Tag Archives: Northern Ireland

Journalisted Weekly: (More) phone hacking, the Eurozone Crisis and the Beckham baby

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Journalisted is an independent, not-for-profit website built to make it easier for you, the public, to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is run by the Media Standards Trust, a registered charity set up to foster high standards in news on behalf of the public, and funded by donations from charitable foundations. Each week Journalisted produces a summary of the most covered news stories, most active journalists and those topics falling off the news agenda, using its database of UK journalists and news sources.

for the week ending Sunday 17 July

  • The phone hacking scandal still dominates the news, but violence in Northern Ireland and the Eurozone Crisis also get a look-in
  • Harper Seven Beckham scores lots of coverage
  • The Libyan rebel TNC gaining official recognition and more Olympics ticket controversy covered little

Covered lots

  • The News International phone hacking scandal continues, with new resignations, new victims, and a shift of focus onto the Metropolitan Police Service, 1,310 articles
  • The Open, held at Royal St. George’s, Sandwich, Kent, won by Northern Irish golfer Darren Clarke, 357 articles
  • Eurozone countries undergo stress tests to see if they could withstand another financial crisis, 79 articles
  • New bouts of violence in Northern Ireland after Orange Order parades, 41 articles

Covered little

  • Theresa May announces that UK terror threat has been reduced to ‘substantial’, 12 articles
  • More Olympics tickets controversy, as around 700 people get charged twice for their tickets, 4 articles
  • The Libyan rebel Transitional National Council is officially recognised by world powers as the ‘legitimate governing authority’, 6 articles

Political ups and downs (top ten by number of articles)

Celebrity vs serious

  • New addition to the Beckham family Harper Seven, 81 articles vs. rush hour bombing in Mumbai, a terrorist attack killing 17 and injuring 131, 34 articles
  • The Apprentice final, which saw inventor Tom Pellereau win a £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar, 45 articles vs. new European regulations on fishing quotas, 22 articles
  • Mr and Mrs. Weir of Ayrshire win £161m on the EuroMillions lottery, 49 articles vs. Pink Floyd guitarist’s son Charlie Gilmour gets 16 months in jail for his actions at the student protests, 32 articles

Arab spring (countries & current leaders)

Who wrote a lot about…’The Eurozone Crisis’

Nick Fletcher – 8 articles (The Guardian), Richard Milne – 7 articles (Financial Times), Hugo Duncan – 7 articles (Daily Mail), Peter Spiegal – 6 articles (Financial Times), Juliet Samuel – 5 articles (City AM), Peter Garnham – 5 articles (Financial Times), Julia Kollewe – 4 articles (The Guardian)

Long form journalism

Sign up to the campaign for a public inquiry into phone hacking at hackinginquiry.org
Visit the Media Standards Trust’s new site Churnalism.com – a public service for distinguishing journalism from churnalism
Churnalism.com ‘explore’ page is available for browsing press release sources alongside news outlets
The Media Standards Trust’s unofficial database of PCC complaints is available for browsing at www.complaints.pccwatch.co.uk

For the latest instalment of Tobias Grubbe, journalisted’s 18th century jobbing journalist, go to journalisted.com/tobias-grubbe

#ge2010: Election Night review – a night of TV drama starting in Northern Ireland

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Broadcast journalism lecturer at Coventry University John Mair reviews last night’s election coverage from the BBC from his post in the broadcaster’s Northern Ireland election newsroom:

Lunchtime Friday and still no clear answer. The British people have spoken but in a divided way. The politicians are wriggling to get advantage or cling on to power (you decide). The most exciting election campaign of modern times has been followed by the most exciting night of election drama of modern times.

Nowhere was the drama greater than here in Northern Ireland where I was working on election night – the other election, often ignored by those ‘across the water’. First casualty, Northern Ireland’s First Minister Peter Robinson whose 31-year stint as MP for East Belfast ended in stunning defeat by a woman of the centre – Naomi Long of the Alliance Party. Robinson has had an annus horibbulis having to face television investigations announcing his wife’s affair and, after that, his own land dealings came under scrutiny. Last night was his nadir. He rushed to the count at Newtonards Leisure Centre, spoke briefly to the local media and was then ushered out. Now he has gone to ground to lick his wounds and fend off predators.

The Robinson moment was magic telly: milked by the local outputs, but less so by the networks. They wanted more of Lady Sylvia Hermon, who defected from the Unionists when they joined with the UK Conservatives. The Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) were seen off in what should have been their heartland North Antrim by Ian Paisley Jnr – brands are as important in politics as anywhere else. He and father – who preceded him in the seat for 40 years – showed their contempt for the TUV by singing the national anthem before his victory speech. Worse for ‘moderate’ Unionism, Sir Reg Empey lost out in South Antrim to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). The planned Tory beachhead in Northern Ireland became a washout. It was a media confection.

