The UK is ready for its first ever televised leader election debates following an agreement between the three main political parties and BBC, Sky and ITV, the BBC reports.
Labour’s Gordon Brown, Conservative leader David Cameron and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg have agreed to go head-to-head in a series of three debates.
Each clash will last about 90 minutes, with ITV’s Alastair Stewart hosting the first and Sky’s Adam Boulton the next.
The Observer’s Barbara Ellen offered a different point of view on the BBC’s ‘Should homosexuals face execution?’ / Uganda talkboard controversy over the weekend, arguing “not only was the BBC absolutely right to highlight this debate, it would have been ethically wrong for it not to”. An extract:
(…) Just as wearying were the well-meaning, liberal hand-twisters, squealing about how the BBC debate was “sick”, “unnecessary” and how upset they were. Liliane Landor, acting head of the Africa region for the World Service, responded that a stark approach was required to reflect the stark reality of the bill and she was right.
However jarring these debates are, they need to happen, in the case of gay Africans, as loudly as possible, for they have no voice.
People seem worried that even airing ugly ideas lends them legitimacy but, happily, the BNP’s Nick Griffin proved otherwise on Question Time. So yes, an unpleasant question, but perhaps we should be on our guard that squeamishness does not become a western luxury that others, less fortunate, end up paying for.
Carter-Ruck has issued its response (via PR firm Bell-Pottinger) to today’s high court hearing resolution that ended the legal dispute between oil trader Trafigura and BBC Newsnight.
The BBC has agreed to apologise for allegations made about waste dumping in Côte d’Ivoire on air tonight; pay £25,000 to a charity of Trafigura’s choice, as well as legal costs.
In a Newsnight programme in May 2009, the BBC alleged that waste dumped in Côte d’Ivoire in 2006 had caused deaths, miscarriages and serious long term health effects.
“Faced with such grave, yet wholly false, allegations, Trafigura was left with no alternative but to commence libel proceedings,” the British-based oil trading firm claimed today, through its solicitors.
Although the feature published in May 2009 disappeared from the BBC’s site last week, the text and video has been made available via the whistleblowing site Wikileaks.
In a statement today, Eric de Turckheim, founder and director of Trafigura, said:
“Trafigura has always maintained that the slops cannot have caused the deaths and serious injuries alleged by the BBC. We informed Newsnight of the detailed evidence before the programme was aired – yet they chose to proceed with their highly-damaging and false assertions. We are pleased the BBC has now acknowledged that it was wrong.
“Trafigura accepts that the Probo Koala incident is a matter of public interest. However, there is no public interest in the BBC reporting damaging untruths. Such is the international reach and high-regard of the BBC, we were left with little choice but to bring these proceedings – the only libel claim we have brought anywhere in the world against any media outlet.
“With the benefit of the facts, Mr Justice MacDuff advised the media earlier this year to take note of the evidence and approach their reporting of these matters more responsibly. We hope that, in future, they do.”
The BBC statement can be read at this link. It says: “the BBC has played a leading role in bringing to the public’s attention the actions of Trafigura in the illegal dumping of 500 tons of hazardous waste in Abidjan in 2006. The dumping caused a public health emergency with tens of thousands of people seeking treatment.”
The corporation, however, has backed down by retracting its earlier claims. It now says that “the evidence does not establish that Trafigura’s waste caused deaths, miscarriages or serious or long term injuries”.
Trafigura agreed to pay victims of the waste dumping around £30 million in compensation in September 2009, having previously paid compensation of over £100 million to the Ivory Coast government. However, the company denies liability.
In October, Trafigura’s injunction on the ‘Minton Report’ – which looked into the effects of waste dumping – was lifted, following a five week legal battle with the Guardian.
Dan Slee looks at how the BBC’s newly launched College of Journalism website can be used by journalists and by bloggers and hyperlocal sites too.
The site, which was previously available only internally at the corporation, offers several guides on legal issues, social media and handling user-generated content that could benefit individuals launching community websites and news sites, suggests Slee.
[Disclaimer: the BBC College of Journalism is sponsoring Journalism.co.uk’s news:rewired event on 14 January 2010]
Something lighthearted for a Friday: BBC newsreader Alison Rooper used her iPhone earlier today to avoid dead air after the corporation’s telephone and computer system crashed.
