Category Archives: Editors’ pick

WaPo: Facebook hires former White House press secretary

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Former White House spokesman Joe Lockhart has been appointed by Facebook as vice president of global communications, according to reports, such as this by the Washington Post:

Lockhart will be located at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters and report to Elliott Schrage, VP of global communications, marketing and public policy. Marne Levine, DC-based vice president of global policy, also reports to Schrage.

This follows the appointment of Mashable’s former community manager and social media strategist Vadim Lavrusik by Facebook as its new journalist program manager in April.

Telegraph: BBC ‘flooded’ with complaints about Choosing to Die documentary

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The Telegraph reports that as of yesterday afternoon a total of 898 people had “registered their disapproval” of the Choosing to Die documentary, broadcast on Monday by the BBC.

The documentary shows author Sir Terry Pratchett, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s three years ago, travel to the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland and witnessing the procedures for assisted death.

The corporation said 898 people had registered their disapproval of the documentary presented by the author Sir Terry Pratchett, with 162 fresh complaints since it aired on Monday night.

A spokesman from the BBC was also said to add that the broadcaster has also received 82 “appreciations” of the programme.

Update: Journalism.co.uk has received updated figures from the BBC. There have now been 226 appreciations received and 408 complaints, bringing the total up to 1,150 complaints.

According to a spokesman the 226 appreciations make it one of the top 10 most appreciated BBC programmes this year.

MEN journalists respond to news of arrested photographer

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Journalists at the Manchester Evening News have responded to the news that photographer Sean Wilton was arrested after taking pictures of an incident near to the city’s magistrates’ court on Monday.

According to a report by MEN Wilton was later released, after being what the police termed “de-arrested”.

“I tried to explain I wasn’t obstructing and was just doing my job, but to no avail,” Wilton says in the report. “When I tried to speak to him about the situation, he arrested me for breach of the peace. As professional photographers, we do try to conduct ourselves as professionally as possible.”

In a statement (attributed to mother of the chapel Bethan Dorsett) his colleagues in the NUJ MEN chapel said its photographers always abide by industry codes of conduct.

To be treated in such a way by police is completely unacceptable and very worrying. Either police officers do not understand our rights and responsibilities or they sometimes choose to ignore them – either is disturbing and suggests some education would be useful. We are sure the NUJ and MENMedia would be more than happy to discuss and clarify these matters with the police.

The police issued the following statement:

A photographer was arrested to prevent a breach of the peace and on suspicion of obstructing a police officer. Officers brought the situation under control and the photographer was de-arrested and subsequently released.

BBC to close down Religion and Ethics messageboards

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The BBC is to close its Religion and Ethics messageboards to new comments or threads later this month, with a new blog to be brought in later in the year.

Announcing the changes in a blog post commissioning editor for religion Aaqil Ahmed explained the cost of maintaining the messageboard “has become impossible to justify for a relatively small group of users”. The changes follow confirmation of a 25 per cent budget cut facing BBC Online.

We’ve had to make some tough decisions but I want to assure you that the decision to close our BBC Religion and Ethics messageboards was not taken lightly, as I know users have enjoyed being part of the varied discussions on the messageboards about all kinds of religious and ethical topics. However, the cost of maintaining this messageboard has become impossible to justify for a relatively small group of users. What’s more, as we’ve seen with the meteoric growth of Twitter, Facebook and other social networks – there are now many ways to interact and share information online.

Instead the site will launch a new BBC Religion and Ethics Blog later this year, which will be hosted by an expert editor, based in Salford and part of the BBC’s Religion and Ethics team.

We’ll host contributions from leading figures in politics, religion, news, ethics and the media. The blog will be a new way to take a topic further and find out more, whilst also offering you the chance to participate in a wider religious and ethical discussion.

New guidance from PCC on coping with media attention after family deaths

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The Press Complaints Commission has published new guidance aimed at members of the public who need help coping with with media attention after the death of a friend or relative.

Newspapers and magazines regularly publish stories about people who have died, particularly if the death has happened in unusual circumstances. There are generally entitled to do so, provided that they abide by the terms of the Editors’ Code of Practice. However, media interest can cause distress to those grieving, and the PCC has now issued practical guidance to ensure the interests of members of the public are properly protected.

