| World in Action | |
|---|---|
 1970s version of the programme's opening title | |
| Created by | Tim Hewat |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language | English |
| No. of series | 35 |
| Production | |
| Producer | Granada Television |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Original release | |
| Network | ITV |
| Release | 7 January 1963 (1963-01-07) – 7 December 1998 (1998-12-07) |
World in Action was a British investigativecurrent affairs programme made byGranada Television forITV from 7 January 1963 until 7 December 1998. Its campaigningjournalism frequently had a major impact on events of the day. Its production teams often took audacious risks, and the programme gained a solid reputation for its often-unorthodox approach. The series was sold around the world and won numerous awards. In its heyday,World in Action drew audiences of up to 23 million in Britain alone, equivalent to almost half the population.
Cabinet ministers fell to its probings. Numerous innocent victims of the Britishcriminal justice system, including theBirmingham Six, were released from jail. Honouring the programme in its 50th anniversary awards thePolitical Studies Association said, "World in Action thrived on unveiling corruption and highlighting underhand dealings.World in Action came to be seen as hard-hitting investigative journalism at its best."[1] A melodramatic post-trial encounter in 1967 betweenMick Jagger and senior British establishment figures, in which the rock star and his retinue were flown by helicopter onto the lawn of astately home, was engineered by thenWorld in Action researcher and futureBBC Director-GeneralJohn Birt. Decades later, Birt himself described it as "one of the iconic moments of the Sixties."[2] Soon after she becameConservative Party leader,Margaret Thatcher was said to have told the BBC Director-General, SirIan Trethowan, that she consideredWorld in Action to consist of "just a lot ofTrots.Panorama, however, are bastards."[3]
Its removal after 35 years was seen by some as part of a generaldumbing down of British television and of ITV in particular.[4] One commercial TV regulatory official privately characterised theTonight programme, which replaced it, as merely "fluffy".[3] Others sawWorld in Action's eventual disappearance as the inevitable consequence of rising commercial pressures. Announcing a £250,000 fund for an investigative journalism training scheme,Channel Four said in November 2011 that a decline in the pool of investigative journalism had occurred since "the demise of training grounds such asWorld in Action".[5]
World in Action was the pre-eminent current-affairs programme produced by Britain's ITV Network in its first 50 years. Along withThis Week,Weekend World,TV Eye,First Tuesday,The Big Story, andThe Cook Report – and the news-gathering ofITN –World in Action gave ITV a reputation for quality broadcast journalism to rival theBBC's output.
For the first 35 years of its existence, ITV had a near-monopoly of television advertising revenue.Roy Thomson, who ranScottish Television, famously described ITV as a "licence to print money".[6] In return for this income, the broadcasting regulator insisted that the ITV companies broadcast a proportion of their programmes aspublic-service TV. Out of this was born the network's reputation for serious current affairs, eagerly grabbed by programme makers under Granada's founder, LordSidney Bernstein.
Some of the most prominent figures in 20th-century British broadcasting helped to createWorld in Action, in particular,Tim Hewat, "the maverick genius of Granada's current affairs in its formative years",[7] andDavid Plowright, but alsoJeremy Isaacs,Michael Parkinson, John Birt, andGus Macdonald and its most long-serving executive producer, Ray Fitzwalter. The series developed the skills of generations of journalists, and in particular, filmmakers.Michael Apted worked on the originalSeven Up!.Paul Greengrass, who spent 10 years onWorld in Action, told the BBC: "My first dream was to work onWorld In Action, to be honest. It was that wonderful eclectic mixture of filmmaking and reportage. That was my training ground. It showed me the world and made me see many things."[8] He later toldThe Guardian: "If there's a thread running through my career it'sWorld in Action – the phrase as well as the programme."[9]
Although its rivals produced many memorable programmes,World in Action's "slamming into the subject of each edition without wordy prefaces from a reassuring host-figure"[7] consistently gained a reputation for the kind of original journalism and filmmaking that made headlines and won major awards. In its time, the series was honoured by all of the major broadcasting awards, including manyBAFTA, theRoyal Television Society, andEmmy awards.
