Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Broadcasting

Behind-the-scenes at the Beeb’s multimedia newsroom

Teo Beleaga — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:59:02 +0000

Coventry University’s Teo Beleaga gives us a student’s eye view of the BBC’s multimedia newsroom.

The BBC opened its gates on Tuesday night for students and members of the Media Society to come and observe its newsroom at work.

Although centralized into one enormous room and called a multimedia newsdesk, the new BBC newsroom (opened last spring) is still separated into television, online and radio departments. In one corner, less than 10 people are in charge of everything that comes from wire agencies and are the only team dealing with all the platforms at once.

It’s still too early to mix all the platforms into one multimedia department, but as Radio 4 presenter Peter Day, our tour guide, said: “We have a morning meeting where everyone learns what everyone does. We try to deliver the same content.”

The six o’clock news bulletin is ready at least a half-an-hour before broadcast, when the director, Chris Cook, starts the rehearsal of the running order and the studio camera captions. Fifteen minutes after, the presenter puts his newsface on and they start rehearsing the headlines.

They may get it wrong in practice, but when its live, the bulletin unfolds naturally. When watching, an untrained eye couldn’t tell just how much hard work goes on behind the scenes.

Our tour was followed by a debate on the future of news, chaired by Nick Pollard and featuring Mary Hockaday, head of the BBC’s multimedia newsroom; Stephen Cole, Al-Jazeera presenter; Jonathan Levy from Sky News; and Jonathan Munro, head of news at ITN.

“There will be new types of delivering journalism in the future. But in the end it’s about adapting the fundamental to the platforms and not creating the platforms as a fundamental change. The fundamentals are what gets you into journalism in the first place,” said Hockaday.

Commenting on the development of online journalism, journalists need to go back to basics, the panel suggested. Journalists are too polite, said Cole; while Munro said there needs to be a greater distinction between journalism and information.

“What you get on social networks may be information, but that’s not journalism,” he said, adding that the key questions like why and how are still asked by journalists.

The same journalistic checks must be applied to user-generated content and so-called ‘citizen journalism’, the panel said.

According to Levy, ‘99.9 per cent of citizen journalists are not journalists at all’: “They are people who happen to be there and have a mobile phone with them, which takes pictures. They are not citizen journalists they are video witnesses. They’ve got evidence of what’s happening in front of them.”

Teo Beleaga is a journalism and media student at Coventry University, whose students run the CUToday website.

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Mediaweek: Current TV cuts 80 staff across global offices

Laura Oliver — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:03:11 +0000

Current TV, the cable channel backed by former US vice president Al Gore, is to cut 80 full-time positions as part of a restructuring.

Jobs will be lost in Current’s Los Angeles, San Francisco and London offices. But Current says the cuts are not down to cost-cutting, but part of a ‘reallocation of resources’ and change to its programming, including more long-form programmes and bought-in content.

Full story at this link…

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Half-price student tickets at ‘Will We Have News for You?’ event

Judith Townend — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:55:18 +0000

We’re informed a few tickets are still going for next Tuesday’s ‘Will We Have News for You?’ a Media Society night at the BBC; details below:

5:00pm, Tuesday 10 November 2009, BBC TV Centre Wood Lane, W12, Full price £10; students £5

Nick Pollard (former head of Sky News)

Mary Hockaday (head of multimedia newsroom, BBC)

Jonathan Munro (ITN)

Jonathan Levy (editor, General Election Sky News )

Stephen Cole (presenter, Al Jazeera English[tbc])

Contact: Mutesa Sithole – mutesasithole [at] googlemail.com

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CNN to broadcast first live news show from Abu Dhabi with new hub

Laura Oliver — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:12:39 +0000

Following the recent relaunch of its website, broadcaster CNN has created a new ‘newsgathering hub’ based in Abu Dhabi.

The new online and TV production facility will be the central point for seven newsgathering operations in the region: Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Dubai, Jerusalem, Kabul and Islamabad.

