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''World in Action'' was a British investigative current affairs programme made by Granada Television from 1963 until 1998. Its campaigning journalism frequently had a major impact on events of the day. Its production teams often took audacious risks and gained a solid reputation for its often unorthodox, some said left-wing, approach. Cabinet ministers fell victim to its probings. Numerous innocent victims of the British criminal justice system, including the Birmingham Six, were released from jail. Honouring the programme in its fiftieth anniversary awards, the Political 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."〔(Political Studies Association pdf )〕 A melodramatic post-trial encounter in 1967 between Mick Jagger and senior British establishment figures, in which rock star and retinue were wafted by helicopter onto the lawn of a stately home, was engineered by then ''World in Action'' researcher and future BBC Director General, John Birt. He decades later described it as "one of the iconic moments of the Sixties."〔(John Birt's MacTaggart Lecture 2005 )〕 ''World in Action'' was sold around the world. It won numerous awards. The long-running intermittent ''Seven Up!'' series of TV films, which in due course spanned decades, was first broadcast from 1964 as part of ''World in Action''. In its heyday ''World in Action'' drew audiences of up to 23 million in Britain alone, equivalent to almost half the population. Margaret Thatcher was said to have told the BBC Director General, Sir Iain Trethowan, soon after she became Conservative Party leader that she considered ''World in Action'' to consist of "just a lot of Trotskyists."〔(Discussion recorded at London Frontline Club, May 2008 )〕 Its removal after 35 years was seen by some as part of a general dumbing-down of British television, and of ITV in particular.〔 *Ray Fitzwalter, ''The Dream That Died: The Rise And Fall Of ITV'', London: 2008.〕 One commercial TV regulatory official characterised in private the'' Tonight'' programme which replaced it as merely "fluffy."〔(recorded at London Frontline Club, May 2008 )〕 Others saw ''World 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 there had been a decline in the pool of investigative journalism since "the demise of training grounds such as ''World in Action''".〔 (Guardian. 8 Nov 2011 ) 〕'' ==Origins== ''World in Action'' was the pre-eminent current affairs program produced by Britain's ITV Network in its first 50 years. Along with ''This Week'', ''Weekend World'', ''TV Eye'', ''First Tuesday'', ''The Big Story'' and ''The Cook Report'' – and the news-gathering of ITN – ''World in Action'' gave ITV a reputation for quality broadcast journalism to rival the BBC's output. For the first 35 years of its existence, ITV had a near-monopoly of television advertising revenue. Roy Thomson, who ran Scottish Television famously described ITV as a "licence to print money". In return for this income, the broadcasting regulator insisted that the ITV companies broadcast a proportion of their programmes as public service TV. Out of this was born the network's reputation for serious current affairs, eagerly grabbed by program makers under Granada's founder Lord Sidney Bernstein. Some of the dominant figures in 20th-century British broadcasting helped to create ''World in Action'', in particular Tim Hewat "the maverick genius of Granada's current affairs in its formative years"〔Guardian 4/12/2004 Tim Hewat Obituary by Philip Purser〕 and his ''World in Action'' successor David Plowright: but also Jeremy Isaacs, Michael Parkinson, John Birt and Gus Macdonald and, its most long-serving executive-producer, Ray Fitzwalter. ''World in Action'' trained generations of journalists and, in particular, film-makers. Michael Apted worked on the original ''Seven Up''. Paul Greengrass, who spent ten years on ''World in Action'', told the BBC: "My first dream was to work on ''World 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." He later told ''The Guardian'': "If there's a thread running through my career it's ''World in Action'' – the phrase as well as the programme." Although its rivals produced many memorable programs, it was ''World in Action'' "slamming into the subject of each edition without wordy prefaces from a reassuring host-figure"〔 which consistently gained a reputation for the kind of original journalism and film making which made headlines and won major awards. In its time, the series was honoured by all of the major broadcasting awards, including many BAFTA, the Royal Television Society and Emmy Awards. ''World in Action's'' style was the opposite to its urbane BBC rival's, 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".〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=World in Action )〕 Steve Boulton, one of its last editors, wrote in ''The Independent'' that the programme's ethos was to "comfort the afflicted – and afflict the comfortable." Paul Greengrass told ''The Guardian'' in June 2008 that the chairman of Granada TV once told him: "Don't forget, your job's to make trouble."〔 ''World in Action'' out-lasted all of its contemporaries in ITV current affairs, killed off as the commercial pressures on the network grew with the arrival of multi-channel TV in the UK. Eventually ''World In Action'', too, was removed from the schedules by its own (by now dramatically different ) creator, Granada TV, following pressure from the ITV Network Centre. ''World in Action'', with its worldwide view and coverage, was replaced in the schedules by ''Tonight''. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「World in Action」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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