World in Action's style was the opposite to its urbane BBC rivals, especially to the London BBC. By repute, especially in its early days,World in Action would never employ anybody who was on first-name terms with any politician. Gus Macdonald, an executive producer of the programme, said it had been "born brash".[10] Steve Boulton, one of its last editors, wrote inThe Independent that the programme's ethos was to "comfort the afflicted – and afflict the comfortable." Paul Greengrass toldThe Guardian in June 2008 that the chairman of Granada TV once told him: "Don't forget, your job's to make trouble."[9]
The series outlasted all of its contemporaries in ITV current affairs, killed off as the commercial pressures on the network grew with the arrival of multichannel TV in the UK. Eventually,World In Action, too, was removed from the schedules by its own creator, Granada TV. On 7 December 1998,World in Actionceased operations for good after 35 years on air. It was replaced in the schedules byTonight.
From the beginning, and especially from the late 1960s,World in Action broke new ground in investigative techniques. Landmark investigations included thePoulson affair, corruption in theWest Midlands Serious Crime Squad, the exposure of the shadowy and violent far-right groupCombat 18, investigations intoL. Ron Hubbard andScientology, and most notably, a long campaign that resulted in the release from prison of theBirmingham Six, sixIrishmen falsely accused of plantingProvisional Irish Republican Army bombs inBirmingham pubs.
World in Action's appetite for controversy created tension with theIndependent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the official regulator during most of the series's run, which had the power to intervene before broadcast. SirDenis Forman, one of Granada's founders, wrote that "trench warfare" existed between the programme and the industry regulator, theIndependent Television Authority, in the years between 1966 and 1969 asWorld in Action sought to establish its journalistic freedoms.[11]
The most celebrated dispute was in 1973, over the banning ofThe Friends and Influence of John L Poulson, the definitive film about the Poulson affair, itself one of the defining scandals of British political life in the 1960s. Poulson was an architect, who was jailed a year later forcorrupting politicians and civil servants to advance his construction business. The regulator, which was then the IBA, banned the film without seeing it and without giving official reasons other than "broadcasting policy". As a protest, Granada broadcast a blank screen – which, bizarrely, recorded the third-highest TV audience of that week. After a public furor, which saw newspapers from theSunday Times to theSocialist Worker unite in condemnation of "censorship", the IBA held a second vote, having by then seen the film. By a single vote, the ban was lifted and the programme, by then retitledThe Rise and Fall of John Poulson, was transmitted on 30 April 1973, three months after it was first scheduled.[12]
In January 1980, the programme examined the business practices of the then chairman ofManchester United football club,Louis Edwards. Edwards ran a wholesale butchery business that supplied schools inManchester;WIA exposed practices of bribery of council officials and the supply of meat that was unfit for human consumption to such institutions; Edwards' businesses were subsequently prosecuted and lost their contracts. Louis Edwards himself died of a heart attack a month after the show was broadcast.
World in Action tackled the Britishintelligence services, as well as the Royal Navy, over their recruitment practices; senior navy personnel famouslydoor-stepped the director ofWorld in Action's film in question. The programme broadcast revelations bywhistleblowers from bothGCHQ,[13] the government's electronic eavesdropping and surveillance headquarters, and from theJoint Intelligence Committee.[14]
Its most audacious investigation of the intelligence community was, perhaps, an extended edition in July 1984 titled "The Spy Who Never Was", the confessions of a formerMI5 officer,Peter Wright.Spycatcher, Wright's subsequent account of the period when his colleagues and he had, as he put it, "bugged and burgled our way across London",[15] revealed what had in effect been a planned coup against the then-Labour government ofHarold Wilson. Wright appeared to have been in charge of the technical side of things. "The Wilson plot", as it became known, was corroborated to varying degrees both before and after the film's transmission in various other books by journalists and in volumes of memoirs by others involved in the conspiracy. Wright's book was the most explosive of them all. Wright, embittered by a still-unresolved pension dispute, fled to Australia, where the book was written and finally published – to the fury of Margaret Thatcher – with the assistance of the original programme's chief researcher,Paul Greengrass. Publication in Britain was initially banned outright by the government of Margaret Thatcher.
