Tag Archives: mediaguardian

MediaGuardian: News of the World’s phone-hacking defence unraveling

Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal, has said that the paper’s assistant editor commissioned him to intercept voicemail messages, MediaGuardian reports.

Mulcaire’s claim leaves the newpaper’s ‘rogue reporter’ defence, which lays the blame for the practice solely at the feet of royal reporter Clive Goodman, in tatters.

Accortding to the MediaGuardian report, Mulcaire submitted a statement to the high court yesterday confirming that Ian Edmondson, the paper’s assistant editor (news), asked him to hack into voicemail messages left on a mobile phone belonging to Sky Andrew, a football agent who is suing the paper for breach of privacy.

Edmondson was suspended by the New of the World last week after what the paper called a “serious allegation” of phone-hacking that emerged during a civil case brought by actress Sienna Miller.

Full story on MediaGuardian at this link.

Top 100 media list suggests print power is losing ground to digital

The MediaGuardian’s top 100 list illustrates the growth and influence of digital over traditional media, according to an analysis by the EditorsWeblog.

And if the list is anything to go by, digital appears to be winning in regards to influence hands-down.

Referring to panel comments in a Guardian blog, the report highlights how those who created the list felt newspapers’ influence was “continuing to wane”.

Far too much credence has been given to the influence of newspapers. The election was evidence that they are not the power we once thought.

Digital and social media pioneers claimed the majority of the top spots – prompting a number of questions for the future of traditional media.

Is the influence of newspapers actually waning? Can publishers still compete with Apple or Google for influence over the public? What can they do to work with such companies, and with social networking platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, to maintain newspapers’ relevance in an increasingly digital society?

In another post commenting on the top 100 list, Kevin Marsh from the BBC highlights what he perceives as a lack of interest in content over platforms.

For those of us who think news – in the traditional sense – still matters, the highest placed newspaper editor is Paul Dacre, at 13 … and there’s not another journalist ’til Helen Boaden (BBC), at 21, and Nick Robinson (BBC), at 26 – and there are only three other journalists in the top 50

[T]he power of platforms – whether physical, social media or multi-use – is now greater than that of the content they carry.

Read the EditorsWeblog post here…

MediaGuardian: Clifford drops phone hacking case following £1m deal

News International is to pay out around £1 million in legal costs and personal payments in the latest phone hacking case, the Guardian reports. Publicist Max Clifford will now drop his legal action concerning the alleged interception of his voicemail.

The settlement means that there will now be no disclosure of court-ordered evidence which threatened to expose the involvement of the newspaper’s journalists in a range of illegal information-gathering by private investigators.

Full story at this link…

Jeff Jarvis: ‘The fate of journalism is not in the hands of institutions’

Remember how, in true ‘beta-journalism’ spirit, Jeff Jarvis tested the idea for his forthcoming Guardian column at last week’s ‘Crisis’ conference in Coventry?

Well, here’s the final result, in today’s MediaGuardian, at this link. An extract:

“I am less protective of legacy news organisations because they have had a chance to remake themselves as smaller, nimbler, collaborative enterprises for the internet and have largely failed. The future of news – and there is a future – is being built by entrepreneurs who in change see opportunity, not crisis.

“In short: I say the fate of journalism is not in the hands of institutions. The fate of journalism is in the hands of entrepreneurs.”

MediaGuardian: BBC Worldwide may be part-privatised, says Thompson

In an interview with the Guardian, BBC director-general, Mark Thompson, said that executives are considering the part- privatisation of the corporation’s  commercial arm, BBC Worldwide.

Thompson also said that the provision of free BBC online news was ‘utterly non-negotiable’. “I would rather the BBC was abolished than we started encrypting news to stop people seeing it,” he told the Guardian.

Full story at this link…

paidContent:UK: ‘Guardian may kill Tech print supplement’

paidContent:UK learned that the Guardian is near to dropping its Thursday Technology supplement. It is, paidContent:UK confirmed, after speaking to Guardian News & Media (GNM):

“The online counterpart, which is updated through the day, will continue, however, and Technology may yet be merged with MediaGuardian. The move is thought to be due to worsening tech ad spend but also the fact that many readers, naturally, are online natives with a voracious appetite for tech news throughout the week.”

NB: paidContentUK’s publisher is a wholly owned subsidiary of GNM.

Full story at this link…

MediaGuardian: What did British media look like in 1984?

Happy Birthday to Media Guardian, 25 years old on May 14. In this week’s supplement we learn what each of the writers were doing in 1984: Emily Bell was doing her A-Levels; Stephen Armstrong was still at school; Peter Wilby was education correspondent for the Sunday Times. And long before Media Monkey was even a twinkle in Mr Monkey’s eye – Monkey Jnr is a youthful nine years old, apparently.

One of the features to mark its anniversary examines the shift in the type of newspaper content:

Peter Wilby asks: ‘How did readers know what to think in 1984?’

“Once you get over the minuscule, blurred pictures and the lack of colour, the first thing that strikes you about the newspapers of that year is the paucity of opinionated columnists. The finger-jabbing, red-faced anger of today’s commentariat, the passionate, omniscient certainty with which they declare opinions, scarcely existed 25 years ago.”

Full story at this link…

MediaGuardian: Turkish court rules blocking of newspaper website

Turkey’s third largest-selling newspaper has been blocked, after a complaint by an Islamic creationist. Gazetevatan.com is now closed to Turkish users, after a court ruled that it had insulted Adnan Oktar, a Turkish writer who disputes the theory of evolution.