The BBC Northern Ireland Election programme ran for seven-plus hours using all the 18 counts at eight locations as their prime material. Down-the-line interviews galore at the outside broadcasts based on deep local knowledge. The local commercial station – Ulster Television – did not even make it to the starting line. No election news between 10:30pm and 09.30am. That did not go unnoted by fellow hacks.

The BBC’s ‘Dimbleby programme’ had a magnificent set on its side and some pretty special Jeremy Vine virtual reality graphics too – my favourites being the Downing Street staircase or the House of Commons with real faces smiling and nodding. Modern Television journalism is about entertainment and keeping it simple. Nowhere more so than in the use of electronic graphics. All of that plus live reporting from many of the big beasts of telly journalism. It’s fascinating to see how many of them still used the basic journalistic skills, like Kirsty Wark doorstepping/walking besides and interviewing Nick Clegg on the hoof on the way to his count.

It’s difficult from inside my bubble to know how the drama played out in the nations. It certainly kept us rapt in this television control room. You could not have written the script. But the 2010 General Election story has not yet reached its final chapter. Plenty more drama to come…

Read John Mair’s report from the BBC’s TV ‘hub’ in Belfast on the build-up to election night.

BroadcastNow: Ofcom warns ITV could lose £64m a year on regional news

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Ofcom has warned that the ITV network will be facing a loss of up to £64m a year by 2012, if it has to continue providing regional news bulletins, reports BroadcastNow.co.uk.

“The regulator indicated its support for establishing independent news consortia to deliver localised news across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.”

(…)

“The Digital Britain report released earlier this year also called for independent news consortias to take over the regional news slots on ITV, suggesting that the groups could comprise of existing media organisations and be funded by the surplus from the Digital Switchover fund.”

Full story at this link…

Related:

Last week John Hardie, ITN chief executive,  called for separate contracts for replacement ITV regional news services to be issued for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – ie. a single contract for the whole of England (via MediaGuardian).

INM signs £40m print deal in Northern Ireland

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Amid all the ominous news surrounding Independent News&Media a more positive story for the company has surfaced:

A £40m print deal will make Northern Ireland one of the biggest producers of daily newspapers in Europe, after INM signed contracts with the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror.

INM will now be printing all Mirror titles and the Telegraph titles, as well as the Sun, News of the World, the Daily Express and Sunday Express, the Daily Star and the London Independent.

The Belfast Telegraph reports:

“The first deal sees all sections of the Daily Telegraph printed in the company’s high-tech plant at Newry for the next 15 years. The second deal brings the Daily Mirror to the Belfast Telegraph print plant for a seven-year term.

“The deals represent two of the longest print agreements signed in the region and have been made possible by an IN&M investment strategy which has seen more than £50m spent on new presses in both centres.”

Marc Vallée: The Met’s new photography guidelines

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Photojournalist Marc Vallée comments on the new guidelines issued by the Metropolitan police service (MPS) for the public and the media on photography in public places, over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free. Full post at this link. He writes:

“It details the Met’s interpretation of anti-terrorism legislation, and how these laws should be used against photographers. Professional photographers such as myself view it as part of an ongoing campaign to create a hostile environment for photography in the public sphere.”

One area highlighted by Vallée:

The advice covers section 44, section 43 and section 58a of the Terrorism Act 2000 (58a is more commonly known as section 76). On sections 44 and 43, the MPS say that “officers have the power to view digital images contained in mobile telephones or cameras carried by a person searched”.

Vallée says that guidance for section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008, which came into force at the beginning of this year, is key.

“It amends the Terrorism Act 2000 to make it an offence to elicit or attempt to elicit information about an individual who is or has been a member of the armed forces, intelligence services, or a police officer in Great Britain – this has been an offence in Northern Ireland since 2000.”

What does the guidance say?

The MPS advice says that section 76 (58a) “should ordinarily be considered inappropriate to use… to arrest people photographing police officers in the course of normal policing activities, including protests”.

What does Vallée say?

“Section 76 should be scrapped.”

Guidelines at this link…

Vallée spoke about these issues at the Frontline Club this week. Video below:

Background on Journalism.co.uk Editors’ blog:

BBC executives’ expenses: the links. Now play!

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You’ll find the information tucked away on the BBC Freedom of Information site at this link.

Update: Journalism.co.uk wasted a little bit of its time getting the annoyingly inaccessible BBC PDFs into spreadsheet format, but knew that the Guardian’s data people would be doing that too. So we’ll get back to other duties while you have fun with this from the Guardian’s DataBlog:  DATA: download the full spreadsheet of BBC executive expenses.

More to follow from Journalism.co.uk, but in the meantime the links you’ll need if you want to play yourself. Some files are missing – BBC Information informs us that there are more to come.

