Carte Blanche 25 Years. The Stories Behind the Stories, by Jessica Pitchford

Carte Blanche 25 Years. The Stories Behind the Stories, by Jessica Pitchford. ISBN 9781868425617 / ISBN 978-1-86842-561-7

Carte Blanche: 25 Years - The Stories Behind the Stories dips into an era of quality journalism through the eyes of the producers and presenters. It’s a show that has become part of our landscape and promises to survive another quarter of a century, and Jessica Pitchford describes it.

Jessica Pitchford  

George Mazarakis:

In over 33 years as a broadcaster, I have never brought anything to air on my own. Broadcasting is a collective effort. As viewers, we never, ever sit in front of a screen and watch a show that has been made by one person. It simply isn't possible. The sense of TEAM that is Carte Blanche is, to my mind, the one aspect that makes the show what it is. Carte Blanche is not the kind of show one can easily box into a genre; it is not simply a current affairs show, or a magazine show, or an entertainment show, or an investigative show, while being all of those things at once. It has many different elements, and these are defined by the personalities who get involved in the making of the show. In a sense, Carte Blanche takes on their characters and becomes different people on different days. And it grows, and it ages, and it rejuvenates itself, as those elements change and new characters grind their stamp on it. Carte Blanche is a show with many faces. Not just those of the presenters who thrust microphones into people's faces, but also those of the camera operators who craft its visual sense, and who become its vehicles of narrative, of the editors and sound crews who create its texture, of the researchers who ferret out the details, and of its lawyers and editorial team, who massage the content into palatability, both legal and otherwise. This book is about that process and those individuals. It will introduce you to the people behind the stories, and, more importantly perhaps, it will give you an insight into how and why stories are made, and what happens along the way. In this information-dense age, when anyone can access material that hitherto was the rarefied preserve of the governing elite, we reveal what we ourselves once considered confidential 'trade secrets'. There are no secrets to the hard slog of investigative journalism. We no longer need to 'protect' our techniques. In fact, we need to be transparent and open about what we do and why we do it, if we want to own the right to challenge, with the same principles, those who govern us. However, Jessica Pitchford's book is not an academic textbook on how to make television stories; it is rather, simply, a celebration of 25 years of storytelling. She has spoken to the people who made those stories, and they in turn have done all the searching their memories or dusty notes will allow. It is not an academic history either, so don't expect endless cross-references or annotated footnotes. This is, after all, a human story, full of human judgments and their concomitant flaws. Jessica Pitchford is probably the finest managing editor I have ever had the pleasure of working with, though let me hasten to add that she is the finest of a fine (if sometimes sensitive) bunch. We were at university together in the early 1980s and found ourselves working together at the beginning of our careers and then picking up again as we matured into management roles. (...)

This is an excerpt from the book: Carte Blanche 25 Years. The Stories Behind the Stories, by Jessica Pitchford.

Title: Carte Blanche 25 Years
Subtitle: The Stories Behind the Stories
Author: Jessica Pitchford
Publisher: Jonathan Ball Publishers
Johannesburg & Cape Town, South Africa 2013
ISBN 9781868425617 / ISBN 978-1-86842-561-7
Softcover, 15x23 cm, 228 pages, several b/w photos