PCC rules Daily Mail not in breach of code over Iain Dale diary piece

The Press Complaints Commission has ruled that the Daily Mail was not in breach of clause 12 (discrimination) with a diary piece that described blogger and aspiring Conservative candidate Iain Dale ‘overtly gay’.  Commenting on Dale’s bid for the parliamentary constituency of Bracknell, the piece said it was ‘charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause’.  Dale lodged a complaint, claiming that the references were pejorative and the article homophobic, the PCC noted.

Today the PCC reported:

“The Commission could understand why the complainant found the comments to be snide and objectionable.  However, it did not rule that there had been a breach of Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Code.  It noted that the item had used no pejorative term for the complainant, nor had it ‘outed’ him.  In the Commission’s view, the piece was uncharitable, but – in the context of a diary column, known to poke fun at public figures – was not an arbitrary attack on him on the basis of his sexuality.

“The Commission said that: ‘where it is debatable – as in this case – about whether remarks can be regarded solely as pejorative and gratuitous, the Commission should be slow to restrict the right to express an opinion, however snippy it might be.  While people may occasionally be insulted or upset by what is said about them in newspapers, the right to freedom of expression that journalists enjoy also includes the right – within the law – to give offence.’”

In the wake of the Jan Moir episode at the end of last month, a petition to Gordon Brown was launched, questioning the impartiality of the PCC and calling for its replacement by a public body. The PCC’s deputy director (and soon-to-be director) Stephen Abell subsequently defended the position of Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre, as head of its code committee.

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Richard Wilson: ‘No one knows how many secret super-injunctions are currently in force’

Richard Wilson, author of Don’t Get Fooled and central blogger in the Trafigura/Guardian/Carter-Ruck episode, reports back from a meeting of the UK Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights which focused on ’super-injunctions’.

Wilson, along with journalists, editors, MPs, Lords and lawyers (including two senior partners from Carter-Ruck) took part:

“[N]o one knows how many secret super-injunctions are currently in force. While the UK state seems bent on meticulously recording every detail of its citizens phone, email and web-browsing habits, it is positively lackadaisical about tracking its own media gagging orders. While each individual super-injunction is (we have to hope) being kept on file somewhere by the judiciary, no-one, anywhere, is collating information about the overall picture.”

Full story at this link…

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Editor&Publisher: 50 US papers rescind AP cancellation

Fifty US newspapers that had previously given notice of cancellation (two years warning is required) to the Associated Press have rescinded those notices, reports Editor&Publisher.

50 Papers Rescind Associated Press Cancellation Notices.

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Online journalism at the NUJ ADM: The Journalist, Twitter and new blood

And so, the annual National Union of Journalists (NUJ) delegate meeting (ADM) draws near; with a variety of motions and amendments up for debate on November 19-22 (final agenda available at this link – PDF).

Among them, many issues that directly concern online media: both in terms of how the NUJ communicates through the internet, and how to engage with online journalists.

How to attract new blood?

For the New Media Industrial Council (NMIC), member recruitment among the digital community is key. For this purpose, it commissioned freelancer and former newspaper journalist Vivien Sandt to research digital media, looking into employment patterns in the UK and Ireland to help the council form a new strategy. Sandt will present some of her findings at the ADM 2009.

How should the Journalist handle its web presence?

Another topic up for discussion is how campaigns and The Journalist should be managed online. As the fight for The Union publication’s editorship rages (see the Journalism.co.uk forum for some lively discussion), the Press and PR branch proposes this motion [excerpt]:

“(….) Union rules allow that [the Journalist] editor has editorial content only over online content taken from the Union’s journal. ADM believes this is insufficient for the editor’s new role (…)

It proposes a motion to change the rules to allow that ‘the editor shall have additional editorial control over union and other website pages holding content taken from or associated with the union’s journal written or commissioned by the editor’.

Leeds branch wished to clarify this: ‘that all editorial content on the NUJ website shall by under the independent control of the editor of the union’s journal, unless the editor agrees to cede control of specific content for a specific purpose and for a specific amount of time’.

That is bound to raise some questions over the relationship between the Journalist and other parts of the NUJ, especially with its support of another motion proposed: ‘ADM further instructs the NEC to implement, without further delay, the integration of the Journalist’s editor into the Union’s Campaign and Communications department’.

North Wales Coast branch, which proposed the original motion, claim that the mixture of internet strategies has pushed the Journalist ‘into becoming a cross between a picture led kind of OK magazine and Agony Aunt Letters column’.

[See what the editor hopefuls suggest for the Journalist website at this link to the Journalism.co.uk forum.]

How should the NUJ engage with social media?

This motion proposed by Magazine is bound to create some discussion: the last para has already been recommended as void by the Standing Orders Committee (SOC) for ‘uncertainty of meaning’”…

This ADM notes that:

1) Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and blogging are irrevocably changing the face of journalism.
2)That many of this new wave of journalists believe the NUJ’s attitude towards them is out of date.

