Reuters runs safety training course for Gaza journalists

Reuters’ Gaza bureau ran a four-day training course this week in recognition of cameraman Fadel Shana, who was killed in the region on 16 April 2008.

Twenty Palestinian journalists received tuition in TV production, with extra training on aspects of safety and ethics in conflict zones, a release from Reuters said.

Sessions on filming and editing ran alongside first aid training, including the treatment of gunshot and blast wounds.

In April 2008, Shana was killed by a shell fired by Israeli soldiers. He was the first Reuters journalist to be killed in Gaza. The cameraman was on his way to cover an incident when his vehicle stopped. On getting out of the vehicle an explosion killed Shana and two bystanders.

A soundman travelling with Shana escaped serious injury.

In August last year the news agency said it was ‘disappointed and dissatisfied’ by an investigation by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) into Shana’s death, which said soldiers were justified in opening fire on Shana, as they believed his tripod-mounted camera might be a weapon.

Commenting on the training programme, Reuters bureau chief in Israel and Palestinian territories, Alastair Macdonald, said: “Fadel was killed doing a job to which he was dedicated and to which he brought immense talent and promise. To honour his memory and to improve opportunities for young Palestinian journalists who would wish to follow his example, we are delighted to be able to provide this training.”

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‘Twitter mobs’ on the BBC Radio 4 Moral Maze

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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Media for All: Solving convergence and ownership consolidation problems

As the traditional media continue their seemingly inexorable decline, how can journalists use new media to fulfil their remit to provide information and hold to power to account?  Journalists, academics and activists gathered in Bloomsbury, London last Saturday (October 31) to try to find an answer.

The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom’s (CPBF) Media for All conference aimed to tackle problems posed by technological convergence and ownership consolidation in the media industry.

Topics covered included the friction between increasingly consolidated media ownership and democracy, gaps and biases in news reporting, threats to local and regional news, and protecting and campaigning for diverse and high quality media.

“The collapse of people who are actually communicating is radical, it’s ongoing and it’s extreme,” said John Nichols, correspondent on American news magazine The Nation.

“In the USA today there are roughly 3,000 people working on the internet making news. Last year alone 16,000 newspaper employees lost their jobs.

“The internet is not replacing old media.  At best it is aggregating old media.”

Graham Murdock, author of Media in the Age of Marketization, spoke of the danger of powerful commercial interests closing off the creative commons offered by the internet.

Net neutrality was an issue, he said, citing how private media companies lobby for priority of access to the internet.

This must be countered by an online ‘revivification of public cultural institutions’, and the creation of alternative information networks to counter those being created by private companies, he added.

NUJ president Jeremy Dear looked how the crisis was affecting local news, taking as an example the closure of the Long Eaton advertiser last year, leaving the town with no local news outlet.  “The Long Eaton Advertiser was not a victim of the recession, it was a victim of a failed corporate culture,” said Dear.

Dear continued: “At the heart of our campaign must be the total rejection that profit must be the determinant of the success of local news.

“It’s that threat that led our union to launch the ‘Journalism Matters’ campaign, based on the premise that the supply of information is too important to be left to private companies.”

Dear called for a campaign to exert political pressure in the run up to the next general election: “Be assured that editors and owners are out there wining and dining the politicians,” he said.

“In the run-up to any vote we will be mobilising days of action.  These are battles for jobs, but they are also all about people standing up for local news.  We need to make the media an election issue.”

Damien Gayle is a postgraduate journalism student at City University, London.

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#ICE: Apology ethics, Big Brother and Boyle

Journalism.co.uk is at the Institute of Communication Ethics Annual Conference today, hosted by Nick Jones, former BBC political correspondent.

Jones kicked proceedings off, talking about the ethics of an apology: the way the media is influenced by the technique, seeing it as a victory when one is achieved.

Just say the ‘S’ word, Alastair Campbell warned politicians in the midst of scandal. But, Jones warns, the apology fad leads to ‘personality-driven’ news.

More on that one later. In the meantime, follow @journalism_live for occasional tweets. Big Brother’s Bex (2008) is on the stage now and papers on PopBitch (by me) and Susan Boyle (by Spencer Murphy) to follow.

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

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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#ReutersEthics: Trust and Twitter debated at Thomson Reuters

“It’s good for trust in journalism to be low,” the Evening Standard’s executive editor said last night, “and we should feel like our back is against the wall”.

Taking part in the ‘What Price The News?’ debate on the ethics of modern journalism hosted by Thomson Reuters, the Evening Standard’s Anne McElvoy said that while society as a whole is less trusting, ‘it’s right for people to be skeptical’ about where their news is coming from.

Journalism will benefit, she claimed. “We’re not Mother Teresa – we don’t expect to have a high trust rating.”

