WINOL Critical Reflection

It’s my final year on Winchester News Online (WINOL), the student journalism behemoth which has taken over my life for the last year and a half. This semester I took on the role of production editor, a role that I had wanted since my first semester when I was a lowly production lackey, sub editing things and sitting on the sound desk. As a whole I am proud of how the bulletin has run and how it has looked. It was pointed out to me the other day that it is rare to have a team on production at the start of a new year that only has one third year student. When I started on production we had Domonique, Justina and Jack all on production overseeing me, George and Dan, so to take a group of complete novices to a fairly well oiled machine I think I have done well.

I wish I had been able to innovate more as production editor; the website has moved forward so much but the bulletin is much the same as it always has been. Together with Dan as news editor we have implemented the ‘Coming Up’ feature most weeks, which broke the show up well, and we also tried a new credits style which threw to the website for the packages that didn’t make it into the bulletin. Only the coming up survived but the first semester with a new team is difficult; you have more chance for innovation in your second semester on WINOL  so I hope the second years will carry our solid foundations forward to really do some innovative things with the bulletin, now that the website has settled down. I feel I was slightly restricted by the studio but we have developed a system which allows us to light presenters better by recording Sport in advance, as the packages are often done on the Monday or Tuesday. If you look at the last bulletin, both Henry and Ali are well lit, not ghostly or even particularly shiny as presenters have been in the past. We tried having the presenter stand up during the headlines, in a similar way to ITV, but with the way our green screen works you don’t get the sense of perspective so that idea was ditched. We have changed our headlines, simplifying them with a new music bed that is easier to edit. We have retained the old Garage Band WINOL theme but the different bed means we can more easily drop stories from the bulletin, even if they aren’t originally in the headlines, by dragging and dropping any story we want into the timeline. In the final bulletin we our presenter sat with a laptop, something we couldn’t have done before as the sports presenter would have been sitting there. The laptop performs no real function but it looks professional and it also gives the presenter something to look up from when moving from VT to the next part of the script.

Aside from WINOL we had quite a few large scale projects which we hoped would really show what we’ve learnt and how big WINOL has become. We started with the BJTC awards. Henry organised us into a team before we had even started on WINOL and despite some people having never worked with the equipment before, we put on a show that impressed the BJTC and hopefully worried our rivals. On the subject of rivals we had never really had a true rival that we could hold our work up against before; we talk about Westminster and occasionally Southampton but this year we took the success of Goldsmith’s and their East London Lines website as a direct challenge to us, causing us to really put work in to gaining a higher Alexa ranking on our website in both the UK and Worldwide. We were a long way behind them at the beginning of the semester but with the Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner Debate, the American Election and our week of daily 99 second news we were able to direct a lot of traffic to our site. Also, when plugging the bulletin on Facebook, Twitter and other social media we used to send our viewers to YouTube rather than the site, meaning we got a lot of views but the site suffered. This year though I was part of the decision to send people to the site for the bulletin, which meant a slight drop in viewers as it is a different system but increased the traffic for the site. At the end of my time as production editor  WINOL was the top student journalism site in the country as shown in the Alexa rankings where we were 479,411[1] in our global rank and 10,333[1] in our UK rank; over 10,000 places ahead in the UK rank of our nearest rivals in this country, the aforementioned East London Lines. This is to be commended and I think everyone on the team should be proud of this achievement now that we can confidently call ourselves the best student journalism and definitely the most widely viewed in the country. Special mention goes to Sam, website editor, who has overseen the change and Jason who has helped engineer it by taking us through the transition to the seemingly simpler WordPress system.

