[citation needed] He won a prize in the British Press Awards in 1980 for a series of features tracing the roots of Coventry Asians back to Pakistan and India.

During a spell at BBC Radio London he revealed how the Metropolitan Police was training its riot control officers using Roman Army tactics.

He won the Media Natura Award for TV documentaries for Gas Muzzlers,[8] a film on green energy investment in President Bush's America.

It also traced a Chinese-made energy-saving product – dryerballs – and showed how some people in the West were blaming China for its emissions created during the manufacture of goods for export.

[clarification needed] He states that often major risk issues fail to fit news criteria of novelty, drama, conflict, personality and pictures.

This leads the media, he believes, to have given the wrong level of prominence to a range of risks including MMR, dirty bombs, child abduction, transport safety, exotic diseases, UK National Health Service "crisis", the Brent Spar oil platform, nuclear power and genetic modification.

[citation needed] He argues that the media should find new ways of exploring long-term risk issues such as preventive health and security of water, food, energy and climate.

Colleagues subsequently credited him with devising "Harrabin's Law" on disproportionate media coverage:[17] When considering societal problems over the long term, news-worthiness is often in inverse proportion to frequency.

If problems become commonplace, they are not new - so do not qualify as 'news'On returning to the BBC he led pan-BBC reporting on a public survey that suggested that people in the UK were much more ready to accept tougher measures on smoking, drinking and obesity than previously believed.

[citation needed] He questioned media demands for increased rail safety investment because trains were already statistically much safer than roads, which were starved of funds.