Twitter ethics

The debate inevitably covered Twitter, and its value as a source of news. “Twitter was not designed to cover the world. It was designed to give a flavour of the conversation at the moment,” said Joe Lelyveld, Pulitzer prize winner and former New York Times journalist.

The panel also saw a use in ‘getting privileged information out there fast’, as with the Guardian-Trafigura case, but were wary of it becoming more than ‘just a tip-off service’ for journalists without subsequent fact checking.

BNP on BBC

While Nick Griffin sat in a BBC studio recording his appearance on the Question Time panel, the panel at Thomson Reuters considered how they would have dealt with the issue.

“It’s the responsibility of journalists in this country to report the hell out of this situation. You need to give your readers and viewers a truthful view of who this character is, and do so clearly, intelligently and aggressively,” said Lelyveld.

Sean Maguire, Reuters political and general news reporter, could see himself ‘making the same decision’ to allow Griffin on the programme. “It’s about time he showed himself up (…) Let’s turn the stone over and see what comes out.”

The situation paralleled the BBC’s contact with the Taliban, added Simon Robinson, European editor of Time magazine. “It was never going to change the outcome, but it is important to know what local people are thinking.”

Meanwhile Ray Snoddy, BBC Newswatch presenter and chair of the panel, wondered whether the BBC had ‘jumped the gun’ by letting Griffin appear before knowing the outcome of the court case concerning BNP membership.

• Also on Journalism.co.uk: ‘Former employees raise concerns about Reuters’ speed over accuracy slip-ups’

The Thomson Reuters Foundation has produced an Ethics Handbook, copies of which have also been printed in Arabic and distributed to journalists in the Middle East thanks to a fund left by journalist Mona Megalli. The debate could be followed on Twitter (#ReutersEthics) and Reuters ran a live blog on its site.

Marion Dakers (@mvdakers) is an MA newspaper journalist student at City University.

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Dart Blog: Twitter was ‘great excuse’ of Western media in Iranian election protests, says Iason Athanasiadis

“Was there a Twitter revolution in Iran? To Iason Athanasiadis, an independent journalist whose detention there sparked a global uproar that culminated in his release, the answer comes quickly: No.”

A thoughtful piece on the Dart Center blog about Iason Athanasiadis’ recent talk at Columbia University. “Twitter was the great excuse of the Western media,” the journalist argued. But it did play a crucial role, he said.

“When using social media as a reporting tool, Athanasiadis is careful to triangulate.  ‘I’ve never really quoted anyone that I’ve never met,’ he said. The same could not be said for much of the Western press, who, faced with the alternative of reporting nothing, often relied on broadcasting messages and videos before investigating their provenance. It was one such video, of Neda Agha Soltan dying after being shot in the chest, that became the most powerful and recognizable symbol of the protests.

“The video turned out to be authentic, but social media also helped spread false images of Neda, inflated protest tallies, and rumors; the multitude of non-Iranian Twitter users who changed their stated location to Tehran made parsing the authentic from the inauthentic all the more difficult.”

Full post at this link…

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Poll: Was the BBC right to invite BNP’s Nick Griffin onto Question Time? #bbcqt

Amid much controversy the BNP’s Nick Griffin made his BBC Question Time debut last night. Now, having seen or read about the transmitted programme, do you think the BBC was right in its judgement to invite him on? Please take part in our poll and leave additional comments about the programme below:

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#BBCQT: BBC Analysis – ‘Who’s afraid of the BNP?’

Food for thought ahead of BNP leader Nick Griffin’s appearance on tonight’s Question Time (#BBCQT if you’re following on Twitter).

If you missed Kenan Malik’s Radio 4 Analysis ‘Who’s Afraid of the BNP’ programme on September 28, you can read the transcript on his website or listen to it again here.

Some provocative material from its selection of contributors. Among them was Nick Griffin, who was challenged on his comments about the Holocaust and his party’s admission procedure.

Views were mixed about Griffin’s invitation onto Question Time. Writer and economist Phillipe Legrain was in support of the BBC’s decision:

“Freedom of expression is not something that you only give to people who you agree with, but, just as importantly, to people who you don’t,” Legrain said.

“Frankly, I think the BNP appearing on Question Time will be fantastic. Nick Griffin is going to get caught out. He’s going to sound stupid, he’s going to sound extremist. That kind of exposure is actually the best way to combat the BNP.”

Full transcript at this link…

Also see:

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• Fraser Nelson: ‘Question Time Conundrum’
• Sunny Hundal: ‘How their language has changed’
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BBC Radio 4: Sami al-Hajj on his return from Guantanamo

BBC Radio 4 has produced a programme featuring Al Jazeera journalist Sami al-Hajj who was arrested on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001. It’s available on iPlayer for another six days and repeated on Radio 4 on Sunday (25/10).

“For more than six years he was held in the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention centre until, in 2008, he was suddenly released. In an exclusive interview, he talks to Gavin Esler about what happened to him, and why.”

Full programme at this link…

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