Another project we undertook was the Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner Debate (HPCC), planned by our main politics reporter Louis O’Brien. In the weeks building up to it we had a lot of planning sessions; details changed, venues changed, and the university got involved but we were fairly confident that we could pull it off. All the third years involved were veterans of November 30^th and me, Henry, Ewan, Flick and Sam were involved in the memorial service last year at a school, a job given to us by a professional production company so we knew we could do it. The scale of the event though was much larger as we had six candidates to look after and host, BBC South’s Alex Forsyth. We also had an audience of around 300 packed into the Stripe auditorium; add this to the online audience, streaming the event live on UStream and it was one of our most successful events. My role on the night was as a sort of director or perhaps a floor manager; there’s not much we could do about talkback and the like and Henry was running the camera output from the tricaster, although he had to rely on his camera people to give him good shots to choose from. It fell to me to time answers and try to keep Alex Forsyth informed as to whether she needed to hurry someone along or whether a candidate had longer for their opening statements. This was a big responsibility but fortunately Alex was a fantastic host and I hope that she appreciated my help.

The American elections saw us attempt to cover another big event, evolving from when WINOL covered the General Election in 2010 and attempting to do the same but on a much larger scale. It became obvious that this wouldn’t be possible, the programme would need to be a different kind of show and after changes and confusion from an organisational point of view we had a programme that would be two hours long, streamed live like the HPCC debate and that took the form of a discussion show with guests and experts, trying to argue over who would win the elections. The show was to be broadcast from nine o’clock but not in the contingency plan was the prospect of Obama winning before we went to air. This showed a real lack of planning but cannot be solely blamed on Ali as the head of the project. We should have encouraged Ali to involve other people in the plans sooner but other projects got in the way. On the day we came in and Ali was asking if we could take the show down to a 15 minute bulletin, the same length as a normal WINOL but I knew this wouldn’t be possible. A two hour long show had been promised and that was what we were going to put out. I was director for the whole two hours and it was a very steep learning curve. I volunteered to direct the show since no one else seemed like they wanted the job, despite having only directed one WINOL before;  that gave me more experience than some but it was still a lot of pressure. I think if you compare my directing style during the two hours (which was frantic at best) to my directing during the bulletin that afternoon where it was decided I would also take the helm, I was a much more accomplished director, keeping everyone in the gallery informed as well as the presenter who often feels a little bit lost and alone in the studio. I think the whole experience taught me a lot about directing and has shown me that it is something I would really like to pursue; nothing on WINOL, except perhaps occasionally turning my hand to presenting, has given me a greater buzz than being in control of that gallery.

In our final week of WINOL we decided we would have a daily news update in the style of BBC Three’s 60 seconds. It was to be called 99 news and a unit was put together to produce the bulletins, whilst I stayed focused on putting out our final bulletin of the semester and my final bulletin altogether. The show was very polished and made its one o’clock deadline every day bar the Monday. It gives us the distinction of being the only student run organisation to boast daily news broadcasts, most journalism courses only do one news day a term, and not only do we do WINOL weekly but we now have a pretty viable plan for daily news updates which I personally think could be carried forward into next semester. I also got involved with the radio, being a regular newsreader during WINOL’s Tuesday takeover as it was called. I really like radio as a medium and was quite glad to get some experience, no matter how small, on my CV before I left.

I would have liked to direct the final week of WINOL but it is no longer about us, the third years, it is about passing the torch so to speak to another team of hopefully bright young things who will continue to build upon the solid foundation I think we have laid out. I worry a little about production because although I encouraged members of my production team to get training on lighting, made sure they were officially studio trained and to learn things like the tricaster, I’m not sure this ever happened. And with many of them wanting to try their hand at news or sport next semester before deciding where they really want to be on WINOL, I worry that not many people will have the production skills I taught to my group, who have been a superb help and very good at following instructions. The main worry for me at the start of the semester was how I would cope with the added pressure of having a team of people working under me, and I think I was able to cope a lot better because of the quality of the team. They all had a chance to direct except Nicole who would have been director in the last week if she hadn’t had to disappear due to a problem at home. However I am pleased to say that Ben did a great job, learning a lot over the intervening weeks between that and the first WINOL which he also directed. It was criticised by some that I let a second year direct the first couple of weeks but I think throwing them in at the deep end was necessary to give them the fear that all journalists should live by. I am therefore extremely happy with how this term has gone and how my time as production editor has come to a close. Long may WINOL’s dominance continue.

