Miranda Cresswell, senior vice president for strategy and operations at BBC Online speaks to Beet.TV about the new US edition of the broadcaster’s news website:
“The impetus for the US edition of BBC news is really about building on momentum as a business (…) BBC is one of the world’s greatest story tellers and we tell incredible stories through news video (…) So video is really at the centrepiece of what we’re doing.”
The BBC online team has launched a new appeals process for moderated comments, in a move which aims to ensure greater equality and fairness when sharing opinions online.
The broadcaster announced that a new system became necessary after the growth of online communities within the BBC site.
The old system relied on you responding to a moderation email and was devised when we had half a dozen community sites using the DNA moderation system. However, with nearly 300 different blogs, boards, community sites and comments systems now using DNA, it became impossible to even maintain the folders, let alone ensure that all the teams responsible were responding to your moderation queries.
The new system will mean all appeals and complaints will be handled by a dedicated team, who will turn to hosts, bloggers or production teams for direction where necessary.
The moderation failure emails are shorter and contain a link to more information about the rule your contribution was deemed to have broken. If you wish to appeal you can contact us via the feedback forms on http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs and http://www.bbc.co.uk/messageboards. You will get an initial response within 10 working days, and if you are unhappy with the outcome, an opportunity to continue with the appeal procedure. If you have restrictions placed on your account, you can also appeal with the new process.
Just a few years ago, I was shaking my head and saying I thought I’d had the best of times for journalism, and wouldn’t want my children to join the trade. No longer. I’d like to be 20 and starting out again right now.
So says Andrew Marr in a piece on his take-up of digital news, despite being one of the last “news romantics”.
I think it isn’t long before in news terms, there is hardly any distinction between broadcasting and newspapers. This singularity is almost here. On my iPad, I will follow a political crisis in real time, merging commentators and video clips, a little bit of Nick Robinson here and some Simon Jenkins there.
Of course, Marr’s comments about starting out again have sparked some jokes on Twitter:
I’d like to be 20 and starting out in journalism, says Andrew Marr. http://bit.ly/bwZYW9. Maybe the BBC could put him on £12k a year?
Jon Swaine
jonswaine
Media coverage of the police hunt for Raoul Moat may have come to an end, but the debate over how the press reported on events continues.
From live video coverage of Moat’s stand-off with police, to interactive maps, to timelines of events leading up to his attacks, – the terrifying story gripped our news headlines.
But the volume and content of some coverage has led to criticisms of sensationalism and glamourising, from outside and within the industry – with some even warning reports could encourage future attacks.
The debate over the media’s responsibility when reporting such events has even prompted a Twitter debate from the BBC, who will hold a debrief tomorrow to discuss the lessons to learn from covering the actions of people like Raoul Moat.
Responding to the debate on Twitter, @julesthejourno illustrated the problem – while some of the real-time footage may have been difficult to watch, it was equally impossible to turn off, for a public with a desire to know the latest developments.
Friday’s live coverage was so raw (especially the phone calls) it felt wrong to watch but even more so to change channels.
This supports Barbara Ellen’s post at the Observer, which claimed that the media are simply “feeding the ‘public interest’ monster”.
It’s too pat to blame the news media. They are merely feeding the “public interest” monster – a ravenous, impatient, rubbernecking creature. In a way, that seems almost too tidy. It seems to be this very part of us that feeds the “death and glory” monster presumably lurking inside poor, deluded sods such as Moat, making all those fantasies about being the centre of attention, the big scary guy with the gun, come true.
But she warns that demand for such coverage could lead to a very dark road.
Homicidal sprees as another form of spectator sport? Just another button on the remote control, perhaps labelled “Homi-tainment”, with a helpful skull and crossbones motif? The whole thing was reminiscent of iconic scenes from the US. “Homi-tainment” was definitely there when OJ went off on his car chase, Waco went under siege, even in those candlelit vigils outside prison executions. Didn’t Brits used to think we were rather above this kind of thing? Well, seemingly not any more.
But is the media to blame for how the news itself plays out? Freelance journalist Martin Robbins has written a series of “serious questions” which he feels need to be answered by the media, who he claims created a “carnival atmosphere” with their coverage.
His comments have since exploded across Twitter and the blogosphere.
One such question is whether the media understand the nature and extent of their influence on Raoul Moat? Robbins says a quote from Moat proves that media coverage could have directly led to another person being killed:
For every piece of inaccurate information published I will select a member of the public and kill them.
