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This is taken from The Guardian:
David Walter
Journalist, broadcaster, politician and communications director for the Liberal Democrats
by Jonathan Fryer
Monday 2 April 2012 15.55 BST
Gentleness and self-effacement are not usually qualities associated with either politics or journalism, but the Liberal Democrat politician, broadcaster and writer David Walter, who has died of cancer aged 64, was characterised by both. Though he never realised his ambition of getting into either of the houses of parliament, he played a key role in training other Lib Dems in how to handle media interviews.
Potential parliamentary candidates would often be caught out by being "doorstepped" outside the party's former Westminster headquarters in Cowley Street by David, microphone in hand, asking the most aggressive and topical question possible as their reactions were captured on film. This was a bit of out-of-character play-acting he relished, though afterwards he would deconstruct their performance kindly and give pointers as to what they could have done better.
The advice was based on many years of experience working at the heart of broadcast news and current affairs at ITN, Channel 4 and the BBC, variously as newsreader, presenter and part of a production team. He was ITN's political correspondent before moving on to work on a range of serious-minded BBC programmes for television and radio, including Newsnight, Panorama, On the Record and the now defunct Eurofile, a weekly Radio 4 round-up of major European stories, whose demise David much lamented.
He was an enthusiastic European; the job he enjoyed most during his career was his stint as the BBC's Paris correspondent. In all this professional work he had to remain politically strictly neutral, of course, despite holding strong Liberal Democrat convictions. It was therefore something of a relief to him when he left broadcasting to become the party's communications director (1998-2003), helping them develop their messaging as well as preparing Lib Dem figures for appearances on Question Time, Any Questions and so forth.
David's deep interest in politics and international affairs was almost predestined by his origins. He was a descendant of John Walter, founder of the Times. David's father, Basil, worked in the colonial service, notably in Nigeria. David was nonetheless born in Newcastle and educated in England, winning scholarships to Charterhouse, Surrey, and Trinity College, Oxford, where he studied classics. He was president of the Oxford Union and was later awarded a Kennedy Memorial scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was thus admirably qualified to stand for a winnable parliamentary seat once the shackles of his broadcasting neutrality were removed. His chance came when John Burnett, MP for the marginal Liberal Democrat constituency of Torridge and West Devon, announced his intention to stand down at the 2005 general election. David's main connection to Devon was through his wife, Pamela, whom he had married in 1970. Burnett's predecessor had been Emma Nicholson, who initially held the seat as a Conservative but defected to the Liberal Democrats and subsequently was elevated to the peerage. When the Tories seized back the seat at the 2005 election, it was a bitter disappointment and David was not minded to try again. But he found some compensation in becoming the highly respected chair of his local party in the Lib Dem-controlled London borough of Kingston, where the impish sense of fun and love of gossip lurking behind his strait-laced facade was much appreciated.
Through his party connections, David was able to further his international interests by working on short-term projects for the government-funded Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which aims to enable capacity-building for political parties in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Russia, Kenya and Tanzania. He also built up his own media consultancy, First Take, which became the prime focus of his professional activities after he left the Lib Dem HQ.
In 2008, he was a member of the jury of the Royal Television Society awards. He was proud of his role as president of the Media Society, a charity that campaigns for freedom of expression and encourages high standards in journalism. Over the years he wrote for the Guardian, the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Economist and the New Statesman. He published four books, notably The Strange Rebirth of Liberal England (2003).
He is survived by Pamela and their son, Pete, and daughter, Natalie.
• David Charles Walter, politician, broadcaster and writer, born 1 February 1948; died 29 March 2012
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