[Lord Thomson of Fleet, Fleet Street press baron.] Producer Hugh Burnett's copy of typescript of Thomson’s interview with John Freeman in the BBC TV series 'Face to Face', marked up for publication.

Author: 
Lord Thomson of Fleet [Roy Herbert Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet] (1894-1976), Canadian-born British newspaper proprietor, one of the Fleet Street press barons [Hugh Burnett; BBC; John Freeman]
Publication details: 
Undated, but BBC interview broadcast on 4 February 1962, and this item prepared for publication in 1964.
£50.00
SKU: 24019

The present item is producer Hugh Burnett's own copy, from his papers, of the transcript of John Freeman's interview with Thomson, broadcast in the groundbreaking BBC series 'Face to Face' on 4 February 1962. This single-spaced typed transcript was produced for inclusion in Burnett's book 'Face to Face / Edited and introduced by Hugh Burnett' (London: Jonathan Cape, 1964), and is marked up with printing instructions in pencil and red ink, with a few proof corrections in green ink. 1p, foolscap 8vo. In good condition, lightly aged. Emphasizing Thomson’s unthreatening ordinariness. Begins: ‘I think I’ve got ninety-five newspapers. It was ninety-three. Now it’s ninety-five. And I think it’s seventy-two magazines.’ Thomson explains that he could have gone into ‘the grocery business, or making steel’, but that he likes the newspaper business. ‘It’s a business - a profitable business when it’s well operated. It’s a business that has a lot of prestige [...] If I start to give orders to my papers, even in something that I’m sure is correct, then where do I draw the line? The next thing I’m interfering in politics, [...] I cannot run a large number of newspapers on any other basis than complete editorial delegation, and I practice it religiously. Many of my papers say things I completely disagree with. I do nothing about this. It’s not so much morally, or ethically, but, I mean, I think their judgment is bad in many instances. I often gnash my teeth when I read a leading article in one of our papers that I know has been written with in sufficient knowledge of the subject. I have more knowledge of the subject and I’m sure they’re wrong. But, after all, again I cannot interfere with them on that.’ Other topics are his Protestant faith, preferred reading and viewing, and finally: ‘I don’t think I’d buy the Daily Herald. I mean, you don’t want to buy a headache and that’s really a pretty big headache.’