The series was rarely away from the courts and the threat of legal action. The Scientologists tried – and failed – to stopWorld in Action's broadcasts about them through the courts, and in 1980, members of the programme's staff and senior executives at Granada TV announced that they would be prepared to go to prison rather than submit to aHouse of Lords ruling[16] that the programme reveal the identity of an informant who had suppliedWIA with 250 pages of secret documents from the then-state-ownedBritish Steel Corporation[17] which was at the time locked in anindustrial dispute with its workforce.
In 1995,Susan O'Keeffe, aWorld in Action journalist, was threatened with prison in Ireland for refusing to reveal her sources. She had investigated scandals within the Irishmeat industry in two films in 1991, setting in motion a three-yearTribunal of Inquiry in Dublin, which found that much of her criticism of the industry was substantiated. The tribunal, though, demanded that she name her informants, and when she refused to do so, she was charged by the IrishDirector of Public Prosecutions.[18] The case became acause célèbre in theRepublic of Ireland, and in January 1995 she faced trial forcontempt of court but was cleared of the charge.[19] O'Keeffe was honoured in the 1994Freedom of Information Awards for her stand.[20]
In its last few years, the programme was involved in two high-profilelibel cases. It won the first (along withThe Guardian) against the formerConservativecabinet ministerJonathan Aitken, and lost the second, against thehigh street chainMarks & Spencer.[21]
On 10 April 1995, Aitken, himself a former journalist forYorkshire Television, called a televised press conference three hours before the transmission of aWorld in Action film,Jonathan of Arabia, demanding that allegations about his dealings with leadingSaudis be withdrawn.[22] In a phrase that would come to haunt him, Aitken promised to wield "the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play ... to cut out the cancer of bent and twisted journalism."[23] Aitken was subsequently sentenced to 18 months in prison forperjuring himself in the resulting libel case.[24]World in Action followed the collapse of Aitken's libel case with a special edition whose title reflected the MP's claim to wield the "sword of truth". It was calledThe Dagger of Deceit.
Although the series's lasting reputation is for its investigative work, it also led the way in introducing other techniques to mainstream TV. In 1971, years before the rise of "reality" programmes on TV schedules,World in Action challenged theStaffordshire village ofLongnor to quit smoking,[25][26] a forerunner of many of the popular-challenge documentaries that enjoyed success in the 21st-century reality-television boom.
In 1984,World in Action caused a sensation by challenging a rising young Conservative Member of Parliament,Matthew Parris, to live for a week on a £26 unemployment benefit payment to test the reality of his own critical views on unemployed people[27] – Parris subsequently abandoned Parliament for a career as a broadcaster and writer. The same year,World in Action revealed the tricks behind politicaloratory by coaching a complete beginner, Ann Brennan, to deliver a speech, which won a standing ovation at the annual conference of theSocial Democratic Party, using techniques developed by ProfessorMax Atkinson. Eminent political commentator SirRobin Day, covering the conference for BBC television, described Mrs Brennan's performance as "[t]he most refreshing speech we've heard so far."
World in Action helped to pioneer the technique of usingcovert cameras, not just in investigative work, but also in social documentary, including, from the earliest days, the treatment of gypsies, the old in care ("Ward F13"), and poverty in England. The arrival of high-quality miniature cameras allowed ambitious projects such asDonal MacIntyre's award-winning programmes in October 1996 on theillegal drug trade, and the future Conservative MPAdam Holloway's disturbing reports on the reality of life among thehomeless in 1991. In 1998,World in Action took advantage of the new technology to equip an entire house with secret cameras hidden in places from coke tins to fish tanks to catch out shoddy builders. The success of the two-part series calledHouse of Horrors, produced by Kate Middleton, led not only to the ITV seriesHouse of Horrors and to the BBC'sRogue Traders, but also to a whole new genre of programming, around the world, based around hidden-camera footage of dodgy tradesmen.
