From the Committtee to Protect Journalists: “After more than a month of detention, several journalists may face trial beginning on Saturday on charges of ‘sending pictures to enemy media’.”
In addition, three documentary filmmakers were arrested on Thursday; the total of journalists currently held in Iranian jails is currently 42, the highest count in the world.
Interesting stuff from journalist Chris Amico reflecting on his project Patchwork Nation – ‘covering complicated national issues from a local perspective with a lot of data to back it up’.
Amico describes the framework he applies when reporting on complex data sets/starting an investigation with data – of particular interest are the tips on what he doesn’t do, which makes the process faster.
“What all this means, in terms of daily reporting, is that we don’t have to start over on every story. Instead, we have an ongoing story that develops incrementally, moving update by update, with a big picture evolving as we go.”
As a rule of thumb, however, he says: “Starting with data but no story tends to be a slow process. Ending up with a story but no data makes me feel like I haven’t done my job.”
An award-winning journalist has succeeded in lifting a gagging order, which prevented the naming of a 20-year-old sexual offender.
Four women had had their breasts groped by Wajahat Zubair, from Walworth, London, who targeted women walking to or from Tooting Bec underground station. One of his victims, an Australian woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was attacked five times.
Local paper, the Wandsworth Guardian, had not been able to report the case to date as the judge had placed a section 4 order banning the disclosure of the identity of the offender.
Section 4 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 bans reporting which would seriously prejudice court proceedings.
But, following an appeal from Wandsworth Guardian reporter Eleanor Harding, the judge at the hearing in Kingston Crown Court, Judge Matthews, agreed the order was imposed incorrectly in this instance and lifted the restriction on Monday.
It was found that there was no risk of prejudice in Zubair’s case and as such the gagging order had been wrongly placed, the court concluded.
The clerks’ office said the order had been introduced ‘because it is a sex case’, the Guardian reported.
The incidents occurred between March and May last year. Zubair, who had come to the UK to join his mother less than two years ago, was arrested in June last year.
On May 11 this year, after a lengthy trial, he pleaded guilty to eight sexual assaults. He will be sentenced at Kingston Crown Court on August 10.
Speaking about the case in a statement, reporter Harding said:
“The [section 4] order does not exist to protect sex offenders. We are glad it has now been overturned, as cases such as these are clearly in the public interest.
“This is a small victory over the growing culture of over-cautiousness at some courts, which contradicts the principle of open justice.”
Harding is winner of the Mind Journalist of the Year 2009, an award which rewards excellence in mental health reporting.
#FollowJourn: Kevin Matthews
Who? Head of web and data at the Liverpool Daily Post.
What? Journalist: Head of data and web development, Trinity Mirror Merseyside: Liverpool Echo, Liverpool Daily Post and Merseyside Weeklies.
Where? @kmatt
Contact? kevin.matthews@liverpool.com
Just as we like to supply you with fresh and innovative tips every day, we’re recommending journalists to follow online too. They might be from any sector of the industry: please send suggestions (you can nominate yourself) to judith or laura at journalism.co.uk; or to @journalismnews.
Journalism.co.uk is going to trial a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.
We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.
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On the Editors’ Blog
Jolande van der Graaf, a De Telegraaf journalist, who had her phone tapped by Holland’s secret service after report using leaked government information, won her case last week.
A Dutch court ruled that the tapping of both van der Graafe and her editor-in-chief’s phones was unlawful.
AIVD, the country’s secret service, is expected to appeal the decision, which provides an interesting contrast to the recently reported ‘phone hacking’ activities of the News of the World.
As reported widely elsewhere, at this link for example, owner of Express and Star newspapers and OK! magazine Richard Desmond, last week lost a libel action against Tom Bower, concerning a passage in the journalist’s unauthorised biography of Conrad Black published in 2007.
Amid all the subsequent comment, Tom Bower’s own ‘My Week’ piece for yesterday’s Observer stands out. Bower believes that Desmond devised the libel complaint ‘to prevent the publication of Rough Trader, my unauthorised biography of Desmond which was completed and printed [but never published] in 2006 (…)’.
Here’s an extract from Bower’s account of the trial:
“The ‘forged’ letters incident was a glorious highlight. My letters in 2005 to Desmond asking for interviews were dismissed by Desmond as ‘forgeries’. Infuriated by Desmond’s audacity, I stood up while he was still giving evidence and signalled to my wife [former London Evening Standard editor, Veronica Wadley] seated behind to exit the court. One hour later, after a dash back to our Hampstead home, she returned clutching a recorded delivery letter sent in 2005 to Desmond’s home and returned by him unopened. For four years, it had been carefully preserved in a white filing cabinet in my study.”
The all-party report led by former cabinet minister Alan Milburn, has triggered a nationwide debate on issues of social mobility and whether social class divides can be overcome to provide equal career opportunities to all. Journalists found their profession branded ‘one of the most exclusive middle-class professions’. The industry was urged to provide financial support to interns from less wealthy backgrounds and adopt a best practice code.