The commission says it has consulted widely on the issue, working with outlets including Facebook, the Samaritans, MPs and the police, to ensure the resulting guidance is helpful and relevant. The guidance is also said to reflect the views of newspaper and magazine industry members.

See the new guidance here.

EJC taking responses for data-driven journalism survey

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The European Journalism Centre is still collecting responses to its data-driven journalism survey, which will help to inform a future series of training sessions.

The survey, which is being run in collaboration with Mirko Lorenz of Deutsche Welle, features 16 questions asking respondents for their opinion on data journalism, aspects of working with data in their newsrooms and what they are interested in learning more about.

Increasingly, governments, international agencies and organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank, are publishing online collections of freely available public data. Developing the know-how to use the available data more effectively, to understand it, to communicate and generate stories based on it by using free and open tools for data analysis and visualisation, could be a huge opportunity to breathe new life into journalism. The aim of this survey is to gather the opinion of journalists on this emerging field and understand what the training needs are.

You can find the survey here, with one of the participating journalists to be awarded with a 100 Euro Amazon voucher.

Independent: Broomfield sets sights on Palin for upcoming documentary

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Nick Broomfield, the filmmaker who has profiled such easy-going and likable characters as Eugene Terre’Blanche and Aileen Wuornos, is in the closing stages of a new film about Sarah Palin, according to a report from the Independent today.

Broomfield has reportedly secured interviews with Palin’s parents and former aides.

Broomfield turned to the former Republican vice-presidential candidate after lack of access forced him to abandon a planned Amy Winehouse documentary. The Palin film has “been a struggle because she has been difficult”, Broomfield revealed. “Making her evangelism intelligible and interesting was difficult. All that you’re trying to do is tell a story as simply as possible, putting together a cohesive piece that will entertain.”

At the same time another portrayal of Palin is in the works, likely to be altogether more sympathetic that Broomfield’s. Tea party activist Stephen Bannon is preparing a film called The Undefeated for released, based largely on interviews with Palin supporters.

Palin is currently having 24,199 pages of her work emails being pored over by press and public after they were released last week under freedom of information legislation.

Read the full Independent piece at this link.

Image by david_shankbone on Flickr. Some rights reserved

Mirror needs quick phonebooth trip to change Superman gaffe

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A quite spectacular picture mix up is still going strong on the Mirror website this morning, despite having been outed late last night.

Here’s a screengrab, because the page is surely going to change back into its proper civilian clothes any minute now.

 

Elsewhere on the site there appears to be a story about the superhero with no image, which just might give us a clue as to what’s happened here.

(hat tip: the Media Blog, via Gareth Winchester and Dick Mandrake).

 

OWNI.eu publishes WikiLeaks ebook

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The rush to get books in the shops in the wake of the WikiLeaks phenomenon was quite predictable. It’s a story with all the Hollywood mores, but strangely real. The films are soon to follow.

So far we’ve had, most notably, David Leigh’s and Luke Harding’s “WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy” and Daniel Domscheit Berg’s “Inside WikiLeaks”.

Now Paris-based OWNI.eu, which helped build apps for WikiLeaks to allow people to navigate the Iraq war logs and US embassy cables, is publishing Olivier Tesquet’s “WikiLeaks: A True Account” through its own publisher OWNI Books. The organisation boasts an “exceptional vantage point” on the whistleblowing group, and claims that Tesquet’s “thorough investigation” will shed light in the relationship between the WikiLeaks and OWNI.

OWNI Books publishes ebooks only, and this latest one will be the first published in three languages: French, English and Arabic.

Hot on the heels of the OWNI book – and the other behind-the-scenes accounts – will be a more academic take on the affair from Polis director Charlie Beckett and former WikiLeaks journalist James Ball.

The book was announced by Beckett at the Polis Value of Journalism conference on Friday and is expected within the next few months.

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Media release: Financial Times launches A-List commentary section

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The Financial Times has announced the launch of a new section called the A-List, claiming to offer commentary from leaders, policy makers and commentators, on FT.com and all global editions of the newspaper, based on issues “at the top of the news agenda”.

Topics will range from business, economics and finance to world politics and diplomacy. The headline commentary will be accompanied by a response from related experts to encourage debate, and readers will be able to participate and comment online.

Read more here…

This follows the launch of Bloomberg View last month, a new editorial page featuring columns and commentary across all of Bloomberg’s platforms, as announced at the end of last year.