundbites and Spin Doctors, Sultans of Spin, and The Control Freaks.

Journalism: Truth or Dare ? by Ian Hargreaves (Oxford University Press, paperback, £12.99).

At a time when some prominent British editors are not simply resisting attempts to curb the excesses of certain multi-circulation newspapers, but actively defending a failed code of conduct, it is good to be reminded of the importance of responsible journalism in a free society (writes Anthony James). Ian Hargreaves performs a useful service in presenting many examples of the ways in which newspaper owners and editors regularly distort and sensationalise events, trivialising and sometimes ruining people along the way, in pursuit of increased circulation.

He names all the usual suspects, over a wide field, and asks, in effect, why and how we let them get away with it. Some of the cases cited were new to me - as was the story of the author's sacking as editor of the Independent, after little more than a year. This is well worth reading, as part of the case against those proprietors who put profit before principle, but also another instalment in the valient effort, in the Independent, to establish a British daily newspaper as "an independent voice outside the club of traditional newspaper owners..." It is certainly widely respected now (at the time of this book's publication) for its principled stand against the US/UK-led invasion of Iraq, against the will of the United Nations and large numbers of the British people.

As one who found the Kemsley Manual of absorbing interest as a young reporter, and collected practically every such volume for years, I now find much of interest in the latest how-to-do books about online hackery. Perhaps, though, it was nostalgia that sent me back to the old favourites when I read Journalism Online, by Mike Ward.

The techniques of publication are always of importance, whether in the old print systems (still in use in some parts of the world), or the latest computerised methods. However, it is the content that remains our paramount consideration, and authors of these guides must keep that firmly in mind.

Mike Ward's book (published by Focal Press, £19.99), goes on my shelf next to that of Paul Williams, The Computerized Newspaper (Heinemann, £16.95), and others from far and wide. Not far away are some of the earlier books on the technicalities of print, including Allen Hutt's respected Newspaper Design, published in 1960 as "the first full-scale treatment of newspaper design" in the UK.

Still in pride of place, though, are some of those earlier aids to professionalism, most of them still valid in their main focus, the journalism - the excellence of the writing. In 1966 came Practical Newspaper Reporting, by Geoffrey Harris and Spark, updated in 1993 by F.W. Hodgson. A Simple Sub's Book proved a handy guide, especially for reporters who moved on to sub-editing. Then there is F.W. Hodgson's own excellent book, Modern Newspaper Practice,

But the blockbusters of what may seem another age were by Harold Evans - Harry's famous five: Newsman's English, Handling Newspaper Text, News Headlines, Picture Editing, and Newspaper Design. The project was a great success, underscoring the author's reputation as a great all-round journalist and the finest national editor of his generation. I have found them still on the shelves when visiting newspaper offices in the UK - and at least two volumes were left behind by yours truly in the Xinhua office in Beijing, for the Thomson Foundation courses for Chinese journalists. - James Brennan.

Copyright 1998/2006 Brennan Publications