Media organisations were accused of recruiting trainee journalists for internships for as long as one year, without payment, as a means of filling staffing gaps instead of providing appropriate training. The unpaid placements automatically filtered out students to only those who could afford the experience, usually middle class ones, or those willing to incur massive debts.
A report in 2006 by the Sutton Trust [PDF at this link] showed that more than half of editorial posts at leading national newspapers had been educated at private schools, that is to say, middle class. As middle-class senior editors tend to appoint others like themselves, birds of a different, less privileged feather cannot find a way into the flock.
The Milburn report also pointed out that ‘qualification inflation’ is a barrier towards equal social opportunities. If once an academic degree or an MA were considered desirable for a career in journalism, some people, such as Press Gazette’s Dominic Ponsford, believe it is not the case any more as theoretical courses often do not provide the practical skills needed in a ‘real’ newsroom.
Degrees do not come cheap. Whereas a full-time MA at City University will set back an aspiring journalist by £8,000, a number of institutions offer NCTJ-accredited courses of much shorter length.
The Brighton Journalist Works, for instance, offers a 10-week fast-track course leading to a Certificate in Production Journalism for £3,600. Journalist Works MD Paula O’Shea, who set it up in April 2007 in The Argus’ Brighton offices, says the course is intense as it exposes students to as many hours as they would in an academic year on an MA, but graduates had landed jobs at The Argus, Johnston Press, Time Out, local TV stations and B2B magazines.
There is recourse for students who could not afford the fast-track course: “Our course is accredited by the Learning and Skills Council, so students can apply for a career development loan (www.direct.gov.uk) or the Journalism Diversity Fund (www.journalismdiverstityfund.co.uk),” says O’Shea.
A lack of diversity in news media could pose a problem for journalism, says Charlie Beckett, director of the journalism think-tank Polis. “If the news media is not diverse then it will not reflect the wider population,” he says in his blog.
“At a time of crisis in the industry and the wider economy, that is not a good thing economically, let alone politically.”
Here is Beckett, interviewed on Channel 4 News:
Useful links:
John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University. He was born in Guyana and regularly returns there to help build local media, print and TV. Previous posts looked at the Caricom Summit held July 2-5 in Georgetown. Trinidad and Barbados were the final stops.
After experiencing Guyanese ‘journalism’ during the Caricom summit, any order is better. In Trinidad, there is much economic prosperity due to oil and natural gas: ‘What recession?’ they ask here. The economy is healthy but the society has some of the fissures of Guyana.
Trinidad politics
Indians were brought here in thousands as indentured labourers to replace the freed black slaves one hundred and seventy years ago. They live in the south of the island, the African Trinidadians in the North. They have much of the wealth, the prime minister and his ruling PNM party are black and have the political power.
There is much violent crime – especially kidnappings and murders – and that is the staple fare of the super tabloids who make up the Trinidad & Tobago newspaper market. The Guardian, the Express and Newsday are much the same. Screaming headlines on the cover but much content inside. They are big in pagination and include lots of classified ads.
Politics gets a big shout and through that the racial dimension. The leader of the opposition (at the moment) Basdeo Panday is Indo-Trinidadian. He was prime minister until 2001 but was driven from office for alleged corruption. Today his UNC is breaking into bits.
His former attorney general Ramesh Marhaj is leading a ginger group/internal opposition within the party together with another MP – Jack Warner, who runs football in this part of the world, is vice-chair of FIFA and has been the subject of critical investigations on British TV about his dodgy behaviour in that job.
Warner’s son sold the travel packages and tickets for Trinidadians to the to the 2006 World Cup. Panday wants Warner to account for $30m (T&T) of election expenses. Warner says it was money he gave the party so no need to account. This makes the British MPs look tame.
Columnists abound on the pages of the T&T press. Different races. All have views. Many far too prolix for the page. Sub-editing is not a craft that seems to have been found in the Southern Caribbean. But the three dailies and the local TV news programmes – sadly also divided on racial lines – make for lively reading and listening. Crime sells. They certainly put the fear of God into the bank manager cousin with whom I was staying.
Keeping awake in Barbados
Not so Barbados. The problem here for a journalist is keeping awake. The best description for the Barbados Nation and Advocate? Stodgy, boring, dull. They make the Bedworth Advertiser look interesting. Boring headlines and even duller stories. It is like reading a parish newsletter for a nation.
The ‘news’ is based on government news conferences and other press conferences by NGOs and the like. On such sexy subjects like polyclinics, insurance and diabetes. Again, writing is prolix and not of great quality.
Barbados is a very polite and ordered society (the murder rate is a fraction of Trinidad’s) and that shows in its press. The hacks need to get themselves some more balls. The TV news is not much better.
There we have it. Prosperity, tabloid culture, Little England and the news values of British suburbia. Funny how they all travel. But Blighty calls.
“There’s been enough talk about the cancer spreading through modern journalist,” writes Westbrook, who has instead decided to look ahead and consider the shape of the journalist of the future.
As starting points, he suggests the future journalist will incorporate skills if the following characters:
As Westbrook says in the post, this is by no means a definitive list – read on and leave him a comment with your thoughts.