Press Ganged

Alongside the complaints about the lack of integrity in News International's journalists, there's plenty of concern about how print media is dying. Usually demonstrated through a quick survey of the sales' figures for once proud national newspapers, it is often associated with the presumed loss of public trust in the media (qv complaints about lack of integrity...).

Enquirer, a serious attempt by the National Theatre of Scotland to measure the decay, draws this connection explicitly. Interviews with big boys from Murdock's media are slipped into a structure that imitates a day at a newspaper: the forty-odd interviews with journalists are remixed into a narrative that mirrored the shift from morning's bright enthusiasm to late night acceptance. Unsurprisingly, the higher-ups on both red-tops and broadsheets reveal a lack of morality, many journalists are worried about their career prospects, and the foreign correspondents are heroic. There is no real news in Enquirer, just a timely snapshot of a world that sees itself as on the fade.

Directors Vicky Featherstone and John Tiffany acknowledge that the play was inspired by their love of the media: Tiffany recently mentioned that, during his time on sabbatical at Havard, he came to miss his early morning irritation at the Today programme, adding that while he has found himself suddenly able to fulfill his artistic ambitions, his peers in the press are filled with foreboding. Without flinching at the current scandals, Enquirer is a love letter to journalism.

The "cold" approach - rarely does the script attempt to manipulate emotions, avoiding preaching by cutting up the interviews into episodic scenes - lays out the supposed crisis in detail. Appropriately for a piece about the press, it never offers solutions, only identifying problems. The pace is relaxed, despite the potential high drama of the news conference scenes, stories from international wars and the panic that is behind many of the rueful comments on past glories.