PRESS REVIEWS


Programmes shown in 2001

General comments

Tom Paulin, Newsnight - 21 December 2001
"Panorama has been extraordinary this year, I mention the Leeds football players, the thing they did on the BNP, the thing they did on the great war criminal Ariel Sharon in July - again and again Panorama has been terrific."

Financial Times - 20 June 2001
"Panorama, banished to the wastes of Sunday night, has reacted by producing some of its most striking work in years."

Financial Times - 28 July 2001
"Panorama which was strikingly revealing even after all the dirt that had been uncovered in the preceding weeks."

The Guardian - 23 July 2001
"At a time when our (journalists') integrity is in the public mind down there in the sewers, roughly on a par with professional extortionists and worse, politicians, Michael Crick's Panorama on Jeffrey Archer last Thursday night can allow us all to walk a little taller. It was the most entertaining hour of television since Eric Morecambe stopped skipping, since Alan Bleasdale's boys escaped from the blackstuff and Edmund Blackadder was blasted away on the Somme."

The People - 22 July 2001
"Panorama's divine demolition of the life and lies of Jeffrey Archer."

The Times - 9 July 2001
"It is depressing that we should rely on the media to ferret these stories out, but thank heavens they do and more grease to Panorama's elbow."

Independent on Sunday - 8 July 2001
"This series of the current affairs strand concludes by raising serious doubts about an issue that is hardly ever questioned: the reliability of fingerprint analysis."

The Daily Telegraph - 7 July 2001
"The ramifications for cases solved through fingerprint evidence is terrifying - lawyers stand by your phones."

Sunday Business - 17 June 2001
"BBC's Panorama is standing its ground after incurring the wrath of Israel over allegations to be broadcast tonight."

FT Weekend - 16 June 2001
"Panorama is still doing sterling work... Bankable Fergal Keane fronts the inquiry, a sign of how seriously even the BBC's powers that be are taking it."

The Financial Times - 20 June 2001
"an admirably calm and analytical - and consequently powerfully impressive - review of the Sabra and Shatila massacres."

Daily Mail - 5 June 2001
"A devastating exposé of the sleight of hand the Government has used to produce 'cuts' in hospital waiting lists and 'savings' on NHS red tape, and to claim credit for reducing class sizes in primary schools."

The Financial Times - 6 June 2001
"A brave 'Panorama' shows how broadcast political reporting is changing"

The Financial Times - 6 June 2001
"The programme had a big impact, not only because of what it said about government manipulation of figures but because Panorama is Panorama: a very old warhorse, perhaps, and long in the tooth, yet, for that very reason, loaded with prestige as the oldest current affairs programme in the UK and carrying the BBC banner. Had John Ware done his report for a newspaper, it is unlikely that it would have caused such fury."

Scotland on Sunday - 27 May 2001
"Panorama delved into the festering world of cricket match-fixing and illegal gambling, heaping more woe on a game struggling to maintain its credibility."

Daily Express - 12 March 2001
"As an indictment of the British state's inhumane treatment of minors, this was bang to rights."

The Times - 12 March 2001
"You might be tempted to think a do-gooder BBC crew had exagerrated the place's problems, but most of the criticism came in measured tones from such people as a former Feltham doctor, a former assistant governor, and a prison officer."

BBC Question Time - 29 March 2001
Menzies Campbell MP: "...and you needn't take the word of politicians, perhaps trying to argue from a partisan point of view, there was a Panorama programme last Sunday night which some of you may have seen, of which there was one gentleman who was actually calling for the fifth time for the operation to remove the cancerous growth in his stomach."

Conservative Party Press Release - 26 March 2001
Dr. Liam Fox MP: "For many people, Panorama will have been a shocking awakening to the true state of the NHS under Tony Blair and Alan Milburn."

Daily Mail - 6 March 2001
"As BBC's Panorama has just made clear, it would have seemed impossible for any senior figure in government not to have known that the Hindujas had been under an investigative cloud in their own country for almost 12 years."

The Observer - 11 February 2001
"The programme they have produced is almost too chilling to watch. But the horrifying story of the Wonderland Club is an important one for the public to understand."

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