World in Action also gave rise to a number of other spin-off series, most famously theSeven Up! documentaries that have followed the lives of a group of British people who turned seven years old in 1963. The most recent,63 UP, was shown in 2019.Michael Apted directed most episodes; parallel series have also started in South Africa, the US, and Russia.
More recent current-affairs series on other channels, such as theMacIntyre series on BBC andFive, andChannel 4'sDispatches, commissioned by Dorothy Byrne, a formerWorld in Action producer, may be seen as having inherited certain aspects ofWorld in Action's hard-hitting journalistic style.[citation needed]
One of the programme's hallmarks was its willingness to embrace popular culture, at a time when its competitors preferred a morehighbrow approach. One of the earliest editions reported on overspending at theMinistry of Defence in the style of a contemporary gameshow,Beat the Clock. The programme was so controversial, it was banned from being shown on ITV by the then-regulatory body, the Independent Television Authority; instead, 10 minutes of it were shown on the BBC as an act of journalistic solidarity.[28] The gameshow device re-emerged in 1989, when an academic study of the uptake of tax-fundedbenefits by the middle class was transformed into a mock quiz show namedSpongers, fronted by a well-known star of game formats,Nicholas Parsons.
Popular music played a significant role inWIA's history. An early edition, in 1966, carried afly-on-the-wall account of daily life aboard one of the then-pirate radio ships,Radio Caroline, at a time when the British government was determined to preserve the radio monopoly of the BBC by driving the "pirates" off the air. In 1964, the show covered the launch of the second pirate radio ship, Radio Atlanta, by putting a film crew on board the radio ship as she sailed into position.
After the offshore radio ships were outlawed, only Radio Caroline's two ships continued, soWIA visited one of the ships in September 1967. The British government were furious and banned the camera crew from sailing back into the UK at Felixstowe, just a few miles away, forcing them to sail to Holland and then fly back to the UK.
The long-running intermittentSeven Up! series of TV films, which in due course spanned decades, was first broadcast from 1964 as part ofWorld in Action. By its intimate technique of filming the everyday lives of children and interviewing them, a different picture of life in Britain was formed.
In 1967, a young researcher named John Birt established his early reputation by persuading the rock star Mick Jagger to appear onWorld in Action[29] to debate youth culture and his recent drug conviction, with establishment figures, includingWilliam Rees-Mogg ofThe Times, who had written a famous editorial defending the singer. Jagger so enjoyed the experience that he invited the Granada team to filmthe Rolling Stones at the band's free 1969 concert inHyde Park, London. The resulting film,The Stones in the Park, was one of the iconic concert films of the 1960s. John Birt moved on to editWorld in Action, and eventually became the director-general of the BBC.
The rise ofThatcherism and the misery of mass unemployment hadWIA examining the phenomenon through the eyes of another emerging band,UB40, inA Statistic, A Reminder (1981), a line taken from one of the band's songs. Six years later, a special edition of the programme was devoted to the Irish rock bandU2 and their charismatic front manBono. Like the Rolling Stones before them, U2 allowedWorld in Action to film one of their classic concerts in 1987 in Ireland. This footage, shot by future Hollywood director Paul Greengrass, was shown only once on ITV because ofcopyright restrictions, although it has circulated among fans as abootleg.
