The Law Gazette’s Jonathan Rayner attacks newspapers’ lack of balance, in the run-up to the election. Of both national and regional journalists, he asks: “When did reporters stop reporting the news and become political propagandists instead?”
What is the journalist’s job? Is it still finding out and reporting what’s going on, because how else will everyone know? Or is it convincing the readers, because of their proprietors’ commercial or political interests, to vote in a certain way?
A judge in Ohio has filed a law suit against The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, which claimed she may have commented anonymously on the newspaper’s website about court cases, ABC News reports.
According to [judge] Saffold and her attorney, Spitz, any comments from the username “lawmiss” connected to cases involving Saffold were most likely left by the judge’s 23-year-old daughter, Sydney, an aspiring law student.
The Conservative party has joined Labour and the Liberal Democrats in pledging support to the Libel Reform Campaign, a coalition led by Index on Censorship, English PEN and Sense About Science.
Conservative shadow justice secretary, Dominic Grieve, said:
The Conservative party is committed, if elected, to undertaking a fundamental review of the libel laws with a view to enacting legislation to reform them. This reform could best be done by means of a separate Libel Bill and this is the preferred approach for us.
The Libel Reform campaign “is believed to be the first campaign by an NGO this year to get a manifesto commitment from all three major parties,” reports Index on Censorship.
Disclaimer: Journalism.co.uk has also pledged its support to the libel reform campaign.
Hear the Libel Reform Campaign’s Michael Harris talk about how he built the online buzz around this issue at Journalism.co.uk’s upcoming news:rewired event, on 25 June 2010 in London.
Polis director Charlie Beckett reports on comments by Sky political editor, Adam Boulton, at a Foreign Press Association event at the LSE.
Boulton convinced Beckett that the televised leader debates, one of which Boulton will host, could change the general election campaign.
“This campaign is about to be completely shaken up [by the first TV debate]. So far it has just been the lull before the storm” says Boulton. “It’s not just the live debates themselves. There will be re-runs on all the channels plus the online downloads, the YouTube mash-ups and the rest. They will be a real presence in the campaign. And it won’t just be about personality. Policy will be discussed because they have to talk about something for 90 minutes.”
In January we reported how blogger Melanie Schregardus, an air traffic controller in Shannon, lodged a complaint and sought legal advice when the Irish Mail on Sunday reported, alongside her photograph, that she had ‘lifted the lid’ on a ‘den of male chauvinists’ in her workplace; a story she strongly disputed.
In a lengthy statement in January the newspaper defended its treatment of the story without apology.
But after Schregardus took the matter to the Irish Press Council, the newspaper agreed to print an apology. On Sunday February 21, it published this, on page 4:
In our edition of January 24, we published an article based on the contents of a blog written by Melanie Schregardus, an air traffic controller in Shannon.
The Irish Mail on Sunday was critical of the behaviour of her male colleagues, as described by Ms Schregardus in her blog, and labelled this behaviour as ‘sexist’.
Ms Schregardus has asked us to point out that our interpretation of her remarks does not reflect her personal views.
While the Irish Mail on Sunday did contact Ms Schregardus prior to publication to ask for an interview in relation to the controllers’ industrial action of the previous week, it was not made clear to her during those contacts that there was a proposed article that would focus on the contents of her blog. This error was a breach of our own policy and is deeply regretted.
Thus while the Irish Mail on Sunday stands over its story, we would nevertheless like to apologise to Ms Schregardus for not informing her in advance that we planned to report on her blog.
Ms Schregardus has asked us to point out that she is very happy and fulfilled in her job, and that her colleagues, both male and female, are of the highest calibre as fellow workers and personal friends.
Schregardus has written more about the process on her blog.
While she says she is unhappy that she did not see the final version of the apology before it was printed, she will now drop her complaint:
After some further discussion and reflection, my family and I decided to accept this clarification as the end of the matter. After all, the Mail had been forced to apologise and clarify, warned about its conduct, and the journalist in question had been disciplined.
She also commends her readers’ support following the article, and the influence of online users in challenging mainstream media reports:
As many people read my original blogpost as actually buy the Mail on Sunday every weekend, and that’s thanks to all of you who helped get my side of the story out there. I’m not one for big reflections on the world, but it seems to me that we are reaching a point where – thanks to the power of the internet – the media have to think twice before pursuing an ordinary person, and that’s a good thing.
Google has been sued in the US, over claims that its Buzz social media service “violated” Gmail users’ privacy rights, Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek reports.
Buzz, introduced by Mountain View, California-based Google in February, automatically displayed to other users the customer’s contacts pulled from Google Gmail e-mail accounts. Google has said it modified the service after customers complained.
Have you been affected by social media privacy settings? Please get in touch with judith [at] journalism.co.uk to share your experiences.
A telling screen grab is doing the rounds – showing the discrepancy between CNN’s news coverage and Al Jazeera English’s.
It shows the two channel’s front online pages, captured on the day Wikileaks released its video showing previously unreleased footage of a US army attack in Iraq.
It looks like the two channels have quite different priorities. CNN goes for Tiger Woods and the iPad, while Al Jazeera puts the Wikileaks story top of its page.
MSNBC has “indefinitely” suspended its news anchor David Shuster for filming a new pilot for CNN, Huffington Post (and others) report.
Schuster had also got into trouble for a tweet sent to the conservative activist James O’Keefe in January; it was deemed “inappropriate” by the channel, adds HuffPo.
Non-profit US investigative organisation ProPublica has got so many ‘loan modification’ case studies it is now playing matchmaker, linking contacts and stories with local journalists from other publications and broadcasters as part of its reporter network project.
Numerous American homeowners have had problems obtaining ‘loan modifications’, a national programme with some major flaws.
More than three million people are eligible and more than one million might be currently involved in the loan modification process, ProPublica’s Mike Webb said, explaining the scale and level of interest.
“We’re doing this because more than 800 homeowners have shared their stories with us about the numerous problems they’ve had in obtaining a modification,” he said.
“We’ve shared many of their stories in our reports, but there are just too many to publish. So we’re hoping local reporters can talk to the homeowners and local banks to help your readers understand how the program works (or doesn’t work).”
Very quickly, ProPublica had 40 reporters sign up to be be paired. “It’s a continuation of our sharing approach, like the reporting recipe, and stimulus data sets,” said Webb.
“We know that news organisations don’t give up their sources to their competitors, but we’re a different kind of publication,” say reporters Amanda Michel and Paul Kiel, on their blog.
As reported on our main site, Simon Singh has successfully appealed the initial ruling on meaning of his Guardian article about the British Chiropractic Association, in the Royal Courts of Justice today. The new ruling determines that Singh can defend his writing as “fair comment” – rather than having to justify it as fact.
Via Index on Censorship, we’ve got the judgement in full (albeit a little wonky). We’ve embedded it on Scribd – see below: