Kathryn Gyngell
Kathryn Julia Gyngell (née Rowan) (born 7 April 1950), known as Kathy, is a former media researcher turned right-wing operative. She is the widow of Thatcher's favourite broadcaster Bruce Gyngell. She is currently a research fellow of the Centre for Policy Studies.
Education and career
Gyngell studied a degree in social anthropology from Cambridge University and an M.Phil in sociology at Oxford. [1] She subsequent worked as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Television Research at Leeds University [2] where she worked under the US born media academic Jay Blumler. [3]
Gyngell later worked at the Features and Current Affairs Department at LWT before being appointed a Features Editor at TV-am. [4] In 1986 she married TV-am's managing director Bruce Gyngell. [5] After the birth of their second child in the late 1980s, Gyngell left her job at TV-am to work as a full time mother. She spent several years in Australia and on her return to London co-founded the Full Time Mothers Association, to raise consciousness about motherhood as 'a skilled job for intelligent women'. [6]
During the 1990s Gyngell wrote several letters to The Times, mainly relating to parenting and 'family values'. In November 1999 she wrote a letter referring to media attacks on Jeffrey Archer and Michael Ancram and complaining that, 'sleaze seems to be real sleaze only if it can be stuck to the Conservative Party.' [7]
In July 1999 she co-founded a right-wing media monitoring company called Minotaur Media Tracking with David Keighley, a family friend and formerly director of corporate affairs at TV-am. [8] Minotaur Media Tracking produced a number of reports for the Eurosceptic think-tank Global Britain and for the Centre for Policy Studies. The great majority of these reports alleged a bias in favour of EU integration in the UK media (particularly the BBC) and several alleged a broader bias against right-wing politics. The company was co-owned and directed by Gyngell and Keighley. [9]
Minotaur Media Tracking was dissolved in 2006 and superseded by Newswatch. Gyngell is listed as one of four team members on the company website, [10] but is not listed in its Annual Returns as a director or shareholder. [11]
Around the same time Minotaur Media Tracking was dissolved, Gyngell became involved in other political campaigning. In June 2006 the Centre for Policy Studies published a report on 'inner city youth' which she co-authored with the East London youth worker Ray Lewis. Gyngell was referred to in the report as, 'the Chairman of the Addiction Working Group of the Social Justice Policy Group' - the Tory think-tank set up by Iain Duncan Smith. [12]
Notes
- ↑ Screengrab of Kathy Gyngell's CV. Taken from <http://www.news-watch.co.uk/gyngell.php> on 27 November 2009
- ↑ Kathy Gyngell & David Keighley, ‘Blair's EU-Turn: A case study in BBC partiality’, 16 September 2004; p.2
- ↑ A 1984 article by Blumler in Parliamentary Affairs credits Kathryn Rowan and with carrying out the research for the article - Jay G. Blumler, (1984) 'The Sound of Parliament', Parliamentary Affairs37(1) 250-266
- ↑ Kathy Gyngell & David Keighley, ‘Blair's EU-Turn: A case study in BBC partiality’, 16 September 2004; p.2
- ↑ 'The man who began to get younger at 46', Daily Mail, 25 August 1987
- ↑ Ros Coward, 'Women at war', Guardian, 22 March 1993; 'Working parents: how best to meet the children's needs', The Times, 7 February 1997; p.19
- ↑ 'Press and party as arbiters of morality in politics', The Times, 27 November 1999; p.23
- ↑ ‘Former TV-am boss dies’, BBC News Online, 8 September, 2000
- ↑ Minotaur Media Tracking Ltd, Annual Returns made up to 8 July 2005
- ↑ Screengrab of Kathy Gyngell's CV. Taken from <http://www.news-watch.co.uk/gyngell.php> on 27 November 2009
- ↑ Companies House, Newswatch UK Ltd Annual Returns, made up to 6 September 2008
- ↑ Centre for Policy Studies, From Latchkey to Leadership - A practical blueprint for channelling the talents of inner city youth