In 1983,Stevie Wonder, at the height of his popularity, gave the programme a musical exclusive when he agreed to let aWorld in Action crew record him performing an unreleased song, written to helpDemocratic politicianJesse Jackson's electioneering, forThe Race Against Reagan.[30] Another popular singer,Sting, appeared in a more criticalWorld in Action episode, which questioned the effectiveness of hisRainforest Foundation.[31] In August 1980, the series devoted an edition to the story behind chart rigging – an ongoing practice where record companies were bribing the British chart compilers to put certain artists' singles higher in the charts than they actually were. Singles mentioned on the programme included several UK number-one hits of the previous 12 months.[32]
Perhaps the most bruising encounter betweenWIA and popular entertainment was the 1995 filmBlack and Blue, which featured a covert recording of a performance by comedianBernard Manning as the star of a charity function organised by the Manchester branch of thePolice Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers. Manning's racist and homophobic performance, loudly applauded by those present, caused outrage whenWIA broadcast excerpts, sparking an intense debate about the willingness of British police officers to embrace adiverse culture.[33] FormerWIA editor Steve Boulton revealed during a 2013 ITV documentary[34] aboutWorld in Action that the covert recording had been made by a fellow speaker at the function, former LiverpoolMilitant politicianDerek Hatton, himself a previous target of aWorld in Action investigation.[35] Hatton used a miniature cassette recorder concealed in Boulton's ownFilofax.
World in Action employed many leading journalists, among themJohn Pilger;Michael Parkinson;Gordon Burns;Nick Davies,Ed Vulliamy andDavid Leigh of theGuardian; Alasdair Palmer of theSunday Telegraph; John Ware, BBCPanorama's leading investigative reporter;Tony Wilson, whose second career as a music impresario was immortalised in the feature film24 Hour Party People; Michael Gillard, creator of theSlicker business pages in the satirical magazinePrivate Eye;Donal MacIntyre; the writer Mark Hollingsworth; Quentin McDermott, since 1999 a leading investigative reporter for theAustralian Broadcasting Corporation; Tony Watson, editor of theYorkshire Post for 13 years and editor-in-chief of thePress Association from December 2006; andAndrew Jennings, author ofLords of the Rings andThe Dirty Game, who has campaigned vigorously for more than a decade against corruption in international sport.
Two formerWorld in Action journalists uncovered one of the biggest broadcasting scandals of the 1990s. Laurie Flynn, a central figure in the British Steel papers case, and Michael Sean Gillard revealed that large parts of a 1996Carlton Television documentary,The Connection, about drug trafficking fromColombia, had been fabricated.[36][37]Flynn and Gillard's exposé inthe Guardian in May 1998 led to an inquiry and a record £2 million fine for Carlton from the then-regulator, the Independent Television Commission,[38] as well as provoking a passionate debate about truthfulness in broadcast journalism.[39][40]
Unusually for a current-affairs programme,WIA's standard format was as avoice-over documentary without a regular reporter, although a handful ofWIA journalists did appear in front of camera, includingChris Kelly,Gordon Burns, John Pilger, Gus Macdonald, Nick Davies,Adam Holloway,Stuart Prebble (who later became the programme's editor), Mike Walsh, David Taylor,Donal MacIntyre, andGranada Reports journalist andFactory Records supremoTony Wilson, who became the show's first in-vision anchor in the early 1980s. Guest presenters were used on rare occasions, among themJonathan Dimbleby,Sandy Gall, Martyn Gregory,Sue Lawley, andLynn Faulds Wood. Perhaps its most celebrated guest presenter was distinguished AmericananchormanWalter Cronkite, who came out of retirement to cover the1983 UK general election for the series.[41]
A small group of narrators delivered the vast majority ofWIA's voice-overs. The two original narrators wereDerek Cooper, later to become well known as a broadcaster and writer about food, and Wilfrid Thomas. The science presenter.James Burke, did a number of commentaries on early editions of the programme. Other major contributors includedDavid Plowright,Chris Kelly,Jim Pope, Philip Tibenham, and Andrew Brittain. Among the guest narrators who contributed occasional commentaries were popular actorsRobert Lindsay andJean Boht.
