Following the election of Tony Blair, British liberalism's leading journalists were, it is fair to say, beside themselves. The first floodgate was Gordon Brown's surrender of vital economic powers to an unelected committee of financiers at the Bank of England. How daring he is. This was illustrated by a stereotype of a savage. 15 Nov 1999 Kosovo is today's slow news.
Slow news is news that is ignored or minimised.
It is a highly effective, though generally unrecognised, form of censorship in democracies. The expulsion and terrorising of 240,000 Serbs and other minorities from Kosovo since Nato took charge is of little media interest. Last week, the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom held a conference in central London about a threat to broadcasting that few people know about. They included broadsheet editors, deputy editors, literary editors, ex-editors, novelists, actors and John Birt.