Category Archives: Politics

Jeremy Hunt: Providing local content should be condition of broadcasters’ licences

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Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt will say today that he intends to make the provision of local content a condition of the licences given to commercial broadcasters like ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

In a speech today to the Royal Television Society, Hunt will also tell those channels with a public service broadcasting remit (PSBs) that retaining a prime position in the Electronic Programme Guide or future equivalent would depend on their commitment to “content with a social or cultural benefit”.

I will begin the process of redefining public service broadcasting for the digital age by asking Ofcom to look at how we can ensure that enough emphasis is given to the delivery of local content.

Of course not all PSBs will want, or be able, to be local broadcasters. But I’m determined that we should recognise the public value in those that do.

Echoing the sentiments of his party’s ‘big society’ idea, Hunt will warn broadcasters about not investing in local news:

If we remain centralised, top-down and London-centric – in our media provision as in the rest of government – we will fail to reflect the real demand for stronger local identity that has always existed and that new technologies are now allowing us to meet.

Hunt will add that he has been “strongly encouraged by the serious thought that the BBC has been giving to how it might partner with new local media providers”.

He is expected to say that, despite the UK “fast becoming one of the most atomised societies in the world”, those looking back in the future will see its media as “deeply, desperately centralised.”

They will be astonished to find that three out of five programmes made by our public service broadcasters are produced in London.

They will note that there is nothing but national news on most of the main channels, beamed shamelessly from the centre.

And they will discover token regional news broadcasts that have increasingly been stretched across vast geographical areas – with viewers in Weymouth watching the same so-called “local” story as viewers in Oxford. Viewers in Watford watching the same story as viewers in Chelmsford.

Hunt will also set out his vision for local TV provision:

My vision is of a landscape of local TV services broadcasting for as little as one hour a day;

Free to affiliate to one another – formally or informally – in a way that brings down costs;

Free to offer nationwide deals to national advertisers;

Able to piggyback existing national networks – attracting new audiences and benefitting from inherited ones at the same time;

And able to exploit the potential of new platform technologies such as YouView and mobile TV to grow their service and improve their cost-effectiveness.

In June, Hunt scrapped plans for new local news networks set up by the previous government. Hunt called the plans for Independently Funded News Consortia (IFNC) in Tyne Tees and Borders, Scotland, and Wales “misguided” and claimed they “risked turning a whole generation of media companies into subsidy junkies, focusing all their efforts not on attracting viewers but on persuading ministers and regulators to give them more cash”.

Read Jeremy Hunt’s RTS speech in full here (PDF)

Trust in journalists in steep decline, says YouGov research

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Trust in journalists has plummeted over the past seven years, according to a survey conducted by YouGov for Prospect Magazine.

YouGov has been assessing people’s trust in various communicators, decision makers and service providers since 2003, and the forthcoming edition of Prospect compares the polling agency’s latest findings with its first.

Unsurprisingly, politicians have taken a hit since the Iraq war and trade union leaders won’t be going to the prom with the captain of the football team any time soon.

But there has also been an alarming fall in the ratings for journalists. In 2003, ITV journalists had a trust rating of a little over 80 per cent. That figure had fallen by 33 percentage points by August this year, putting BBC news journalists in the lead.

But the BBC might not be getting asked to babysit or look after anybody’s car: trust in its news journalists has dropped 21 points since 2003, down from 81 to 60 per cent.

And it’s a similar story elsewhere: “upmarket” newspapers (Times, Telegraph, Guardian) have suffered a 24 point knock down to 41 per cent in the latest figures; mid-markets (Mail, Express) are down from around 35 to 21 per cent; the red-tops from 14 to just 10 per cent.

By comparison, leading Labour politicians scored 23 per cent, leading Liberals 27 per cent and leading Tories, who were the only group on the survey to win an increase in trust, went from a meagre 20 per cent in 2003 to 29 per cent now.

YouGov’s surveys have consistently found more trust in local, rather than national professionals. GPs, teachers, police constables and local MPs are apparently deemed more trustworthy.

Unfortunately, the polls don’t include data for local journalists. Does the tendency to trust local professionals extend to the local hacks? Are there areas where people trust their hyperlocal start-up more than the age-old local rag?