---

[1] Alexa rankings correct as of 13^th December 2012

FOI not MOI - Investigative Journalism

I don't even know if the joke in the title is funny... or even a joke. But this is the last blog of this semester so let's get into it and get it over with.

In journalism the news agenda is not set by the journalist; we do not decide what to write about. In investigative journalism though the point is that the story should not be on the agenda. For an example from WINOL look at a story from the start of my second year where Julie Cordier investigated how many Hampshire police officers had previous convictions. You can view the story on YouTube here but the important thing here is that police officers with convictions was not a topic on the agenda, it was just a story that Julie had basically made up and then used the system of FOI requests to back it up and get the information she needed to make the story work. Often, investigative journalism is close in form to gonzo or presenter led journalism. During the lecture, Chris gave us an example where this was the case with his book True Blue. It wasn't something on the news agenda that they went to investigate and it is presenter led or more likely gonzo. If you're still unsure about investigative journalism then it is important to remember the big things in the history of the form like Emile Zola's famous J'Accuse or the investigation into the convictions of the Birmingham Six. Miscarriages of justice are the things that journalists will most often look to investigate because the reasons behind them can often be very much in the public interest, a corrupt government, a conspiracy; all good journalism topics. It was good to have a lecture on this subject as it directly influenced my thoughts about my FYP which is on the Innocence Project. For people who haven't heard of it or if I haven't written about it before, the Innocence Project was started in America for prisoners on death row who were still pleading not guilty despite many trials and appeals. It eventually was transferred over here and now university courses (mainly in law) can take on cases from prisoners in the UK who are still imprisoned for crimes they claim they didn't commit.

Back to the lecture though and Chris then went on to talk about a lady who is a hero to journalists although you may not have heard of her. Before our newsroom got a revamp her picture was on the wall but her story is worth more than that. Veronica Guerin was a journalist in Ireland during 'the troubles' who began investigating the crime lords of Ireland when no one else would. It was when she began to investigate drug dealers that she began to receive several death threats; shots fired into her home, a gunman at the door, threats over the phone. Her murder was an attack on democracy and the real irony is that two days after her death she was due to speak at a conference in London where her topic was "Dying to Tell the Story: Journalists at Risk." It wasn't the first time a journalist had been killed while investigating a story and it won't be the last but Guerin's story is one that should inspire rather than deflate us. Her pioneering work almost certainly did more to highlight the issue of drug crime in Ireland and whilst it cost her her life, her work will never be forgotten.

FOI requests are not just for journalists and can be made by anybody, yes YOU unsuspecting reader who wasn't prepared for me to address them directly. Websites like whatdotheyknow.com allow you to browse and make your own requests which could be responded to if you ask in a particular way. The people on the end of those requests will do everything they can to avoid answering so you need to be specific and you need to be prepared for disappointment. Two reporters over the last semester of WINOL had a huge amount of FOI requests out, submitted over the summer and despite their hard work were unable to make any of them work and these are our best reporters. Sometimes you're not asking the right questions or the idea just isn't going to turn up anything interesting.

This might be my last blog for a while apart from the WINOL Critical Reflection which should be above so...

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.

Channel 5 bulletin - notes

Geoff Hill, the editor of Channel 5 news is coming in to be our guest editor for WINOL tomorrow and he kindly asked us to 'debrief' his 5 o'clock bulletin, the same way that he will debrief our bulletin tomorrow.

So without further ado, the bulletin started with the presenter in vision before going to the top story headline, floods. The floods got a really rather large amount of coverage considering the bulletin is only about 22 minutes long, but we'll come to that later. The quote from David Cameron in the heads was rather weak but I understand why it was used. We've had a lot of trouble over the last few weeks ourselves with using upsot in the heads just for the sake of using it, sometimes ending up with an unnecessary quote. Having Cameron on location at the floods though makes using him an absolute necessity.

We had the opening graphic after that which was a little jarring to some of us since we tend to run the graphic before our headlines; it does help to break things up though and the opening graphic is a hell of a lot nicer than ours. It wouldn't hurt our programme to have a team dedicated to that kind of thing, it really shows how useful having a graphics team is later on in the 5 news bulletin.

