Poses from Posties

The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril, by Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser (Knopf, 288 PP., $25)

WHEN, back in 1985, the “Westland affair” almost brought down Mrs. Thatcher’s government, there was a curious statement by her then-defense minister, Michael Heseltine, who had started the whole thing. Westland was a small British manufacturer of helicopters, and it would have failed without the sale of a significant minority of its shares to either the Sikorsky Corporation of America or a European consortium. Heseltine favored the Europeans; Thatcher and her trade secretary, Leon Brittan, favored the American bid. Heseltine ended up resigning from the cabinet, on the grounds that Sikorsky’s stake would ultimately mean that Westland’s highly skilled workforce would become “merely a metal-bashing operation” for the Americans. As it was, he said, Westland made “the best helicopters in the world”; they just couldn’t get enough people to buy them to stay in business.

The News About the News: American Journalism in Peril, by Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser (Knopf, 288 PP., $25)

WHEN, back in 1985, the “Westland affair” almost brought down Mrs. Thatcher’s government, there was a curious statement by her then-defense minister, Michael Heseltine, who had started the whole thing. Westland was a small British manufacturer of helicopters, and it would have failed without the sale of a significant minority of its shares to either the Sikorsky Corporation of America or a European consortium. Heseltine favored the Europeans; Thatcher and her trade secretary, Leon Brittan, favored the American bid. Heseltine ended up resigning from the cabinet, on the grounds that Sikorsky’s stake would ultimately mean that Westland’s highly skilled workforce would become “merely a metal-bashing operation” for the Americans. As it was, he said, Westland made “the best helicopters in the world”; they just couldn’t get enough people to buy them to stay in business.