Feel free to chime in with your own opinions in the comments thread or on Twitter with #trustinjournos. Even though most of you are journalists yourselves…

Newspaper Society: New law for family court will cause ‘regime of secrecy’

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The Newspaper Society has presented a submission to the House of Commons’ Justice Select Committee, claiming that reporting restrictions within the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 that aim to protect privacy within family court proceedings will result in a “regime of secrecy”.

The select committee announced it would carry out an inquiry into confidentiality and openness in family courts – partly in light of the new legislation and invited submissions from interested parties. In its submission the Newspaper Society claims the Act will place more restrictions on the press and not allow for greater public confidence in the system:

The NS says that although the media warmly supported the previous government’s aim of increasing openness and transparency and improving public confidence in the family justice system, its conclusion, regretfully, is that the Act will not achieve this.

(…) The NS points out that the Act’s effect is apparently to make it a contempt of court to publish any article referring to family proceedings, even if derived entirely from material already in the public domain and even if the parties were not identified, if the publication was not derived from an “authorised news report”.

Reporting on its submission the Newspaper Society added that the complexity of the Act may also deter press coverage altogether, concluding:

[T]hat the intention of increased transparency has been lost in the Act’s drafting, that the aim of achieving privacy for the families has been conflated into a renewed regime of secrecy which – if the relevant provisions in the Act are brought into force unamended – will not only fail to deliver the desired public accountability but will represent a major reduction in what can now be lawfully published, and will actually further reduce public debate and discussion of the family justice system.

Le Monde sues office of President Sarkozy for spying

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The row over an alleged attack on press freedom by French president Nicolas Sarkozy continues this week after it was confirmed by police that a senior official has been implicated as part of an investigation into leaked information.

According to a BBC News report, French newspaper Le Monde is to file a lawsuit accusing the office of President Sarkozy of spying on its journalists, claiming it understands an intelligence service was used to identify one its sources in relation to a story ran in July.

The report in question by Le Monde linked a minister to an investigation by authorities into L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt and donations to Sarkozy’s 2007 election campaign. The president’s office reportedly rejects the claims made by the paper.

Following the news of legal action, press freedom group Reporters Without Borders pledged its support to Le Monde.

If the Elysée Palace really ordered government personnel to violate the law on the secrecy of sources in the Woerth-Bettencourt case, it would constitute a violation of press freedom as serious as tapping journalists’ telephones.

We offer Le Monde all our support in its determination to establish whether the government violated the confidentiality of sources. These allegations must be treated with the utmost seriousness. Reinforcing the protection of journalists’ sources was one of Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign promises and a law was even voted in January. It would be intolerable if the Elysée Palace were the first to break a law requested by the president.

MPs and ‘media assassins’: an update on the phone hacking saga

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Adam Price, former Plaid Cymru MP and a member of the culture committee which previously investigated phone hacking allegations, spoke to Channel 4 recently about why the culture committee did not force Rebekah Brooks to give evidence, using the Seargent-At-Arms or “nuclear option”, as he refers to it.

We could have used the nuclear option. We decided not to, I think to some extent because of what I was told at the time by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I know was in direct contact with NI execs, that if we went for her, called her back, subpoenaed her, they would go for us – which meant effectively that they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish them and I think that’s part of the reason we didn’t do it… in retrospect I think that’s regrettable. It’s important now that the new inquiry stands firm where we didn’t. Politicians aren’t above the law but neither are journalists, including Rupert Murdoch’s bovver boys with biros.

In a statement to Channel 4 News, the committee chairman John Whittingdale said there was “no suggestion” the news organisation would target members’ private lives.

When it was suggested by Labour members to force Rebekah Brooks to attend, I recall a conversation with Adam Price in which the repercussions for members’ personal lives were mentioned. But that had no bearing on my own decision to oppose bringing in the Serjeant at Arms. Nor do I have any reason to think there was any suggestion that News International would target our private lives.

West Bromwich MP Tom Watson, who spoke at last Thursday’s Commons debate in support of a motion for the standards and privileges committee to investigate fresh allegations of phone-hacking, told the House that politicians are “afraid” of standing up to media “assassins”.

Watson said this weekend that he regretted his part in a story in the Sun suggesting Kate Adie should be sacked in 2001. In an interview on Radio 4, he said he was was “ashamed” of his role in the story, which quoted him as saying Adie should “seriously consider her position”.