The next headlines were about the Noro Virus, Nadine "I'm an MP get me out of here" Dorries, the funeral of an actor in Coronation Street and the announcement of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year shortlist. Based on Channel 5s other programming it is easy to see why rather tabloid stories such as Nadine Dorries and the Corrie star were covered in the way they were. The grab from Chris Hoy was odd and I'm assuming the freeze and style of "find out what they had to say" is an editorial choice that is used regularly.

I quite liked the set which sadly we don't have the luxury of (yet!), the second years will do in our lovely new studio though. But I wasn't sure about having the presenter standing throughout the whole bulletin. The convention I've seen in a lot of news is standing during headlines and seated behind a desk for the actual bulletin, something we've tried to replicate but again, the lack of a set makes it look odd.

The bulletin then went into its first story which was arguably its second story as well with two live OBs to reporters on location. It's always really good to get a live OB and especially in a story like this where it really matters about having people on location for updates. With our team it's often difficult to do that and we were, without putting it strongly at all, extremely disappointed not to get our OB from the student demonstrations in London last week, something that would be inexcusable on a national news broadcast. I liked the map graphic in the first flood package; some people I talked to thought it went on a little too long but I think with the information it was pitched about right and helped to illustrate a story where the pictures will be very good but very samey. My favourite part of the package though was the lovely bit of natsot at the end; it was the perfect way to end it and from a production point of view an absolute godsend as it means you can make sure there are no black holes when cutting from the VT to the presenter. The second flood VT however was possibly unnecessary. It's great to hear from reporters across the country but whilst the reports had slightly different focuses, I can't help feeling that the stories could have been combined. The footage from the RNLI was a nice touch though as it helped the package feel vital and current and the leisure centre vox pops were well pitched; having real people comment on this story when it is about real people is the most important thing. I did find the interviews a little odd however as the reporter was still very much in shot, or at least the back of her head was, and presumably this was a stylistic point as it was a recurring feature throughout the bulletin. Something I think I liked but did at first amuse me was the interview with the man, still in his house, leaning out of the window. It was quite jarring visually at first but how else would you have filmed it? Would you have gone tighter and been accused of TV fakery since it would have appeared that he was on the ground floor? It did help give that sense of people being trapped in their own homes though and that set the right tone for the package.

On a separate note, I couldn't quite work out if the bulletin was being filmed on a full set with a screen behind it, or whether it was a green-screen with the strange desk type thing protruding from the floor.

Regardless, the next story was the return of our favourite winter illness, the noro virus. It comes around every year and nobody is particularly surprised so having it is a bit of a non-story; it sort of has to be covered though although the slightly eerie music made it seem more like a plague rather than a sickness bug. I've had the noro virus a couple of years ago, just after Christmas actually and whilst it was horrible, the only real side effect was not being able to eat ALL of the mince pies in the world. Again the reporter was in shot during the interview which I addressed above but the graphic this time, whilst well done, was a little hard to take in. It was very number heavy graphic and I actually found it rather hard to take in all the information and I couldn't tell you what any of the statistics were now. It was similar with the Eon power OOV. I know it was something about paying compensation but I can't for the life of me remember anything about the story, it wasn't visually interesting so I just switched off. Unfortunately this is often the case with OOVs as they are the bottom feeders of news. If a story fails, it becomes an OOV and so that may reflect why the pictures were dull.

Nadine Dorries was next and it was a rather odd story all round. First of all, the fact that Dorries was even in the 'celebrity jungle' is weird but then the story was essentially her coming home to see if she would still have a job as an MP but didn't really have any footage of her. A few pictures were used but it cut to the political editor for comment that didn't add much. We were told that Nadine Dorries was in a part of Westminster that didn't allow cameras; well why didn't we see her in a bit that did? It seemed like covering the story for the sake of covering it. If it hasn't got pictures then should it go in? It is quite often the same dilemma we face on WINOL with our news editor agonising over a story that isn't visually interesting but is important. It's rather comforting to know that the professionals face similar problems to us. We must be doing something right.

