Tony Blair's 'Media' Speech: The Commentators

Tony Blair's speech challenged the media over its standards in his valedictory lecture. Many of his charges about the absence of balance, attacks on motive and a pack mentality stand up, even if some are exaggerated and also applied well before his arrival in 10 Downing Street. Mr Blair's solutions did ot match his critique. What is required is a more self‐questioning media, being held to account on the internet and on specialist blogging sites. Vigorous criticism, requiring justification, is a more credible rout than tighter regulation. Tony Blair's speech on the changing pressures on the media is both interesting and convincing in its diagnosis (although generally reported in ways that did not reveal this). It is less convincing in suggestions for change: the fact that on‐line media will fall under Of‐com, and so under its minimal ‘content regulation’ will have little impact. Effective change could begin with other types of (self or other regulation). Some steps towards change might include minimal requirements for journalists and editors to accept elementary forms of accountability, such as disclosing conflicts of interest and payments made for ‘stories’. The scale of media coverage may be crucial in determining the allocation of aid, yet the attention the media pays to particular causes is arbitrary. Many serious disasters are not reported and as a consequence do not receive adequate aid, so that the victims of the crisis will lose out. Chronic long term problems, like famine, are ignored in favour of ‘sudden emergencies’. Reporting seeks sensation and simple stories which influences the way that aid agencies respond to the media. The complex background to a faraway disaster is often overlooked and not properly reported. Tony Blair's speech describing some of the news media as ‘feral beasts’ contained one paragraph which contained an insight into his views on new media. It was known that the outgoing Prime Minister was uncomfortable with some aspects of new technology but his remarks reveal a wider disappointment with how new media has failed to deliver changes which he had hoped for in political communications.This paper records Mr Blair's problems with new media and argues that by focusing on how the new technologies might provide a better way for politicians to by‐pass the traditional media he has missed the point of their wider benefits.     

Influences on Detention Decisions in the Juvenile Justice System

This paper examines the pretrial detention of juveniles in County X located in a northeastern state. The sample (N=642) included Black, White, and Hispanic males and females adjudicated delinquent in the summer of 2000. The following independent variables were analyzed with respect to the dependent variable of pretrial detention: age, sex, address, race, current offense (misdemeanors, violent misdemeanors, felonies, violent felonies, and probation violations), prior offense (misdemeanors, violent misdemeanors, felonies, and violent felonies), and previous dispositions (community or placement). Several variables were found to be significant in increasing the odds of pretrial detention: probation violations, prior misdemeanors, prior residential placements, prior community interventions, age, sex, urban address, felonies, prior violent misdemeanors, and prior violent felonies. It was expected that minority youths would be more likely to be detained, but race was only significant in the absence of the variable of address. Urban youths were more likely to be detained resulting in an over‐representation of minorities in detention, since most of the minority population resides in the urban area. Also included is supplemental material based on interviews with defense lawyers, judges, masters, and juvenile probation officers.     

The Imperial Judiciary Meets the Impotent Congress?

The continuing debate over an activist judiciary frequently overlooks the issue whether majoritarian institutions such as Congress can be the principal policy makers for a democracy as well as whether they ought to be. An explicit comparison of the institutional capacities of the Congress and federal courts on abortion funding suggests that Congress is capable of developing representative, responsible, and educative policies. However, a retreat by the "Imperial Judiciary" from an activist posture would not necessarily transfer power from the courts to the Congress but from the courts to unelected bureaucracies within the Congress and the Presidency.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN THE NHS AND GP UTILIZATION IN ENGLAND UNDER NEW LABOUR, 1997–2003

In this article we compare the pattern of service utilization in the period preceding the health‐care reforms introduced by New Labour with service utilization following the refoms. Data from the 1997 and 2003 waves of the British Household Panel Survey are used to estimate a series of utilization functions. These show that GP utilization overall fell, for women more than men and for the sick more than others. The results suggest that GPs responded to the changing context the reforms created but there are different interpretations of that response. They support the contention that GPs devoted greater attention to preventative services post‐reform than had previously been the case. They are also consistent with the contention that GPs responded less directly to the needs of their patients, either because they became more sophisticated in interpreting those needs or conscious of the increased opportunity costs of responding to them.