Former BBC News chief political correspondent Laura Kuenssberg began her new role as ITV business editor today. Kuenssberg built up quite a Twitter following during her time at the BBC, around 67,000 people, due in no small part to her coverage of last year’s general election saga.
In the wake of the announcement of her move to ITV there was, in her own words, “frenzied conversation” about what would happen to her Twitter account. It was, after all, a professional account, it had BBC in the name. So who did the followers belong to?
In the end, the agreement with the BBC was “entirely amicable”, according to Kuenssberg, and she transferred her account and followers to @ITVLauraK.
Today she writes on her new ITV blog about her take on the issue of professional Twitter accounts and ownership:
Given my belief that those who tweet have minds of their own, the clamour over what would happen to @BBCLauraK, the corporation’s first official journalist Twitter stream, took me rather by surprise. But, more importantly, what the fuss did demonstrate was how central online reporting has become to the work of journalists. No doubt, having started tweeting as an experiment two years ago during the party conference season, it became almost as important to me to break stories on Twitter as it did to get them on air on the BBC’s rolling news channel.
BBC journalists in Brighton, hometown of Journalism.co.uk, are taking part in today’s nationwide strikes at the corporation over compulsory redundancies. Staff at BBC Radio Sussex formed a picket outside the station’s offices on Queen’s Road this morning (1 August) from 4am, leaving management to find non-union staff to present the station’s programmes.
The mid-morning show, which airs from 9am-12pm, was produced at the Sussex offices by stand-ins and broadcast simultaneously by BBC Kent Radio.
There are no compulsory redundancies proposed at BBC Sussex, but Paul Siegert, the NUJ rep for the region, told Journalism.co.uk this morning he feared that the implementation of BBC’s Delivering Quality First Strategy could lead to cuts at the station.
“We know that there is a thing that BBC management are looking at at the moment called DQF, which we call Destroying Quality Forever, which is going to mean that there will be 20 per cent cuts across the BBC, and so we are expecting that there will be job cuts in places like this if we don’t take action now.”
Danielle Glavin, Siegert’s deputy at the Sussex chapel and West Sussex reporter for the station, said: “We are just trying to protect the BBC, otherwise it will be desolated”.
John Lees, the station’s sports correspondent, was outside the BBC Sussex building at 4am this morning to begin the picket, about the time he would arrive for work. His part of the show was presented by another member of staff this morning. He said that no union members had crossed the picket line in Sussex, and that the staff were “standing firm” in today’s strike and in the indefinite work to rule beginning tomorrow.
“Either you’re an NUJ member or you’re not, and if you are you’ve got to support to strike. And we do.”
Also among the picketers was Kathy Caton, a World Service employee on a year’s attachment in Sussex. Caton is among those to have already been made compulsorily redundant, and would have been forced out of the BBC last month if she had still been working out of the World Service offices at Bush House, London. Because of her attachment to BBC Sussex, she has a stay of execution until next June.
She told Journalism.co.uk that there is “simply no fat to cut away” at the local station.
“Everything is done on such a tight ship, and to achieve the cuts that the BBC has planned means losing jobs, losing services and losing programmes.
“But there’s no slack here, people aren’t sitting around eating foie gras and swilling it down with champagne. It’s a tight ship.”
Caton will see out her attachment in Sussex until June next year, and then join the other World Service staff forced out by the cutbacks. The BBC intends to make 100 staff compulsorily redundant, out of a total of 387 job cuts across the World Service and BBC Monitoring.
She praised the World Service as “one of the finest things that the BBC is involved in”.
“What it produces versus its annual cost is extraordinary. To kill it off so fundamentally is something future generations will look back on and despair.”
The BBC has defended the need to make compulsory redundancies in order to achieve the savings set out by last year’s comprehensive spending review. Lucy Adams, the corporation’s director of business operations, said in a message to staff today that the corporation could not agree to the union’s demands for no compulsory redundancies.
“Following the cuts in central Government grants to the World Service and BBC Monitoring we have had to close 387 posts, meaning that regrettably there are nearly 100 staff who as a result are facing compulsory redundancy. We have been working with all these affected staff to ensure that they have opportunities for redeployment and retraining but we cannot and will not give preferential treatment to individuals depending on their union status.