It will also enable CNN to broadcast its first daily live news show from the Middle East – PRISM, hosted by Stan Grant, pictured below:

More than 24 staff will run the operation, which according to a press announcement includes a four-camera digital studio and fully integrated newsroom.

“This region unquestionably plays an integral part in world affairs, and the new hub in Abu Dhabi gives us the opportunity to get to the heart of the rich and diverse stories across the political, business, social and cultural spectrums.”

“The establishment of a permanent broadcast and production centre in the Middle East by CNN is a significant and unique move by a Western news broadcaster. It gives CNN a powerful base from which to coordinate seven regional bureaus and showcase a new daily news show from the Middle East,” Tony Maddox, managing director and executive vice president of CNN International, said at the launch.

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‘Twitter mobs’ on the BBC Radio 4 Moral Maze

Judith Townend — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:46:10 +0000

Two weeks ago, John Mair raised the issue of mob action on this very blog in the wake of the Jan Moir episode, provoking criticism and further comment. Yesterday, he responded to some of the response, and picked up on subsequent national media analysis on Twitter’s impact on democracy.

Tonight the so-called ‘Twitter mob’ is getting yet more discussion space on the excellent BBC Radio 4 programme, Moral Maze, presented by Michael Buerk, and featuring, among others, Kenan Malik.

BBC Radio 4, 8pm (GMT): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nkcfk

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Personality-led ’sorry’ stories are often the easiest to write, says former BBC political correspondent

Marc Johnson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:10:57 +0000

“We have to recognise that the blame game is something that is damaging journalism,” said the former BBC political correspondent Nicholas Jones, at the Institute of Communication Ethics (ICE) annual conference last week.

The demand for public apologies and the blame game is leading to a rise in the ‘cosmetic’ sorry and other empty rhetoric, Jones, who sits on the national council of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom and writes on media affairs for the Free Press and the website Spinwatch.

“The herd mentality of journalists, and the ease with which the news media can be diverted by the quick fix of trying to find a scapegoat, are largely to blame for fuelling the ’sorry’ phenomenon.”

Citing Sir Fred Goodwin’s public ‘apology’ over the Royal Bank of Scotland catastrophe, and Blair’s apology over the ‘presentation’ of the Bernie Ecclestone affair, Nicholas Jones demonstrated how the media’s demand for reparations has made them susceptible to spin.

“Sir Fred did not say ’sorry’ for getting it wrong, far from it. He wasn’t going to take the blame. At no time, he said, did anyone anticipate the “scale or speed” of the slow down, so ‘globally it has caught everyone out’.”

Using the Bernie Ecclestone affair as an example, Jones suggested New Labour tactics were designed to manage the media’s lust for ’sorry,’ despite the sentiment being negated by the context in which it is used.

“What Blair actually apologised for with regard to Bernie Ecclestone was that he wanted to say ’sorry’ for the way the whole affair had been managed; he was apologising for the way it had been presented to party members. “It should not have come out in dribs and drabs … I apologise for the way this was handled … I am sorry about this issue … I think most people who have dealt with me think I am a pretty straight sort of guy.”"

Media frenzy which is often sparked by controversy and an apology regardless of what it refers to, is part of the control mechanism:

“The first step is to excite the pack and then to massage the ego of the journalists by encouraging them to believe that it is their efforts which have helped secure an apology for the public.”

According to Jones, political spin deters good journalism: ‘Given good presentation the media could be stopped from digging further’.

In his paper – available in full on his website – Jones suggested that personality-led stories attempting to hold public figures to account are often the easiest to write:

“The hue and cry to get an apology can be entertaining, it can last for days, but all too often the net result is that journalists are at even greater risk of being manipulated. Sadly we have become addicted to the idea that obtaining an apology from shamed politicians or public figures represents a victory for the public, some sort of justification for journalistic effort.”

