David Elstein

David Elstein, formerly at Thames Television, BSkyB, and Channel 5, is chairman of the National Film and Television School and of the British Screen Advisory Council. He is external editor of the Media&Net theme of openDemocracy.

Recent articles

A dispute over the political views of a leading BBC journalist reflects the concerns of the corporation’s hierarchy over its relationship with Britain’s New Labour government, says David Elstein.

Terrorist attacks challenge journalists to report freely and assert their independence from state influence. How well do they perform under pressure? David Elstein looks critically at the record of the Anglo-American media since 9/11.

Will Iraq’s legacy be a resentful, mistrusted America? In the fifth of a series in which original voices from around the world exchange letters with Americans, the British broadcaster David Elstein, a libertarian conservative and anti-anti-American, expresses his dismay over recent United States foreign policy to the Hudson Institute’s Irwin Stelzer.

The Hutton report is both hopelessly skewed and a devastating critique of the BBC’s failures, says David Elstein. But it provides the corporation with an opportunity to change for the better.

The Iraq war focused attention on how national broadcasters report armed conflicts. In Britain, the BBC could use Iraq to cultivate its dominant self-image of impartial professionalism – especially in light of the performance of companies like Fox News and al-Jazeera. But a deeper source of concern arises, suggests David Elstein: did the BBC’s very professionalism and investment of resources make it an inadvertent combatant in the government’s battle for public opinion?