“We hope the NUJ will realise that these issues are best solved at a local level, and a national strike that penalises all our audiences is not in the interests of their members, other BBC staff or licence fee payers.”
At the beginning of the month the UK Bribery Act came into force, and while it is largely aimed at business corruption, according to the BBC, the provisions of the Act could also impact on the activities of UK journalists.
So this useful post on the College of Journalism website, by the BBC’s Kevin Steele, is a must read. In the post, he explains exactly how reporters could be affected and “fall foul” of the act, such as when using local fixers.
… what happens when your fixer says they can make the local bureaucratic wheels turn faster – and you can meet your deadline – if they make a payment or other ‘consideration’ of some kind to a third party who is in a position to expedite your request.
It is in situations like this that a journalist, and their employer, can fall foul of the new UK Bribery Act.
According to Steele the “wide-ranging” legislation can also affect non-British journalists from foreign outlets “with a presence of some kind in the UK”. And the employer is also at risk, he says.
One of the new provisions of the UK Act is that of corporate liability – so a media organisation can be held responsible in law for the individual actions of its employees, including freelancers or agents (such as fixers) acting on its behalf.
However, there is a defence if the employer can show that it had in place ‘adequate procedures’ to prevent an infringement of the legislation – even if evidence of a bribe can be shown.
Channel 4 newsreader Jon Snow returned to university today to receive a degree 40 years after being expelled.
Snow studied law at Liverpool University from 1968 to 1970, but was kicked out after a rooftop protest against the university’s investment in South Africa during apartheid.
The protesting students demanded the removal of Liverpool University’s chancellor Lord Salisbury who they accused of sympathising with white regimes in South Africa and what was then Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
Snow – who went straight from volunteering in Africa to university – was one of hundreds of students who occupied the institution’s Senate House.
The infamous newsreader says that he is glad he was expelled, as it prevented him from becoming an “extremely mediocre and wonky” lawyer.
He wrote today:
To this day, I have not had a degree. I was studying law. Academe had not been an easy path for me, but my studies were going well. Whilst in some ways eviction served me well in that I didn’t become a fifth-rate lawyer, in other ways it left me questioning whether I would ever have got the degree.
But today Liverpool University and I buried the hatchet. I had the honour of hearing the pro vice-chancellor read out a eulogy about me – or rather, about a man I didn’t really seem to recognise, some character who reported for Channel 4.
From henceforth, no more ‘Mr’ Snow. I am Dr Snow, honorary Doctor of Laws (Liverpool University). Coming back on the train, I had relished the experience. But Somalia beckoned, the Murdoch mayhem beckoned. Another day, another dollar.
Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has backtracked on his plans to introduce a local TV network.
Hunt originally wanted a single network channel – based around a ‘national spine’ – before changing to a more locally run approach.
After a consultation, the culture secretary changed the proposals, and has now settled on a final published framework.
Hunt‘s original plans would have seen a centralised national channel with syndicated programming, which would act as the hub which local channels could feed.
Instead, the final plan favours a network of individual TV stations.
Hunt said he planned to provide bidders with a digital terrestrial TV spectrum, managed by a new licensed multiplex company.
The next task for Hunt is to, in his words, “secure prominence” for the network on Freeview and other electronic programme guides.
In a written ministerial statement, Hunt said: “The proposals include three statutory instruments: the first, to reserve sufficient local, low-cost spectrum for carrying the local TV services; the second to create a proportionate and targeted licensing regime for the spectrum and local TV service operators; and the third, to secure appropriate prominence for the licensed local services in television electronic programme guides.”
“Local TV will provide news and other content for local audiences helping to hold local institutions to account and providing proper local perspectives. This framework offers the right incentives to the market to develop innovative business models; provides greater certainty and reduced risk for investors; and encourages new market opportunities and growth,” he added.
“It is expected the first local television licences will be awarded by Ofcom from summer 2012.”
The infrastructure costs will be met from £25 million allocated as part of the BBC licence fee settlement.
According to a blog post by the BBC’s business editor Robert Peston, the board of BSkyB is due to decide whether James Murdoch, chairman of News International, should stand down from his position.
