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Sir: Matthew Parris hasn't unmasked a big lie in television — he's discovered electron- ic sub-editing (Another voice, 20 April). He and his print colleagues rely on innuendo, hyperbole and unattributable sources for their copy, but we in television must witness every event we show. Most of the journalis- tic casualties of recent years have been tele- vision reporters and technicians, much braver than me, caught trying to catch the pictures that tell the story. No pooling of quotes and eye-witness accounts back at the hotel for them. If the interviewee won't say the words to camera, we can't just make it up — unlike headline writers.
Obviously Mr Parris has been jaded by his experiences at LWT in its notoriously Birtist heyday — makers of both Weekend World and the quipful Blind Date. Most other networks have very different rules. CBS bans editing cutaways altogether, and none I know of permits the unstated restag- ing of news events or the distortion of time sequences. That's why you hear so many phrases like 'earlier the crowd looked ugly'; and why Mr Parris, if he's being talked about today, is asked to pose for fresh pic- tures. As with political impartiality on tele- vision, all this is policed: the Broadcast Complaints Commission forced Sky to read out a prime-time apology after I used a cut- away of the only TUC delegate to claim that she wasn't applauding Arthur Scargill.
Next time he comes on our programmes Mr Parris is welcome not to use autocue or retakes. I notice he used both last Sunday. Adam Boulton
British Sky Broadcasting Ltd, 4 Millbank, London SW1
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