Rooper had the script for the 7am bulletin sent to her iPhone where she deftly scrolled through creating her own autocue.
The BBC Trust has published more details of the strategic review of the corporation’s activities, which it announced in July, led by director-general Mark Thompson.
One focus point of the review will be ‘streamlining the BBC’s online services’ to ‘narrow the focus on distinctive content and help to create a more open BBC’, the Trust said in a release yesterday.
This includes considering which online services could be stopped
“The Trust recognises external concerns over scale and growth of BBC online operations. Equally, it’s an immensely popular service with audiences and an important tool for the UK economy,” said Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the Trust.
“We have no intention of diluting BBC commitment to universal access to free news online. But beyond that we want to question honestly what licence fee payers really expect to get from their licence fee and what they might be surprised to see the BBC doing in the online world.”
At the Society of Editors conference last week David Holdsworth, controller of English regions, discussed BBC Online plans to bring in RSS feeds from newspaper websites – just one example of how the corporation could be a better neighbour to local media, he said.
The Trust said Thompson’s review must take these kind of relationships into consideration and ask ‘how can the BBC work with the rest of the industry to ensure its investment creates the greatest possible value?’ This question has been a sticking point for many local media groups following the dispute over the corporation’s plans to increase its local video offering online, which were later rejected by the Trust.
Additionally, sharing or linking the BBC’s websites with other public or not-for-profit cultural and creative organisations, such as community radio services, should be looked at, the Trust recommended.
The first findings of the review will be published in early 2010 and opened to public consultation.
While Journalism.co.uk was away conferencing, the BBC announced Alex Gubbay as its first social media editor.
Gubbay, currently interactive sports news editor for BBC sport, will take up the role in January.
He will lead ‘editorial development of user-generated content [UGC] and social media initiatives across the newsroom’, said the release, including taking over management of the BBC’s UGC hub.
Kevin Marsh from the BBC’s College of Journalism has more details on the forthcoming launch of the college’s public website on bbc.co.uk.
“It’s all arranged into four main categories: Ethics and Values, Law, Skills and Briefing. There’s also a cross-category bit of the site – the Glossaries.
We’ve tried to keep the structure as flat as possible – the idea is that you should be able to go exactly where you want with no more than a couple of clicks (…) something that’s helped by the site’s ‘intelligent learning environment’ – each page’s metadata should ensure that you’re offered on that page something else similar or related to the learning you’re reading or watching,” writes Marsh.“We’ll be adding new content regularly – there’s already more stuff in the pipeline on court reporting, numbers, field production and political reporting – and building what we hope will be one of the most important networks around journalism and journalism education in the world.”
More details on plans for the College of Journalism website in this report from the DNA2009 conference.
We’re informed a few tickets are still going for next Tuesday’s ‘Will We Have News for You?’ a Media Society night at the BBC; details below:
5:00pm, Tuesday 10 November 2009, BBC TV Centre Wood Lane, W12, Full price £10; students £5
Contact: Mutesa Sithole – mutesasithole [at] googlemail.com
BBC newsreader George Alagiah believes the failings of the media have partly led to the party’s electoral success, he said at an LSE lecture last Friday.
Talking about news and identity at the Polis event, Alagiah, who currently presents the Six O’Clock News & World News Today on BBC World News, said that the media had concentrated too much on looking at differences and had not given enough of a voice to those with reasonable concerns about immigration. “I am uncomfortable with a white-only party on Question Time,” he said.
“I think the emergence of the BNP as an electoral presence in our country poses a challenge to the way in which both the political and media classes in Britain have dealt with the issues of race, identity and culture,” he added.
“There was far too much emphasis on difference and not enough emphasis on the values that unite us together as a nation. I think that there was an accidental, unintentional relegation of the concept of Britishness and when we let it go it went and found a home in the recesses of extremism here in Britain.”
The newsreader added that people asking reasonable questions about the speed of change in communities caused by immigration had been wrongly ‘slapped down as racist’. “Journalists have failed to see this sense of disempowerment amongst white working class people,” he said.
Regional news organisations have a role in tracking changes in communities and helping people to understand them, Alagiah said, adding that investment in local media was vital. “When organised well-funded regional news-gathering is in retreat, hearsay fills the gap, and this is all the more likely in the age of the blog.”
John Stevens is a postgraduate newspaper journalism student at City University. He blogs at http://bit.ly/on-the-fly.