Tag Archives: Daniel Bennett

Mediating Conflict: Looking at the media ‘stealing’ stories from blogs

If you haven’t spotted it already, read Danny Sullivan’s blog post about the mainstream media ‘stealing’ his scoop – the story about a woman suing Google, alleging that bad directions had resulted in her getting hit by a car.

Sullivan documents the various ways his story for Search Engine Land was picked up by mainstream titles, and raises complaint with the way material was used.

…News is messy. But we should all try to do better attribution.

Following on from the post, the UK-based blogger and PhD student, Daniel Bennett, broadens the discussion to one of methodology: how to monitor the way mainstream media uses blog content, if they don’t attribute it?

…If blogs and indeed other sources of other news are written out of media reports how can we accurately measure their influence? It seems to me that relying solely on content analyses to assess the impact of blogs on the traditional news media is highly unreliable.

BBC aggregates outside content with See Also blog

Prompted by blogger Daniel Bennett, I just took a look at See Also – a BBC blog that collects together the “best of the web, including comment, newspaper editorials and analysis”. It’s fairly mainstream media focused, but does pick up a bit of individual blogger comment too, on issues of the day: yesterday’s looked at  Obama’s cancellation of the moon mission, for example.

BBC’s See Also at this link.

Mediating Conflict: Twitter, journalists and hype

Interesting interpretation by Daniel Bennett of a tweeted conversation between a Sky News field producer (@fieldproducer) and one of its political correspondents Niall Paterson (@niallpaterson) debating the usefulness of Twitter to journalists and whether its the hype about the service that influences some blog/media’s coverage of the microblogging platform. [The conversation was initially sparked by this blog post]

Also see the comments, where Paterson takes the debate further, responding to some of Bennett’s own comments.

Full post at this link…

Frontline Club: Links for Iran election protest media coverage

Daniel Bennett has provided two useful link round-ups on media coverage of Iran election protests:

MediatingConflict: Do news orgs need to double-check Twitter?

Following up on a post looking at the Channel 4 News’ use of Twitter (picked up from the Journalism.co.uk ‘Twinterview’ with Krishnan Guru-Murthy) Daniel Bennett looks at at the BBC’s policy:

“First, I said I’d be surprised if any of the BBC’s Twitter feeds are checked either. So I was surprised when I discovered that the BBC’s Global News feed does actually pass through an editorial process whereby someone double-checks a tweet before it is published.”

Bennett uses an earlier comment from Charlie Beckett about verification in the process of reporting television news, and then asks, “What do journalists double-check and why? What doesn’t get checked and why? Does the checking process make any sense?”

Full post at this link…

MediatingConflict: BBC reclaims Twitter account

Daniel Bennett spotted on Friday that the BBC had managed to reclaim a Twitter account from a ‘squatter’. Somehow a BBC news Twitter feed had become @not_bbc – an account now handed over to the BBC. It’s now sorted out and Twitter.com/bbc is definitely genuine, Bennett writes.

Full story at this link…

FromtheFrontline: More Twitter conventions would have aided Mumbai coverage

“As Twitter use becomes more widespread, so it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint the type of information you are looking for,” writes Daniel Bennett.

“A vast of sea of tweets with #Mumbai quickly developed, and if you were a journalist trying to find eyewitness accounts you found yourself painstakingly wading through them all. Those who did probably found it was time well spent, but is there a better way?” Bennett asks.

Death toll rises for journalists killed in Georgia

According to reports, four journalists have been killed in Georgia, since the country’s armed conflict with Russia began on Friday.

Dutch television cameraman Stan Storimans, 39, who was working for news channel RTL, was killed during the Russian bombing of Gori, the Associated Press has said. Storiman’s colleague Jeroen Akkermans was also injured by blasts, which killed five.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has also reported the deaths of two journalists in the South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali. Grigol Chikhladze, head of Alania TV, and Alexander Klimchuk, head of the Caucasus Press Images agency and a correspondent for Itar-Tas, were shot at a roadblock erected by Ossetian freedom-fighters, RSF said.

US reporter Winston Featherly-Bean and fellow Georgian reporter Teimuraz Kikuradze, who were travelling with Chikladze and Klimchuck, were wounded in the attack and later taken to a field hospital.

An as yet unnamed Georgian journalist has also died in the conflict, after a shell hit his car outside Gori.

The BBC’s Gavin Hewitt also claimed his crew were under fire from Russian forces (thanks to Daniel Bennett for flagging this up):

Twittering the Bangalore bombs

Interesting comparison by Daniel Bennett of mainstream media coverage and a Twitter account of today’s bombings in Bangalore, India.

Bennett points out that updates to the microblogging tool by technology entrepreneur Mukund Mohan show the changing nature of breaking news (the oldest is at the moment):

Mohan’s details of telephone lines being down and news of evacuations, show how news organisations can harness the tool in emergencies.