The series was known for its gritty visual style, almost always shot on location, and a number of its producer-directors went on to work on major film projects. Those working on the series in its early years includedMichael Apted, later to directCoal Miner's Daughter,Gorillas in the Mist, and theJames Bond filmThe World Is Not Enough, as well as theUp Series documentaries (the earliest programmes were part of theWIA series), andMike Hodges, who went on to directGet Carter andFlash Gordon. Director John Goldschmidt made several films for the series in the early 1970s. Later,Paul Greengrass, director of the feature filmsUnited 93,The Bourne Supremacy, andThe Bourne Ultimatum and of the drama-documentariesBloody Sunday andThe Murder ofStephen Lawrence, cut his directing teeth onWorld in Action.Leslie Woodhead, director ofThe Stones in the Park, the award-winningA Cry From The Grave, manyDisappearing World films and also regarded by many as a founder of thedrama-documentary movement,[42] worked onWorld in Action for many years as a producer-director and executive. Long-timeWorld in Action alumni who went on to direct and produce Granada's international award-winningDisappearing World films include Brian Moser, its instigator and original producer, and Charlie Nairn.
Among the more recent generation of filmmakers to emerge fromWorld in Action wereAlex Holmes, who became editor of theBBC2 documentary strandModern Times and went on to write and direct theBAFTA-winning dramatised documentary seriesDunkirk for the BBC andHouse of Saddam for the BBC andHBO; and Katy Jones, a formerWIA producer who became a key collaborator with the screenwriterJimmy McGovern as a producer on the drama-documentariesHillsborough (1996) andSunday (2002).
WIA was a starting point for several key programme-makers who went on to major roles in British broadcasting. John Birt became director-general of the BBC, having been programme controller of the ITV stationLondon Weekend Television, where he created the current-affairs flagship,Weekend World.
SeveralWIA staffers were promoted to significant roles in Granada Television, among themDavid Plowright,[43] who became its chairman and later went on to become deputy chairman ofChannel 4. Steve Morrison became chief executive at Granada. Gus Macdonald held the same role at another ITV franchise,Scottish Television.
Stuart Prebble, a former editor, became chief executive of ITV, and Steve Anderson became head of news and current affairs for that channel. Both have since moved on to the independent production industry. Ian McBride, who led the team that made the Birmingham Six programmes, became managing editor of Granada TV, and was director of compliance for ITV until 2008.
Dianne Nelmes, who worked as a researcher and executive producer ofWIA, was the founding editor of Granada TV's hugely successfulThis Morning with Richard and Judy and went on to head daytime and factual programmes at ITV.
Dorothy Byrne, a formerWIA producer, went on to become head of news and current affairs at Channel 4. Julian Bellamy, who worked as a young researcher on one ofWIA's last big foreign investigations – aboutarms deals between Britain andIndonesia[44] – later headed Channel 4's entertainment channelE4 and was programme controller of the BBC digital channelBBC Three before rejoining Channel 4 as its head of programming from 2007 to 2011.[45] In 2012, Bellamy was appointed creative director of Discovery International.
A number ofWIA veterans went on to set up and run their own independent television production companies.John Smithson andDavid Darlow, who set up the production company Darlow Smithson, responsible for the feature filmsTouching the Void andDeep Water and many factual TV programmes includingBlack Box andThe Falling Man, worked together onWIA. Claudia Milne founded twentytwenty TV, which made a successful current-affairs strand for ITV,The Big Story, as well as popular factual series such asBad Boys' Army' on ITV andThat'll Teach 'Em on Channel 4. Brian Lapping set up the much-garlanded Brook Lapping company, which madeThe Death of Yugoslavia and many other landmark contemporary history programmes. Stuart Prebble, a former editor ofWorld in Action, runs Liberty Bell, best known for the popularGrumpy Old Men series on the BBC. Another former editor, Steve Boulton, started aneponymous company, which madeYoung, Nazi & Proud, aBafta-winning profile of the youngBritish National Party activistMark Collett. Simon Albury went on to lead the Campaign for Quality Television and was a founder director of the ITV companyMeridian Broadcasting.