I have done things that I regret with journalists. I’ll tell you the worst (…) I stood up a Sun story that Kate Adie had jeopardised our troops in Iran/Iraq with her reporting because I was asked to do so and I felt very guilty about it afterwards. I didn’t tell lies. I was asked by the Sun did I think her report imperilled the safety of our troops. It was a judgment call – I think I used the words ‘she should consider her position’ which was weasel words from a politician that I feel ashamed of.

So I’m part of the problem as well, I am holding my hands up. But nevertheless there is a problem and we need to get to the bottom of it. People whose phones were hacked need to know. We have a toxic media culture that we cannot allow to continue.

Adie was cleared of blame by the BBC and she later accepted damages for libel from the newspaper.

Also speaking on Radio 4, former chairman of the Press Complaints Commission Sir Christopher Meyer said that MPs have an “love-hate” relationship with the media.

If we are going to talk about people being in cahoots with journalists, look no further than the House of Commons. This is why the thing has got so convoluted. It is because MPs enjoy an intimate, often toxic, love-hate relationship with journalism. They need journalists in order to leak and to brief; they hate journalists when they start looking into their affairs.

(…) They live together in a deadly embrace and I really have to ask the question whether MPs shouldn’t actually recuse themselves from passing judgment on journalism simply because the interests are so conflicted.

Inforrm Blog: Wayne Rooney and the public interest defence

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Following the William Hague allegations sparked from posts within the blogging community last week, this weekend the media spotlight turned to Wayne Rooney as allegations relating to his private life were brought into the public domain by the News of the World and the Sunday Mirror, both appers accusing the footballer of having an affair with a prostitute.

In response, the International Forum for Responsible Media blog has posted an interesting analysis of the issues raised by the press coverage. These mainly centre on the distinction between a story which is argued to be ‘in’ the public interest and one which is simply ‘of’ public interest – the latter of which would not theoretically afford the same justification for publication.

What takes place between Mr Rooney and Ms Thompson behind the closed doors of a hotel bedroom is, at first sight, private. It relates to an indisputable area of private life: sexual relations. Under the general law and the clause 3 of the PCC Code, its publication requires justification in terms of the public interest.

Looking at the newspapers’ references to a public interest in their own reports, the blog argues that in this case the coverage fails to provide such justification.

The central justification appears to be the familiar one that this conduct exposes the hypocrisy of Mr Rooney’s “crafting” of “a brand of happy family life that’s helped win big-money sponsorships and endorsements”. There are a number of difficulties with this argument (…) What false public pronouncements are actually being shown to be false?  A “brand of happy family life” – even if “carefully crafted” – is not, in itself, a public statement about conduct or morality.

(…) This kind of assertion is a patently inadequate basis to justify splashing someone’s private life across the pages of the national press.

Another issue raised by the blog post is that of the right of individuals to an advance warning. The author refers with some concern to a statement in the Mail on Sunday’s report on the allegations which claims Rooney’s lawyers were aware but decided not to battle the allegation due to previous “revelations” in the media.

We do not know whether this is correct. If it is it is an unfortunate reflection on the state of English privacy law – where it is thought to be impossible to restrain the publication of patently private information because of previous press publicity. If, on the other hand, Mr Rooney was not given proper notice then this would be further support for the arguments being advanced by Max Mosley in Strasbourg in favour of a legal obligation to give advance notice.

See the full post here…

BBC CoJo: In defence of Mark Thompson’s visit to Downing Street

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Last week several news outlets, including the BBC, reported on a visit to Downing Street by the BBC’s director general Mark Thompson, who was allegedly there to discuss BBC news coverage of the government’s spending review.

It was suggested that such a visit may risk damaging the impartiality of the broadcaster, with Thompson reportedly trying to ensure a good relationship with the government in light of a licence fee review on the horizon. Others indicated that the meeting was on the order of senior government figures who wanted to “quiz” Thompson on content.

Commenting on the press coverage, Kevin Marsh, editor of the BBC College of Journalism criticizes what he regards as a promotion of appearance and impression over the facts in a post on the College of Journalism discussion blog.

Is it really a surprise for example, to learn that David Cameron’s press chief, Andy Coulson, had lunch with the BBC head of news, Helen Boaden, and that the subject of spending review coverage came up? Or that Mr Coulson would press for more ‘context’?

