English language TV station Russia Today reports:
A Georgian TV channel has caused nationwide panic with a fake news bulletin claiming Russian troops were on their way to the capital, Tbilisi – and that President Mikheil Saakashvili had been killed. Many viewers missed a short warning that the thirty-minute report was a mock-up, and rushed out onto the streets.
Elise Hu has written a thorough round-up of the ‘Future of Context’ panel at the SXSW Interactive conference in Texas.
Some great thinkers in media are leading what I’ll call the ‘context movement’, a push toward giving audiences more satisfying, better understanding of the worlds in which they live instead of simply presenting ephemeral, episodic stories as journalists always have.
Panellists included:
Matt Thompson, NPR and formerly of the Knight Foundation; Jay Rosen, author of PressThink and professor at NYU; Tristan Harris, CEO/Founder of Apture.
(Hat-tip: Jay Rosen on Twitter)
Also see:
Channel 4 News correspondent Alex Thomson was embedded with the Coldstream guards in Afghanistan, while they came under heavy fire from insurgents.
His film from last night’s news programme:
Yesterday Channel 4 news wrote in its evening email, Snowmail:
[The film] reveals the state of relations between the Brits and the rather hapless Afghan army – who spend much of their time shooting in the wrong direction – or arresting, then releasing a local man who may, or may not have done anything wrong.
Suddenly the troops come under heavy fire as the insurgents start shooting straight at them. Our team are pinned down with the soldiers as bullets fly overhead – even into one soldier’s head, whose helmet luckily saves him. Not much ground is won at the end of it all – but it’s a remarkable watch.
Alex Thomson was tweeting throughout his visit, via http://twitter.com/alextomo. Tweets from the battlefield had a time delay because of operations security. An example from 12 March:
(Not live) RMP shot in helmet wakes up realising he has woken up . Alive. A shd let hm keep smashed up helmet. He’s back on roof sentry.
Thomson is due to participate in this week’s video conference in Coventry: Afghanistan – are we embedding the truth? The event is due to be livestreamed on this site and the BBC College of Journalism. The Twitter tag will be #afghancov.
Alex Thomson (Channel 4), Stuart Ramsey (Sky News) and Jonathan Marcus (BBC) have all been confirmed as speakers for this week’s conference on journalism from Afghanistan.
As previously reported on Journalism.co.uk, along with the BBC College of Journalism, we are supporting the afternoon event at Coventry University next Thursday (18 March), which asks: “Afghanistan: are we embedding the truth?”
Conference organiser John Mair said he is “delighted to be co-operating with the BBC College of Journalism – the new kid on the J block in Britain”.
“The time is long overdue to closely examine and debate the British media coverage of the Afghan war – this is the forum. Come along or follow the webcast live.”
Journalism.co.uk will livestream video and tweets from the conference from our site. For followers on Twitter, the tag will be #afghancov.
The conference will take place on Thursday 18, at 1pm – 4pm in the Humber Theatre, Coventry University.
The line-up in full, below:
MP Tom Watson has speculated that his question in the House of Commons last Thursday, like many other phone hacking concerns, will receive scant attention by the press.
Linking to an Independent on Sunday report, he tweeted: “yet another phone hacking story that won’t be reported anywhere else”.
And Google News shows us Watson is right so far – only the IoS appears to have picked up the solicitor general’s response to his question about the investigation of the News of the World phone hacking case.
[From Hansard: PDF at this link]
Mr. Tom Watson (West Bromwich, East) (Lab): Will my hon. and learned Friend satisfy herself that the Crown Prosecution Service has not successfully prosecuted cases on the basis of police files that were compiled using evidence illegally obtained by News of the World phone hacking?
The Solicitor-General: Yes – I am not sure that any connection has been made, but I am very well aware of the issue, and it is an issue well raised.
Further to that, the Independent on Sunday reports:
Whitehall sources said that there would not, at this stage, be a full-blown investigation into any concerns, but that the issue would be examined. A more detailed investigation would take place if substantial evidence was put forward, sources said.
According to the paper: “a spokesman for the Met said it would not be commenting on the parliamentary exchange. A News International spokesman declined to comment.”
Independent News & Media has apologised for a “seriously defamatory” headline on a comment piece by blogger and writer Zoe Margolis published in the Independent on Sunday [see background here]. In a correction published on its site today, the newspaper said:
On 7 March 2010, we published an article by Zoe Margolis. In part of the first edition of the newspaper and online, this article carried the headline, “I was a hooker who became an agony aunt”. This was written by the newspaper not Ms Margolis. We accept that Ms Margolis is not and never has been “a hooker” or otherwise involved in the sex industry. The wording of the headline was a mistake and seriously defamatory of Ms Margolis. We offer our sincere apologies to Ms Margolis for the damage to her reputation and the distress and embarrassment which she has suffered.
While pre-prepared obituaries are standard practice, it was a little surreal to see an obituary of Michael Foot by Mervyn Jones (d. 23 February 2010) in the print edition of the Guardian on 4 March 2010, the Tribune’s diary notes. An obituary for Jones, who was Michael Foot’s biographer, had appeared in the Guardian on 25 February. The deaths were so close together, the Tribune says, it had to run its own tributes in the same edition.
It looks like the US has a subbing pedant to rival the Telegraph’s Simon Heffer: the Tribune Co. CEO, Randy Michaels.
Vocalo’s Robert Feder shares a memo on 119 words or phrases banned on air by Michaels. Anchors or reporters for his radio news station, WGN-AM, must never pronounce W. “dubbaya”, for example – it’s double you. It’s “moot point” not “mute” – “but don’t say that either”. Nothing “went terribly wrong”; “undocumented aliens” are forbidden and no-one left this world in an “untimely death”. “At risk”; “legendary”, “no brainer” and “perfect storm” are also among the vocabulary victims.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and also internet media company Wikia, reveals that he has recently bought a new stocks site, which he hopes whistleblowers will contribute to. Value Wiki is now part of Wikia, his consumer publishing company (Wikipedia is part of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation).
[I] just bought a site called Value Wiki which is about stocks and we’re hoping people will come forward, maybe whistle blowers, whoever, will come forward with some information about companies. The same thing can happen to politicians.
Wales also spoke about the accuracy and editorial issues for his encyclopedia, Wikipedia:
We’re trying to look at different software tools that allow the community to monitor what’s going on. There’s always a core of good people managing Wiki who really want it to be high quality. The main thing is making sure that they have what they need.
[Hiring editors] doesn’t even seem like the right approach to us. When we really dig in deep and we look at where there are problems, and what the problems are, they’re never about not having enough core people who are really passionate about it but about making sure the software tools are available to them.
Reuters has published new social media guidelines in its Handbook of Journalism. As well as reminding journalists to keep the personal separate from the professional, it advises:
Can I break news via Twitter?
As with blogging within Reuters News, you should make sure that if you have hard news content that it is broken first via the wire. Don’t scoop the wire. NB this does not apply if you are retweeting; (re-publishing) someone else’s scoop.
Corrections
If a correction is required, a new tweet that begins “CORRECTION:…” should be published.