This ADM instructs the NEC to address this problem by working with the blogging community and Twitteratti [sic] to bridge this gap and create a framework that embraces the NUJ’s journalistic principle while maintaining the press freedom enjoyed by bloggers and twitterers.

London Magazine further suggests a survey should be carried out, organised by NMIC.

Want to get involved?

The New Media Industrial Council is currently seeking NUJ members to represent these areas: London (1 out of 2) Midlands (1) Black Members Council (1) Disabled Members Council (1) North East (1). The non-geographical seats have to be nominated by the bodies concerned, and all NMIC members must be NUJ members working in new media. Those interested can e-mail the council’s chair (Gary Herman) in confidence on this address: gary.herman [at] gmail.com.

Judith Townend is a member of the National Union of Journalists (Brighton & Mid-Sussex branch) and is co-opted to sit on the New Media Industrial Council – beginning after the ADM 2009.

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Guido Fawkes: Expect more local newspaper attacks on MPs

Guido Fawkes flags up the Luton & Dunstable Express  ‘Get Moran Out Now’ campaign in MP Margaret Moran’s Luton South constituency. Expect to see more of this type of campaigning ‘across the land,’ he writes.

“As well as the macro-political environment and the visceral anti-political feeling that covers the land and will be celebrated this Thursday [November 5], the nature of the expenses scandal means that local newspaper journalists will find it easy to attack their sitting MPs.”

Full post at this link…

Also see Telegraph.co.uk…

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Paul Foot’s stories were not tomorrow’s fish and chip paper

Yesterday saw journalists rewarded in memory of the campaigning journalist Paul Foot, with the Guardian’s Ian Cobain taking the first prize for his investigation into Britain’s involvement in the torture of terror suspects detained overseas.

But as Private Eye editor Ian Hislop reminded the audience, it was a night to remember Private Eye journalist Paul Foot, who died in 2004.  Foot’s stories live on and influence today’s news, Hislop said: “There is a sense in which five years on, we’re still doing this award and Paul remains extraordinarily alive. People say journalism is fish and chip paper the next day. Well, that isn’t always true.

The Lockerbie story is a prime example, said Hislop. Foot provided the foundations for the ongoing journalistic investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan-Am 103, uncovering evidence which throws uncertainty over the Scottish judges’ sentencing of Libyan Abdelbaset Al Megrahi to life imprisonment in 2001.

“Paul’s investigation from five, six years ago is the starting point for a story that’s still going on,” said Hislop.

“The ludicrous detail. I love the idea of Paul’s reaction [that] the man [Al Megrahi] was freed for compassionate reason; that would have amused him.”

Foot’s story on the solicitor Michael Napier, was another of his investigations that resurfaced this year, when Private Eye was threatened with an injunction courtesy of lawyers Carter-Ruck.

“In came the injunction, we weren’t allowed to say who it was (…) We won a case in front of Justice Eady – now you can imagine how crap their [the claimant's] case must have been. That we won in front of Eady, unbelievable,” joked Hislop.

Once past Eady, the Eye finally won in the Court of Appeal, but he wasn’t just crowing over his Carter-Ruck victory, Hislop said, rather emphasising  ‘that even a story Paul wrote 10 years ago (…) never quite finishes and he’s still there’.

And now, investigative journalism needs more help than ever, he added: “[Investigative reporting] needs encouraging for obvious reasons, particularly in a recession: it’s difficult; it’s slow; it’s expensive; it’s risky. There’s no advertising. There are very few local newspapers. People are more interested in the death of the dinner party as a subject to fill a paper.

“This year has seen quite a lot of threats to investigative journalism.

“This year the editor of the Guardian and I were called to talk to the parliamentary select committee about the problems of libel and injunctions. I said there was a chill wind of libel blowing, particularly for these secret injunctions. And Alan [Rusbridger] said it wasn’t a big problem for the Guardian. That was pre-Trafigura so we had a good laugh later, when the Guardian was hit by it.

“These are the injunctions that are served on you and you’re not allowed to say what was in the injunction and you’re not allowed to say there was an injunction.”

Hislop, at this point, directed the audience’s eyes to the wall: “A charming portrait of Mr Marr – and we take that thought home…” [last year the BBC political correspondent won an injunction to stop the media revealing 'private information' about him, only recently reported; details remain undisclosed].

Foot would have loved this year’s short and long-list, continued Hislop. Stories about MPs’ expenses, for example, he said. “Again Carter-Ruck involved trying to stop that! Not that they’re in all the stories, but they are…” he added, as his last jibe to the firm for which the Eye has such a fond nickname.

But not the last time he stuck his tongue out at the legal profession. As he reached the nomination for Mail reporters, Stephen Wright and Richard Pendlebury, he waved two letters in the air; attempts sent today, Hislop claimed, to try and prevent him reading out the prize citation  – a copy of which is available on the Private Eye website of course.

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

“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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Jon Bernstein: Tweets, elites and the same old news agenda

Has new media reinvigorated democracy or throttled good journalism, asks Dr Natalie Fenton in her forthcoming book ‘New Media, Old News: Journalism and Democracy in a Digital Age’.

And her answer? Well, the clue is in the title.

The book is not quite a pessimist’s charter, but nor does it side with the ‘utopian vision [of] everyone connected to everyone else, a non-hierarchical network of voices with equal, open and global access.’

Fenton and her team of researchers at Goldsmiths make two key observations. Firstly, that the mechanics of the journalist’s trade is suffering because of the desk-bound demands of new media – ‘iron cages’, they call them.

Secondly, new media rarely means new voices on the national stage because the ‘economics of news remains stacked against the newcomer’.

Fenton was on Radio 4’s The Media Show on Wednesday last week to expand on her thinking. Of the new media newsrooms her team studied in detail (BBC, The Guardian and the Manchester Evening News), she said:

“What you get is a vastly speeded up news environment, a huge expansion in space to fill but actually with less journalists with less time to do proper investigative journalism.

“There was a big concentration in ‘cut and paste’, administrative, desk-bound journalism largely because these journalists have to fill a vast amount of space, have no time to do it in. So what they do, is they either take PR copy or they take copy from other newsprint or other news broadcasts. So it’s a sort of creative cannibalisation.”

Clear echoes of Nick Davies and Flat Earth News here.

She was asked about the power of social networks to influence the news agenda. On the Jan Moir saga she said:

“[You] have to take account of who is saying what to whom. The who is actually a very small amount of people. Ten per cent of people who Twitter account for 90 per cent of the content.

“That 10 per cent is an elite. They are the likes of Stephen Fry with a celebrity status who can generate these millions of followers and therefore bring attention to a particular issue. Most people who are tweeting do not have that power.”

On the Twitter campaign against the Trafigura super-injunction, meanwhile, Fenton conceded that this was a good example of institutions being held to account:

“But on the whole what they are still doing is responding to agendas that are set by the mainstream news.

“You still have to remember that most people, most of the time get most of their news and information from mainstream news sources whether that’s online or not. So what’s going on in the mainstream is vitally important.”

A well-worked argument, forcefully put. But on elites and news agendas it rather depends where you look.

If you study established players like the BBC, the Guardian, and, yes, a venerable regional like the Manchester Evening News, you are likely to find established forms of interaction.

It’s true that many social media campaigns either take up a mainstream media cause – think Trafigura – or need the mainstream to mediate – think the secret filming of Alan Duncan.

Nevertheless, there are many other campaigns and activities below the radar that provide effective examples of reinvigorating democracy.

In this respect, think hyperlocal. Indeed one of the leading practitioners of the form, Will Perrin, took me to task for applying big media assumptions to ultra-local coverage. He wrote:

“Hyperlocal content is best looked at bottom up, generated not by an abstract, detached journalist, but by people on the ground who it affects. Seen from that angle the trad top down issues fall away – grassroots hyperlocal content is defined by its own creation.”

Again, it depends where you look. As with Davies’ widely acclaimed book, the research methodology might just point to a structural weaknesses.

(You can listen to the interview on the iPlayer. starts around 23 mins.)

Jon Bernstein is former multimedia editor of Channel 4 News and was recently appointed as deputy editor of New Statesman. This is part of a series of regular columns for Journalism.co.uk. You can read his personal blog at this link.

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#Outlook2010: Lauren Rich Fine on media’s future – ‘Is there too much news?’

Last week Journalism.co.uk attended the INMA and Online Publishers Association (OPA) Europe’s annual conference Outlook 2010 – the event focused on innovation, transformation and making money for media businesses. Follow our coverage at this link.

Former ContentNext research director and media analyst Lauren Rich Fine opened her conference presentation with a potentially ‘heretical’ question: “Is it possible that there’s too much news?”

Fine’s overview of the state of the media industry (focusing on the US market) and her ideas for a more collaborative, cooperative future can be listened to in full below:

Here are some key quotes:

On content:

• “I would suggest to you that there might be too much content, that we need to see rampant consolidation, that it’s not just going to be in the newspaper industry (…) it has to be everywhere.”

On the newspaper industry:

• “The newspaper industry has been very bad at being optimistic about its future, the newspaper industry has been really bad at marketing itself (and TV and radio are even more off-base).”

On advertising:

• “Classified advertising is permanently exiting newspapers – and it should, it works better online.”
• “If classified advertising continues to fall by the wayside this could be an industry operating with no margin.”

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The New Yorker: A cartoon IQ test

Something for a Friday – the New Yorker deconstructs its cartoons:

“On occasion, we publish a cartoon so ahead of its time that it boggles the mind, making us reconsider the very essence of comedy itself.”

So take the cartoon IQ test and see if you can decipher the correct meaning or ‘just sigh, give up and check the answers’.

(via MediaGuardian)

Full post at this link…

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