Greg Philo obituary

In 1976, Greg Philo, who has died aged 76, and his colleagues in the Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) published Bad News, a research study challenging British broadcasting’s claims to impartiality. It argued that television news was not a “neutral product” but instead carried “many of the culturally dominant assumptions of our society”.

The GUMG showed that while some commentators on industrial relations blamed Britain’s economic problems on poor management and low levels of investment, in television news such explanations were sidelined in favour of accounts from the right blaming unions and industrial action.

Other members of the group included Peter Beharrell, Howard Davis, John Eldridge, John Hewitt, Jean Oddie, Paul Walton and Brian Winston. Few academic studies before or since have had such an impact. As the cultural theorist Stuart Hall remarked: “Whether they liked it or not, everyone read Bad News.”

Broadcasters and the wider establishment did not like it at all, condemning the GUMG as Marxists. The group submitted preliminary findings based on news bulletins captured on video from the first five months of 1975 to the government-commissioned inquiry into the future of broadcasting. Its chair, Lord (Noel) Annan, described the group as “a shadowy guerrilla force on the fringe of broadcasting”.

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However, in private the BBC’s editorial controller, John Wilson, said that “it was necessary to be honest and admit that there was something in what the GUMG was saying”. Furthermore, there was concern that the arguments were gaining traction among BBC trainees and the wider public.

More widely the initial publication and its successors – More Bad News (1980) and Really Bad News (1982) – were well received and had a profound influence on a generation of media researchers and political communicators.

A Sunday Times interview with Greg two decades after the publication of Bad News remarked that “the emergence of spin doctors and media advisers in all political parties can be linked to the work done in Glasgow” and the group had “skills to rival any market research organisation, combined with a name independent researchers would die for”.

Born in Bexleyheath, Kent (now the London borough of Bexley), Greg was the youngest child of Irene (nee Campbell), a telephone operator, and Thomas Philo, a shipyard manager. At St Mary’s Roman Catholic grammar school for boys, Sidcup, he demonstrated a flair for history and a dislike of Latin.

Greg then went to Bradford University to study sociology. There he perfected the art of brewing bathtub beer and co-founded the General Will, an alternative theatre group. He directed some of the group’s early plays, written by the young David Edgar, graduated in 1970, and two years later went to Glasgow to study under Eldridge, an industrial sociologist. In 1980 he became the GUMG’s research director, and 10 years later was appointed professor of communications and social change.

Under Greg’s four-decade leadership, the GUMG conducted grant-funded research on the reporting of subjects including developing countries, international conflicts, disarmament, mental health, political marketing, child protection, climate change, refugees and disability. Much of this research was cited in parliamentary debates, policy documents and official inquiries. It was also widely used in campaigning by pressure groups and charities.

With this variety of subject matter went innovation in research methods. Greg’s book Seeing and Believing (1990) took the 1984 miners’ strike as a case study, pioneering the use of focus groups and exercises such as the “news game”, where people wrote their own news bulletins using photographs he supplied. These allowed him to unpack how factors such as social experience, prior knowledge and the use of logic affected whether people believed or rejected media accounts.

In Bad News from Israel (2004) he brought together journalists including George Alagiah of the BBC and Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News with members of the public to explore how news impacted knowledge and understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict. As this research demonstrated, broadcast news featured little context or explanation of the Palestinian perspective, leaving audiences confused about basic aspects of the conflict and how it could be resolved.

Austerity and climate change provided the context to much of Greg’s later work. He campaigned for the introduction of a wealth tax as an alternative to cuts in public spending, and researched how vulnerable groups such as refugees and disabled people were stigmatised by reporting that legitimised the “hostile environment” and attacks on disability rights.

In 2015 he co-produced, with Catherine Happer, his successor as director of the GUMG from 2021, and Chatham House, a 12-country study that demonstrated that with the correct messaging populations could be persuaded to consume less meat to combat climate change. It led to a campaign in 2019 to introduce a “meat tax”, a cause advocated by the then Green party MP Caroline Lucas.

That year too came Bad News for Labour, which analysed claims of antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. Greg’s research showed that the scale of the problem had been exaggerated by the media and politicians, and because the leadership had failed to rebut the false claims the public greatly overestimated the incidence of antisemitism in the party.

Although Greg officially retired in 2021, he remained active, two years later publishing research showing how public service broadcasting had endorsed the UK government’s slow reaction to the pandemic and its disastrous policy of herd immunity while marginalising scientific sources who argued for a faster and more robust approach.

At the time of his death Greg was working on a new book on the Israel-Gaza war and a grant proposal exploring how the conflict was impacting public opinion in the west, Middle East and global south.

In 1984 he married May Menzies. They had two children, Sarah-May and John-Mark, and divorced in 2010. In 2021 he married Yajun Deng, and they had two sons, Tommy-Lee and Ritchie-Ray. She survives him, along with his four children and two grandchildren.