In response, Robbins questions the morality of the press who he accuses of doing just that.
Can they explain why they printed inflammatory details that had no conceivable public interest justification? Can they go to bed tonight safe and sound in the certain knowledge that they did not contribute to his death?
Answering his question, the bloggers at Fleet Street Blues simply replied: “yes”.
Look, it’s not as if the Raoul Moat story was Fleet Street’s finest hour. It showed how the proliferation of online news has only heightened the demands of the 24-hour rolling news cycle, and no one’s saying the televised ending was particularly edifying for anyone concerned.
But the implication that journalists were too intrusive, too inquisitive and too obstructive to police is just inaccurate.
Channel 4’s Alex Thomson, whose real-time Tweeting also came under fire from Robbins as an illustration of the media chase, defended his work on Twitter:
“can’t speak for media but yes, v proud of c4n Moat coverage which I say was informative, factual and not sensational.
But psychologists remain concerned that even though the coverage of Raoul Moat’s run from the police may be over, it had the power to encourage another similar event in the near future.
Reporting for the Independent, Johann Hari asks if the media will now indirectly help others “pull the trigger”.
Suddenly, they are shown a path where their problems won’t be trivial and squalid and pointless. No: they’ll be the talk of the entire country. They’ll be stars.
The way we report these cases can make that man more likely to charge out of his house to kill, or less. The psychologists say that currently we are adopting the most dangerous tactics possible. We put the killer’s face everywhere. We depict him exactly as he wanted, broadcasting his videos and reading out his missives. We make his story famous. We present killing as its logical culmination. We soak him in glamour: look at the endless descriptions of Moat as “having a hulking physique” and being “a notorious hard man”.
We present the killer as larger than life, rather than the truth: that these people are smaller than life, leading pitiful, hate-filled existences.
Feel free to leave your own thoughts below.
A new look for the BBC News site will go live within weeks, editor Steve Herrmann says on a blog, explaining how the design will change.
There will be:
The site’s navigation menu will move from the left-hand side to the top of the page, which gives a much cleaner look and feel to the design.
Five years on from the 7 July bombings in London, Matthew Eltringham from the BBC College of Journalism remembers the day that sparked the future of user-generated content.
[W]e ‘stuck a postform’ on the first take of the News website’s story and waited to see what would come in. Within minutes our email inbox was out of control – it was clear that something was happening, but we had no idea how to manage the huge number of emails we were receiving and the information they were giving us.
By the end of the day we had received several hundred images and videos along with several thousand emails. It was only with hindsight that we were able to make sense of them and the impact they were likely to have on our journalism.
Since then, the UGC project has grown to a team of more than 20 people, working around the clock and developing “an incredibly sophisticated and nuanced understanding of the ‘who, what, when, where and whys’ of ‘social newsgathering’ or put another way, ‘finding good stuff on the web’.”
There have been many lessons along the way too, leading the BBC to ruthlessly check every piece of user content which gets sent their way.
We always check out each and every image, video or key contact before we broadcast them, to make sure they are genuine and to resolve any copyright issues. When it’s impossible to do that – such as with content sent from Iran or Burma, when contacting the contributors is very hard to do or might put them in danger, we interrogate the images, using BBC colleagues who know the area and the story to help identify them.
England fans might be desperately trying to sell on their World Cup tickets, but there’s still time to join a Mexican wave in support for the remaining teams playing in South Africa.
BBC’s Radio 5 Live is building an online Mexican Wave, as its special Twitter account advertises:
Join the mother of all Mexican Waves with BBC Radio 5 Live for 2010 World Cup! Dizzee Rascal, Miley Cyrus & Richard Hammond are in, are you?
To be included, users upload need to upload a photo as described at this link. This generates a Mexican Wave video containing the user’s photo, and photos of Radio 5 live and Radio 1 presenters and celebrities; the user will also be included in the 5 Live Mexican Wave.
The latest news? @bigmexicanwave says the former morning doyen of Radio 2 might be making an appearance too:
There’s a rumour we’ve got the godfather of radio, Mr @terry_wogan to do a #bigmexwave. Watch this space!
A journalist has claimed that she was slapped by the Algeria footballer Rafik Saifi, after his team was knocked out of the World Cup after losing to the US, the BBC reports. The journalist who works for the Algerian newspaper Competition said she would complain to Fifa and the police.
In case you were wondering what a ‘media city’ or ‘global media community’ would look like, we’ve got some info on the new flats at Salford Quays, ahead of the BBC’s move of Radio 5 Live, Children’s and some of Future Media and Technology.
