Greg Philo Showed Us How Broadcast Media Really Works
Greg Philo, who died last month, was a giant in the field of critical media studies. Philo and his colleagues exposed the conservative bias of TV news across a whole range of issues, from workers’ strikes to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.
Presenters of Midlands Today, BBC regional television news service for the West Midlands, on October 24, 1988. (Photo by Birmingham Post and Mail Archive/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
Last month I learned of the death of Greg Philo, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Glasgow, who was a pioneer in British media studies. I knew Greg, although not well, so there will be many others who are better placed to tell his life story and speak to his kindness and humanity.
What follows then is not an obituary. Rather it is a tribute to his work on the sociology of the media. That work was often collaborative and is far too extensive to cover comprehensively, but I will try to summarize his contribution and his approach, and to contextualize it politically in a way that I hope highlights its value and significance.
Bearer of Bad News
In his late twenties, Greg was one of eight authors of a seminal study of British television reporting titled Bad News. The research team behind that book was led by the late John Eldridge, a professor with a background in industrial sociology, and Paul Walton, a radical sociologist with an interest in social deviance.
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