And the individuals:

Mark Thompson’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (63KB)
Mark Thompson’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (47KB)
Mark Thompson’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (48KB)
Mark Thompson’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (44KB)
Mark Thompson’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (42KB)

Mark Byford’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (41KB)
Mark Byford’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (41KB)
Mark Byford’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (42KB)
Mark Byford’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (41KB)
Mark Byford’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (40KB)

Jana Bennett’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (47KB)
Jana Bennett’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (48KB)
Jana Bennett’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (48KB)
Jana Bennett’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (48KB)
Jana Bennett’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (51KB)

Tim Davie’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (47KB)
Tim Davie’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (42KB)
Tim Davie’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (47KB)
Tim Davie’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (41KB)

Erik Huggers’ expenses 2008/09 PDF (39KB)

  • Lucy Adams, Director, BBC People – biography to be published shortly

Zarin Patel’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (42KB)
Zarin Patel’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (42KB)
Zarin Patel’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (45KB)
Zarin Patel’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (40KB)
Zarin Patel’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (37KB)

John Smith’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (44KB)
John Smith’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (44KB)
John Smith’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (44KB)
John Smith’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (46KB)
John Smith’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (46KB)

Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2008/09 PDF (50KB)
Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2007/08 PDF (51KB)
Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2006/07 PDF (51KB)
Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2005/06 PDF (45KB)
Caroline Thomson’s expenses 2004/05 PDF (50KB)

And while we’re about it – here’s the link to the Audit Committee standing orders:

And the Register of interests:

MORE:

Expenses:

General:

Travel and transport:

BBC NEWS: Consumer Council paid for NI magazine article

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Publically funded body, the Consumer Council, paid £1,730 for an article on its outgoing chief executive, Eleanor Gill, to appear in Northern Ireland’s Agenda magazine, the BBC reports – raising questions of editorial independence and the use of taxpayers money are raised by this.

But, says Rick Hill, chairman of the Consumer Council:

“It’s the Consumer Council’s role to make the consumer voice heard and make it count.

“We choose various methods to communicate that voice, one being buying editorial space in professional, trade or business magazines.

“The Consumer Council negotiated an annual block fee with Agenda NI of £7,415 in April 2008 to submit five articles over a 12-month period.”

Full story at this link…

NUJ Release: Suzanne Breen given ‘strong support’ by NUJ Exec Council

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Release from the National Union of Journalists (NUJ):

“The National Union of Journalists’ National Executive Council has today passed a strong statement in support a journalist facing attempts by the police to seize her source material.

“At Belfast Crown Court today, Suzanne Breen, the Northern Ireland editor of the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune, challenged an attempt by the police to obtain a wide-ranging high court order that would require her to hand over source material relating to the Real IRA.”

BBC Trustees’ expenses: all online for your enjoyment (links and summary)

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Now this is an interesting media release to get in your inbox of a morning: a summary report and the full expenses for the BBC trustees 1 April-30 September 2008.

“In line with its commitment to transparency and openness, the BBC Trust decided in April 2008 to publish Trustees’ individual expenses with effect from April 2007. These are published on a six monthly basis,” the release said.

So, here you go: the expenses, in text summary form for the period April 1 to September 30 2008 here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/expenses/summary_apr_sept_2008.txt

Or full report in text here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/expenses/full_report_apr_sept_2008.txt

Or visit here for the PDFs (much easier to read): http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/about/bbc_trust_members/expenses.html

The full report lets you details a bit more specifically. During April – September 2008 report for example, Sir Michael Lyons had meetings at the Cinnamon Club, the Dorchester and the Wolseley, for example. Personal details, e.g names of hotels stayed in, are removed.

Download at this link

The interesting parts in digestable form:

  • Lots of BBC prom boxes for ‘external opinion formers’ = £3836.35
  • Wimbledon Tennis Championship – Sir Michael Lyons and Diane Coyle hosted an event for opinion formers = £9,803.99
  • The Trustee expenses amounts below include Trustee business entertainment (external and internal) / Subsistence / Mileage / Accommodation / Travel (other) / Travel –
    Driver/ Flights / Cars / Rail / Other (see links above for notes on categories).
  • Chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, £35,126.82*
  • Vice Chair, Chitra Bharucha, £8,754.01
  • Trust Member for Northern Ireland, Rotha Johnston, £7,154.62
  • Trust Member for Scotland, Jeremy Peat, £15,050.74
  • Trust Member for England, Alison Hastings, £8,341.96
  • Trust Member for Wales, Janet Lewis-Jones, £9,872.85
  • Trust Member, Patricia Hodgson, £1,546.88
  • Trust member, David Liddiment, £856.02
  • Trust Member, Mehmuda Mian, £448.62
  • Trust Member, Dermot Gleeson, £2,860.78
  • Trust Member, Richard Tait, £1,941.07
  • Trust Member, Diane Coyle, £1550.59
  • TOTAL = £93,504.96

    • * “Sir Michael Lyons’ expenses total includes half of the annual £25,000 cost for his access to a BBC car and driver. These costs are already reported in the BBC Annual Report and Statement of Accounts and is included here for completeness,” the report says.