Author Archives: Joel Gunter

About Joel Gunter

Joel Gunter is a senior reporter at Journalism.co.uk.

#followjourn: @martincloake – Martin Cloake/freelance

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Who? Martin Cloake: “Writer and editor on sport, finance and new media models. Also available for training, communications work and general Spurs banter.”

Where? Martin writes for Daily Finance UK, see his collected articles here, and has his own site, including a blog covering mostly media and sport.

Twitter? @martincloake

Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.

Journalisted Weekly: Brisbane floods, Arizona shootings, and Tunisia protests

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Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations.

Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

for the week ending Sunday 16 January

  • Floods in Brisbane and shootings in Arizona dominated the news during the week
  • Protests leading to the ousting of Tunisia’s government received much coverage over the weekend
  • Northern & Shell, Stuxnet, and controversy over Welsh organ donation received little coverage

Covered lots

Covered little

  • Renewed controversy over the Stuxnet cyber virus, which attacked Iran’s nuclear programme last year, 8 articles
  • Northern & Shell, the group that owns the Express, Star and OK! pulls out of the UK press self-regulation system, 7 articles
  • The Welsh Assembly Government calling for a ‘soft opt-out’ policy for organ donation and raising controversy over human rights, 4 articles

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs serious

Who wrote a lot about…’Tunisia’

Richard Spencer – 9 articles (Telegraph), James Bones – 8 articles (The Times), Roula Khalaf – 7 articles (Financial Times), Heba Saleh – 5 articles (Financial Times), Colin Freeman (Telegraph) – 4 articles, Angelique Chrisafis – 4 articles (The Guardian)

Long form journalism

From The Media Standards Trust

The Media Standards Trust’s panel event ‘Libel reform: in the public’s interest?’ is now available to watch on our website

The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

BECTU calls on members to take action over BSkyB takeover bid

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Media and entertainment union BECTU is calling on its members to ask their MPs to support the referral of News Corp’s BSkyB bid to the competition commission.

“Action is easy and takes a matter of minutes. Visit 38 Degrees and enter your postcode to email your MP directly. If you have yet to sign the petition please do so now,” says a release from the union.

BECTU assistant general secretary, Luke Crawley adds: “Once the referral is secured, BECTU will continue its support for the campaign against the takeover which threatens to narrow the range of voices and opinion expressed in the UK’s media.”

The union has also called on culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is responsible for making a decision over the bid, to publish Ofcom’s report into the proposals, which was delivered to his department on the 31 December.

Speaking at London School of Economics last week, Hunt refused to comment on process or when a decision would be arrived at. He also declined to reveal when the Ofcom report would be published. His appearance at the university was interrupted by a demonstration over the bid.

Representatives from BECTU attended a meeting about the bid and media ownership at the House of Commons last week. Speaking at the meeting, Lord Razzall said that “all hell will break loose” if Hunt were to ignore a recommendation from Ofcom to refer the bid to the competition commission.

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

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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.

OUseful: New public data Q&A site launches

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Open University lecturer, self-proclaimed mashup artist and all-round bright spark Tony Hirst blogs about a new Q&A site designed to help people with open data questions.

GetTheData.org is in “startup/bootstrapping” phase at the moment but already has a fair bit of information up.

The idea behind the site is to field questions and answers relating to the practicalities of working with public open data: from discovering data sets, to combining data from different sources in appropriate ways, getting data into formats you can happily work with, or that will play nicely with visualisation or analysis tools you already have, and so on.

Full post on OUseful.info at this link.

h/t: Online Journalism Blog

Observer: How the phone-hacking scandal fits together

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As the CPS begins a fresh assessment of Met police evidence in the News of the World phone-hacking case, and coverage of the convoluted scandal is once again on the rise, the Observer has produced a graphic for the confused, showing how the major players fit together.

See the full graphic at this link [PDF].

Today: Cameron defends Coulson, refuses to comment on resignation rumour

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David Cameron defended his director of communications, Andy Coulson this morning on Radio 4, refusing to comment on speculation that Coulson had offered his resignation after mounting pressure over the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

I think there is a danger at the moment that he is being punished twice for the same offence … I gave him a second chance, I think in life sometimes its right to give a second chance.

Presenter John Humphrys pressed the prime minister on the rumours of a resignation offer but he refused to comment: “I don’t go into private conversations.”

Here the full programme at this link (skip to 18:40 for Coulson questions).

The Wall: Independent.co.uk boosts Facebook referrals by 680%

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Independent.co.uk has been doing its social media homework by the looks of things, with a report from the Wall suggesting that Facebook referrals to the site are up by 680%.

According to the post, Twitter referrals are up by 250%. The site’s digital media editor Jack Riley puts the growth in part down to being one of the first big sites to integrate the Facebook Recommend and Like buttons.

Another nice touch is the paper has started to allow readers to get their news through social networks in categories that reflect their interests and the Independent’s breadth of output. For examples this means you can like individual writers in your news feed or if you’re a footie fan you can like its coverage of your particular team.

Full post on the Wall at this link.

Reporters Without Borders publishes alleged secret Chinese media directive

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Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has published what it alleges to be a document issued to Chinese news organisations by the country’s Propaganda Department.

The directives in the document were reportedly delivered only via word of mouth to journalists at meetings where note-taking was banned.

The document (Chinese language) reportedly bans the coverage of a number of contentious issues in China, including: “the property market, rising prices, corruption, the demolition of housing and compulsory relocation, residence permits, the absence of social security, inadequate transport during the Chinese New Year and popular discontent that finds expression in anti-government demonstrations.”

RSF has accused the Chinese Propaganda Department of placing the country’s media within an “editorial straitjacket”.

Nobody from RSF was available to comment on when, or from whom it obtained the document.

Nobody from the Chinese Embassy press office, London was available to comment on the report.

Full RSF post at this link.

Peston: Ofcom has recommended BSkyB bid go to competition commission, that is a fact

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BBC business editor Robert Peston has insisted that claims he made earlier today about a recommendation from Ofcom to put News Corp’s BSkyB bid to the Competition Commission is not just speculation.

Update 12:59: I slightly regret the way I wrote this post, because some of you seem to think this is speculation.

It isn’t speculation.

What I am saying is very simple: Ofcom has recommended that there should be a full Competition Commission enquiry into News Corporation’s plan to buy all of British Sky Broadcasting.

That is a fact.

The report by Ofcom has not yet been made public, with the regulator and Department for Culture Media and Sport telling Journalism.co.uk recently that they could not comment on the contents of the report until culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has responsibility for the decision, has made an announcement.

Jeremy Hunt discussed the bid in an debate at the LSE with Raymond Snoddy last night but refused to comment in any detail on the decision making process.

In a separate meeting last night, journalists held a campaign meeting at the Houses of Parliament where Lord Razzall said “all hell would break loose” if Hunt were to ignore a recommendation by Ofcom to refer the bid to the Competition Commission.