David Walter: More than 30 years of broadcast journalism experience
The chairman of the Media Society, former broadcast journalist David Walter, has died after a long illness, the group said today.
Walter wrote extensively for the print media, including the Economist, the New Statesman, the Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph and was a former correspondent, presenter and newscaster at the BBC and ITN.
He started out as a reporter for Radio London in the early 1970s and went on to produce the BBC1 early evening news programme Nationwide. He was a political correspondent at ITN and then worked on BBC programmes including Newsnight and On The Record.
In a statement posted on the Media Society website, the group said: "David Walter was the polite embodiment of the very best of fair and honest journalism. An exemplar of professional competence, gentility, and simple, old-fashioned niceness, David didn't appear to fit our industry at all; in truth he was the perfect model for journalism at its best.
"A light touch, a formidable brain, and a slight shyness made him seem like a man who might hate a party, when in fact he loved them; he especially loved the gossip and the banter.
"David will be deeply missed by family, friends and colleagues. We will surely all be less well off without him. He was, quite simply, a fine man, against whom all others should be measured."
The Media Society is a charity that campaigns for freedom of expression and the encouragement of high standards in journalism.
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