(…) Now, I have no special knowledge or insight here – but certainly when I was running Today or World at One it wasn’t that unusual to recruit senior executives to put in a good word when you were trying to fix big interviews.

And it’s easy to see that with a huge, high-profile season on the horizon – and the spending review season will run across all of the BBC’s national and regional programming as well as the news website – a bit of shoulder work from the chaps at the top is no bad thing.

See his full post here…

‘The silence is almost eerie’: press holds back on phone hacking scandal

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Allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World resurfaced this week following an investigation by the New York Times which looked at past allegations as well as a new case being legally pursued by a third party. This has led to calls today for a judicial review from industry bodies and politicians.

But coverage of the event by the rest of the media has come under criticism by numerous publications and bloggers.

Caroline Crampton at the New Statesman reflected on the issue the day after the story broke, when she claims the Guardian was the only national newspaper to have reported on the NYTimes article at the time.

The Times, the Telegraph, the Independent, the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Mirror all failed to cover the story at all. Considering that the investigation uncovers a widespread culture of phone-hacking at a major Sunday paper, with one source saying “Everyone knew. The office cat knew”, I would have thought that Fleet Street would have more to say about the low tactics employed by one of its number.

But the silence on the Coulson story from the rest is almost eerie. Papers are usually desperate to expose each other’s failures. Why are they holding back?

Online media watchdog Tabloid Watch makes the same points, while editor of the Liberal Conspiracy blog Sunny Hundal wrote on the Guardian website that while he expected News International publications to avoid the topic, he was disappointed by a lack of coverage on BBC radio early on.

It comes as little surprise News International subsidiaries and other tabloids have avoided it. But the BBC’s radio silence also speaks volumes: not just about their deference to the new administration, but of unwillingness to investigate their peers. It needed the New York Times to blow the story wide open again.

(…) The conscience of our country is determined more by Rupert Murdoch’s private interests than is healthy, already. These controversies say less about rightwing bloggers (whose smears are used as a proxy) and more about the collusion that takes place among the media establishment.

However the BBC has since followed up on the Time’s report, including an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme with Lord John Prescott this morning discussing his own concerns of being targeted by phone hackers while BBC Surrey’s Nick Wallis yesterday discussed the report, admitting that the BBC had only touched on the issue “from time to time” but said he would be writing to every Conservative MP in Surrey and asking them if they are happy that David Cameron kept former NOTW editor Andy Coulson as his PR man.

The article by the New York Times is due to be published in its Sunday magazine this weekend.

William Hague and the power of the political blogger

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David Higgerson, head of multimedia at Trinity Mirror, has posed some interesting questions on what the William Hague and Christopher Myers story means for the power, image and responsibilities of the blogging community.

The fact Hague felt the need to release the statement he did, and that Myers felt the need to stand down, shows the influence political bloggers have within the Westminster village. (…) Does Hague’s response suggest that he and his colleague over-weighed the true impact of what is written on blogs for the wider public? It’s certainly the mother of all statements, and there’s a danger it sets a new precedent for denying rumours. Will we now see a glut of rumours around the internet in the knowledge that a denial is likely to follow?

And, he adds, if recent events do show political bloggers are becoming increasingly influential, should we now be addressing the introduction of greater responsibilities for such a powerful online community?

See his full post here…

Poligraft: the transparency tool set to make investigative journalism easier

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The Sunlight Foundation has launched a new tool – Poligraft – to encourage greater transparency of public figures and assist journalists in providing the extra details behind stories.

By scanning news articles, press releases or blog posts, which can be submitted to the program by inserting the URL or pasting the entire article, the technology can then pick out people or organisations and identify the financial or political links between them.

Discussing the impact of this technology, Megan Taylor writes on PoynterOnline that it is a simple yet powerful tool for the news industry.

Anyone can use this, but it could be especially powerful in the hands of hands of journalists, bloggers, and others reporting or analyzing the news. It would take hours to look these things up by hand, and many people don’t know how to find or use the information.

Journalists could paste in their copy to do a quick check for connections they might have missed. Bloggers could run Poligraft on a series of political stories to reveal the web of contributions leading to a bill. All this information is public record, but it’s never easy to dig through. What is possible when investigative journalism is made just a little bit easier?

See a video below from the Sunshine Foundation posted on Youtube explaining how the technology works:

Hatip: Editorsweblog