World in Action

Did You Know?

• In 1971, World in Action challenged the Staffordshire village of Longnor to quit smoking, a forerunner of popular-challenge documentaries.
• In 1984, the programme challenged MP Matthew Parris to live for a week on a £26 unemployment benefit payment.
• The title sequence combined da Vinci's Vitruvian Man with a musical score inspired by Bach's Toccata and Fugues.

Origins

World in Action was the pre-eminent current-affairs programme produced by Britain's ITV Network in its first 50 years. Along with This Week, Weekend World, and other series, it gave ITV a reputation for quality broadcast journalism to rival the BBC's output. For the first years of its existence, ITV had a near-monopoly of television advertising revenue, and 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 programme makers under Granada's founder, Lord Bernstein. Some of the most prominent figures in 20th-century British broadcasting helped to create World in Action, in particular Tim Hewat, David Plowright, Jeremy Isaacs, Michael Parkinson, John Birt, Gus Macdonald, and its most long-serving executive producer, Ray Fitzwalter. The series developed the skills of generations of journalists and filmmakers, including Michael Apted and Paul Greengrass.

Investigative legacy

World in Action pioneered investigative journalism from its early days, especially after the late 1960s. Its major exposés covered the Poulson corruption scandal, misconduct in the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad, the violent far-right group Combat 18, the Church of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard, and a sustained campaign that freed the Birmingham Six. The show’s willingness to provoke controversy put it at odds with the Independent Broadcasting Authority, the regulator that could block broadcasts. The most famous clash came in 1973, when the IBA banned a film about the Poulson affair without viewing it, citing only “broadcasting policy.” Granada responded by airing a blank screen, which oddly became the week’s third most-watched program. Public outrage, with newspapers from the Sunday Times to Socialist Worker denouncing censorship, forced the IBA to reconsider. After seeing the film, the authority voted by a single margin to lift the ban, and the documentary, retitled The Rise and Fall of John Poulson, aired three months late. In January 1980, the show investigated Manchester United chairman Louis Edwards, revealing bribes to council officials and the sale of meat unfit for human consumption to schools. Edwards’ companies were prosecuted and lost their contracts; he died of a heart attack a month after the broadcast.

World in Action and popular culture

World in Action stood out from its rivals by leaning into popular culture when others aimed for a more intellectual tone. One of its earliest episodes tackled overspending at the Ministry of Defence by mimicking the gameshow Beat the Clock. That episode proved so contentious that the Independent Television Authority banned it from ITV; the BBC aired ten minutes of it as a gesture of journalistic support. The gameshow format returned in 1989, when a study on middle-class uptake of tax-funded benefits was turned into a mock quiz called Spongers, hosted by Nicholas Parsons. Music also played a key part. In 1966, the show offered a fly-on-the-wall look at life on the pirate radio ship Radio Caroline, while the British government was trying to shut down such stations to protect the BBC’s monopoly. After the pirates were outlawed, only Radio Caroline’s two ships remained, so World in Action visited one in September 1967. The government was angered and barred the camera crew from returning to the UK at Felixstowe, forcing them to sail to Holland and fly back. The long-running Up documentary series, which followed children over decades, first appeared on World in Action in 1964. In 1967, young researcher John Birt made his name by convincing Mick Jagger to debate youth culture and his drug conviction with establishment figures like William Rees-Mogg. Jagger enjoyed the experience and later invited the Granada team to film the Rolling Stones’ free 1969 Hyde Park concert, producing the iconic film The Stones in the Park.

Leading contributors

World in Action employed many leading journalists, among them John Pilger, Michael Parkinson, Gordon Burns, Nick Davies, Ed Vulliamy, David Leigh, Alasdair Palmer, John Ware, Tony Wilson, Michael Gillard, Donal MacIntyre, Mark Hollingsworth, Quentin McDermott, Tony Watson, and Andrew Jennings. Two former World in Action journalists, Laurie Flynn and Michael Sean Gillard, uncovered that large parts of a 1996 Carlton Television documentary, The Connection, about drug trafficking from Colombia, had been fabricated. Their exposé in the Guardian in May 1998 led to an inquiry and a record £2 million fine for Carlton. Unusually for a current-affairs programme, WIA's standard format was as a voice-over documentary without a regular reporter, although a handful of journalists did appear in front of camera, including Chris Kelly, Gordon Burns, John Pilger, Gus Macdonald, Nick Davies, Adam Holloway, Stuart Prebble, Mike Walsh, David Taylor, Donal MacIntyre, and Tony Wilson. Guest presenters included Jonathan Dimbleby, Sandy Gall, Martyn Gregory, Sue Lawley, Lynn Faulds Wood, and Walter Cronkite, who covered the 1983 UK general election for the series.