And it’s here to stay, Jones concluded:

“I don’t think we can turn the clock back: the hyper-personalisation of news is here to stay. But what I think we will see is even greater sophistication on the part of political spin doctors and public relations industry to try to manage the personalisation of news and turn it to their clients’ advantage. The insincerity of saying sorry is just the start of it.”

Additional reporting: Judith Townend

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MSNBC’s Charlie Tillinghast: ‘There are no TV journalists anymore. There are videojournalists’

Judith Townend — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:49:59 +0000

HuffPost’s ‘Game Changers’ feature is selecting 100 ‘innovators, visionaries, and leaders’ who are ‘harnessing the power of new media to reshape their fields and change the world’.

One of its picks is Charlie Tillinghast, president and publisher of MSNBC.com; HuffPo picked out this quote of his:

“There are no TV journalists anymore. There are videojournalists. When somebody from NBC News goes out in the field (…) they’re shooting a piece that will show up on ‘Nightly,’ on MSNBC cable, on MSNBC.com, on a mobile device. The point is it’s all about video and all the places that people can watch video.”

Via LostRemote.com.

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BBC launches Democracy Live with ’speech-to-text’ search

Judith Townend — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:28:14 +0000

BBC has launched its new political site, Democracy Live, with technology that allows users to search video by text.

“Democracy Live is the BBC’s new website which offers live and on demand video coverage of the UK’s national political institutions and the European Parliament. Alongside the video, we have guides to how the different institutions work and who sits in them. Our search engine is a BBC ‘first’ – it uses speech-to-text to take you straight to your points of interest in the video.

(…)

“Our Search is one of the most innovative aspects of Democracy Live. It works by using a ’speech-to-text’ system. After a video is made available to watch again, our system adds words spoken in the video to for you to search on. When it finds a word you’ve asked for, it gives you a link straight to point in the video where the word is spoken. You can also search for representatives by name, place and postcode.”

Full guide at this link…

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Media failings contributed to BNP’s electoral success, says George Alagiah

John Stevens — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:12:07 +0000

BBC newsreader George Alagiah believes the failings of the media have partly led to the party’s electoral success, he said at an LSE lecture last Friday.

Talking about news and identity at the Polis event, Alagiah, who currently presents the Six O’Clock News & World News Today on BBC World News, said that the media had concentrated too much on looking at differences and had not given enough of a voice to those with reasonable concerns about immigration. “I am uncomfortable with a white-only party on Question Time,” he said.

“I think the emergence of the BNP as an electoral presence in our country poses a challenge to the way in which both the political and media classes in Britain have dealt with the issues of race, identity and culture,” he added.

“There was far too much emphasis on difference and not enough emphasis on the values that unite us together as a nation. I think that there was an accidental, unintentional relegation of the concept of Britishness and when we let it go it went and found a home in the recesses of extremism here in Britain.”

The newsreader added that people asking reasonable questions about the speed of change in communities caused by immigration had been wrongly ’slapped down as racist’. “Journalists have failed to see this sense of disempowerment amongst white working class people,” he said.

Regional news organisations have a role in tracking changes in communities and helping people to understand them, Alagiah said, adding that investment in local media was vital. “When organised well-funded regional news-gathering is in retreat, hearsay fills the gap, and this is all the more likely in the age of the blog.”

John Stevens is a postgraduate newspaper journalism student at City University. He blogs at http://bit.ly/on-the-fly.

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‘About the BBC’ blog launches

Judith Townend — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:52:50 +0000

The BBC already has a pretty good track record for its ‘process’ blogs, what with The Editors’ Blog, the Internet Blog and Journalism Labs. And it has launched another, just in time to host a post by Mark Thompson on the BNP / Question Time decision.

The blog, edited by Chris Jones, will be a place where ‘decision makers and experts can talk about things going on inside the BBC’ it says.

“This could include anything; from major announcements to how parts of the corporation operate. We’ll also be highlighting and linking to the fascinating debates happening on the many other blogs, message boards and other social media, inside and outside the BBC website.”

About the BBC blog at this link.

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