One of the biggest British independent production companies is All 3 Media, which controls several other leading companies, includingLime Pictures, formerlyMersey Television, makers ofHollyoaks. It is run by Steve Morrison, a formerWIA producer.
Although in its early days,World in Action was reputed never to employ anyone who was on first-name terms with any politician, a number of subsequent Britishparliamentarians haveWorld in Action on theircurricula vitae. The most recent is the Conservative MPAdam Holloway, elected to theHouse of Commons in 2005. Former Britishcabinet ministerJack Straw worked onWorld in Action as a researcher, as didMargaret Beckett, who served asTony Blair's lastForeign Secretary.Chris Mullin, Labour MP forSunderland South from 1987 to 2010, played a major role in the programme's campaign on behalf of the Birmingham Six. Gus Macdonald, now Baron Macdonald of Tradeston, and from 1998 to 2003 a government minister, was formerly an executive on the programme. John Birt (by then ennobled as Baron Birt), was personal adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair between 2001 and 2005.
Editors of the programme (sometimes with the title of executive producer) were, successively,Tim Hewat,Derek Granger, Alex Valentine, David Plowright, Jeremy Wallington,Leslie Woodhead, John Birt, Gus Macdonald, David Boulton,Brian Lapping, Ray Fitzwalter,Allan Segal, David Cresswell,Stuart Prebble, Nick Hayes, Dianne Nelmes,Charles Tremayne, Steve Boulton, and Jeff Anderson. Anderson also became editor ofWorld in Action's replacement,Tonight, before becoming head of current affairs at ITV in 2006. Mike Lewis, a formerWIA producer, was appointed editor ofTonight in October 2006.
Brian Winston, Pro-Vice Chancellor (External Relations) at theUniversity of Lincoln, who has also held leading posts at the Universities ofWestminster,Cardiff,Pennsylvania State andNew York, was a researcher and producer in the early series ofWorld in Action.
Ray Fitzwalter,WIA's longest-serving editor and the man behind the ground-breaking Poulson investigations, became a visiting fellow at theUniversity of Salford School of Media, Music, and Performance.
The late Gavin MacFadyen, who worked on early series ofWorld in Action as a producer-director, best known for his undercover human-rights films, became a visiting professor atCity University in 2005. He was also director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism.
David Leigh, who madeJonathan of Arabia, the film which provokedJonathan Aitken's self-destructive libel action,[46] was made Britain's first professor of reporting at City University, London, in September 2006.
Although a great many director/producers, journalists, and editors passed through the programme, onecameraman played an overwhelming role in shaping the appeal of the series. George Jesse Turner served on the programme from 1966 until its end. By his own count, he shot the principal footage for some 600 of its 1,400 editions, and filmed all of Michael Apted's documentaries in theSeven Up! series.[47] Turner was shot himself – in the backside – by an Israeli bullet while filming a clash betweenFatah guerrillas and theIsraeli Army in 1969.[48] Shortly before he retired from Granada, Turner was honoured by BAFTA in 1999 for his work as a documentary cameraman.
Among the many cameramen who also contributed toWIA wasChris Menges, who went on to become a distinguished cinematographer –Kes,The Killing Fields, andThe Mission are among his credits – and a film director forA World Apart.[49]
Early series were introduced by composerLaurie Johnson's track "Private Eye", but the series is perhaps best remembered for the distinctivetitle sequence created by John Sheppard in the late 1960s, combining the image ofda Vinci'sVitruvian Man with a musical score of a modernclassical music structure (inspired byJohann Sebastian Bach'sToccata and Fugues), in a descending series oforgan andacoustic guitarchords combined with ajazz rhythm. The score was given the working title of "Jam for World in Action", and has been credited variously to Jonathon Weston orShawn Phillips. English musicianMick Weaver also claims to have jointly authored the score with Phillips.[50] The track was covered byMatt Berry in 2018 on his albumTelevision Themes.[51]