According to a well-placed source, there is a growing view among the company’s non-executives that the burden for James Murdoch of “fighting the fires” at News Corporation – where he is in charge of European operations and is deputy chief operating officer – means that he will find it hard to devote enough time to chairing BSkyB, the largest media and entertainment company in the UK.
According to Peston, it is likely he will be asked to stand down temporarily, until News International “has been stabilised”.
But the Guardian seems to dispute this in its live blog on the phone hacking scandal. Reporter Lisa O’Carroll is quoted as saying that BSkyB had said “it did not expect James Murdoch to be pushed”.
It said it had “no specific comment” to make about claims by the BBC’s Robert Peston that the non-executives felt Murdoch was “fighting the fires” at News Corporation – where he is deputy chief operating officer.
A spokesman said there were no moves afoot on the make-up of the boardroom: “The company has a strong governance framework and there are no changes to the existing plans.”
Channel 4 News is to launch a new iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch app on Friday. Developers are currently working on an Android version.
The free app allows users to watch catch-up videos for seven days. Content can be accessed via a 3G or wifi connection and can be viewed when devices are offline.
You can see Jon Snow promoting the app in this video:
According to a release, the new app will carry the most popular website features – including Jon Snow’s daily Snowblog.
The app will allow users to access the latest top domestic and international news stories, plus the most important news from the worlds of politics, science and technology, business and culture from the Channel 4 News team of correspondents and reporters; all the Channel 4 News blogs, including Cathy Newman’s FactCheck and the World News Blog; special reports and galleries (iPad only); and to watch video of the last seven days from the Channel 4 News at 7pm and noon programmes.
The app will allow users to share all of this content through social media and email.
In a statement today the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced that culture secretary Jeremy Hunt is currently considering whether the announcement regarding the News of the World’s closure has any impact on the question of media plurality in relation to News Corporation’s bid for BSkyB.
The latest consultation on the bid closed at noon today. At the end of last month Hunt said he plans to give the takeover bid the go ahead, subject to a minor new consultation.
In a statement the DCMS said Hunt had “always been clear that he will take as long as is needed to reach a decision”.
The secretary of state will consider carefully all the responses submitted and take advice from Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading before reaching his decision. Given the volume of responses, we anticipate that this will take some time. He will consider all relevant factors including whether the announcement regarding the News of the World’s closure has any impact on the question of media plurality.
Facebook’s new video service gives journalists an alternative way to record quality audio for radio broadcasts and podcasts.
You will only be able to call your Facebook friends, so it will no doubt have limits for journalists who prefer to keep their Facebook profiles private and as a space for friends rather than professional contacts.
2. Download video calling for Facebook by clicking here;
3. Make sure you are friends with the person you want to call, that you can see a green button beside their name and click the video logo. They will have to go through the one-time install for the video recorder if they have not already done so;
4. Select the ‘default system input’ button in Audio Hijack and click record;
5. You can then view and edit the MP3 or AIFF file.
By now most of you will have seen Ed Miliband’s interview where he gives almost identikit answers to questions posed by BBC, ITV and Sky News journalists.
Now Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy has blogged about the episode, in which he criticises politicians’ tactic of repetitive responses in a post titled Changing the Rules of the TV Interview.
There’s nothing new about it, politicians have been doing it for years and it is partly our fault in the media for letting them get away with it for so long.
I’ve had politicians from every party try a variation of the loop on me. Somebody in political PR training school obviously told them that if you’re doing ‘a clip’ for the news and you want to make sure the media only use what you want them to then only say one thing.
He then goes on to suggest a way in which television interviews can be conducted with more transparency.
So perhaps it is time for a new deal between television and politics. Perhaps an interview should just be an interview without any rules. Or perhaps when politicians only agree to be clipped or pooled we should make it clear, when they repeat themselves they should be challenged on camera and when they refuse to debate with other guests we should say so.
ITV’s Damon Green, who was part of the pooled interview, also added his thoughts on Friday, remarking that “if we are not allowed to explore and examine a politician’s views, then politicians cease to be accountable in the most obvious way”. You can read his take on the interview here.