Not only are the new dwellings billed as “tasteful, exquisite, and refined”, you’ll get to “experience (media) city living” and “be at the heart of it”. Continuing with the odd punctuation, Peel Media has named the blocks ‘TheHeart’ and ‘NumberOne’.
If you want to see more, have a look at this Peel Media ad for the new apartments available to buy or rent at MediaCityUK at Salford Quays.
Brand new, contemporary waterfront apartments are now available in the spectacular environs of MediaCityUK at Salford Quays. Available to buy or rent in two towers fronting the Manchester Ship Canal, there are studios, one, two or three bedroom apartments with the upper floors having breathtaking views of MediaCityUK and the surrounding area.
Peel Media is developing a global media community here and, as a resident, you will be at the heart of the excitement. BBC North and the University of Salford will open their respective new headquarters at MediaCityUK in 2011 while the most high-tech broadcast studio development in the UK will be creating content for a wide range of programmes. The apartments benefit from the fastest residential broadband connection in the country; a new tram stop on the doorstep; bars and restaurants; a Booths food store and a stunning public piazza and park.
A word of warning, if this YouTube video is anything to go by, your neighbours will look like they’re straight out of the Monsters Inc factory.
It is the 100 metres of the TV Factual Olympics. General election night. The three main news broadcasters – BBC, ITN and Sky News – vie to get results to the nation first. A month on, the election editors of Sky News and the BBC appeared at last night’s Media Society event in London entitled ‘Who won the TV election?‘
The BBC won the greater share of the audience on 6 May. They always do. But John McAndrew, editor of the Sky News offering was there to claim journalistic credit for being not just first but clearest on screen. His was deliberately not a heavily studio anchored show: “We knew what the BBC would do and we aimed off for that,” McAndrew said. He had surprising support from one member of the audience – the BBC’s former political correspondent Nicholas Jones. Jones had switched over early. Sky News, McAndrew said, went with plenty of straight news and little comment.
The David Dimbleby programme on the BBC was at the other end of the spectrum. There were virtual reality graphics aplenty from Jeremy Vine and scores of outside broadcasts. Craig Oliver, their editor, was at last night’s event to defend their coverage, or at least try to. He had a near impossible job when it came to the now notorious ‘ship of fools‘, a BBC barge moored in the Thames full of celebrities giving their take on the election. Not many of those at the event felt that Joan Collins or Bruce Forsyth ‘added to the sum total of human knowledge’, as one audience member succinctly put it. Another pointed out that the £70,000 allegedly spent on the boat (the only cost figure mentioned on a night when all were coy about what they spent) was money wasted.
Oliver was on surer ground defending the BBC position of not calling any result until the Returning Officer had. ITN seems to jump the gun almost as a matter of principle. Oliver, who edited the ITN election programme in 2005 before defecting, was dismissive of presenter Alastair Stewart’s recent tirade in the Press Gazette claiming that the BBC ‘had missed the story’. His absence from the discussion said it all according to Oliver.
Channel 4’s ‘Alternative Election Night’ – featuring comedians like Jimmy Carr and David Mitchell – was a deliberately offpiste offering but it worked, beating ITN in the ratings. Deputy head of news and current affairs Kevin Sutcliffe was there to explain the thinking behind the format and reveal that it would be used again. Their satirical approach attracted a young demographic and twice the audience he expected, Sutcliffe said, adding that he was impressed with the (unintentionally) satirical quality of the BBC coverage.
Attracting the most audience comment last night was the stunningly accurate exit poll shared by the broadcasters and put out on the stroke of ten. It got the result right to within one seat. Some felt it destroyed the drama and made the remainder of the coverage predictable, suggesting a return to separate polls. Sue Inglish, the BBC’s head of political programmes and a moving force behind the poll, was on hand to explain and defend. The sheer size and cost of the 125,000 sample poll made it impossible to do more than once. But Oliver, in a mild mea culpa, said the BBC studio gurus had been wrong to downplay the surprising exit poll results for the first hour after they were broadcast.
The event had the air of an inquest, but not a particularly rancourous one – and the majority of criticism was reserved for the absent ITN. There was mostly praise for the British broadcasters for whom a 100-metre dash became a five day marathon. If the reaction in the BBC Council Chamber last night is anything to go, they had an audience satisfied with the results.
John Mair is events director of the Media Society.This event was jointly organised by the Media Society and the BBC College of Journalism