It was great to see a 'coming up' as it is something we've been trying to implement over the last few weeks with varying degrees of success. Also, on Channel 5 you have the perfect place to put your coming up, just before the adverts. I did find it a little odd though that coming out of the adverts we were reminded of the floods but nothing new was really added. I know the BBC sometimes repeats their headlines in the same slot as the coming up was played so it is a convention and obviously coming out of the adverts it might be necessary to remind viewers of what's gone, something we fortunately don't have to worry about.

The Yasser Arafat story was well dealt with considering it had to be mostly archive footage. They were the only interviews as well not to feature the back of the reporter's head so why didn't we go a bit closer on the interviewee's faces? It might just be my own personal preference. The Coronation Street star funeral was a little oddly pitched; obviously it is aimed at the Channel 5 audience but I think despite the person's celebrity status, it felt strange to be sort of intruding into people's grief.

It was nice to break up the show again with another OOV and the pictures were pretty great so anyone not interested in Corrie actors no longer with us would have been suitably woken up by a burning crane. I certainly was.

And finally (see what I did there?) we had the BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) package which I really enjoyed as the vox pops helped make it the light story it is. Nobody, well it's unlikely anyway, will get angry about the SPOTY awards so the tone was about right for a piece like this. It was a little odd though considering I don't think we saw the face of the reporter that we had the back of their head again. It made it look like we weren't allowed to see their face. It might not have registered on an audience that wasn't full of aspiring journos.

Overall though it was a very enjoyable broadcast and as a person who is traditionally a BBC News viewer it is interesting to see 'how the other half live' so to speak. I look forward to hearing what Geoff has to say about our bulletin tomorrow.

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.

Reporting Elections

In our most recent law lecture we took the time to look at reporting elections, not always necessarily a story in itself but we're performing a public duty as the press in reporting on them. Who guards the guardians? We do. The profession of journalism has often been referred to as 'The Fourth Estate'. This really means that we're here to make sure those who are meant to be in charge and who are meant to be looking after us and our interests really are doing that. Arguably that raises the question of who do we report to, who watches the watchmen? I think that is an especially interesting point with the shadow of Leveson looming large with his report due this coming week.

During elections the issue of impartiality is very important; the difference between comment and straight reporting must be crystal clear. This is really a guideline for broadcast journalism though. The BBC and the like have to give the same amount of time or thereabouts to each political party in the running, in fact during the lecture it was pointed out to us by Ian who is a BBC man that they will have a record of which parties have been on what channels and for how long. This isn't the same for newspapers though who have the freedom to be completely biased in their reporting. The Sun shows us how important newspaper support can be in elections as it flip-flops from Conservative to Labour and now back again. The most famous example was its denouncement of Neil Kinnock in this famous front page. They even gave themselves a pat on the back after the Tories were voted in that year, saying "It's the Sun wot won it." Grammatically incorrect? Definitely. Factually correct? Possibly. There will often be editorial choices in broadcast media on who gets the main focus; in fact in the packages we watched about Corby not all parties got soundbites, just the main parties. But if you don't balance things and campaigns start to turn sour then who will the parties go for? Well it would be us journos. At election time there is fantastic scrutiny on us as journalists but we also wield great power.

The hard truths about reporting during elections are as follows. Citizens will base their voting choices on your reporting; it's a simple fact but important to remember since your words can change elections, bring down politicians, end governments. Accuracy and impartiality are even more important than usual during elections, they are totally and utterly vital because making a factual error at a time so sensitive could change the course of a campaign and would almost certainly end your career. Something like that would not be good at any time but during elections everything is a little bit more on edge. Another hard truth is that politicians love to shoot the messenger; I shouldn't need to explain this really but politicians need us like a hole in the head but if they can use us to their advantage they will. Going after journos seems pretty popular at the moment and would be even more so if it was election time. The final thing to remember is that campaign language can often become rather 'heated' as it were so there might be some untruths in what politicians will be saying. I don't mean that they'll just be going round lying but it would be a good idea to check what the facts are on what politicians say about their opponents before reporting it and getting in trouble ourselves. That's one of the danger areas of reporting on elections; if we were to report others statements for example we could get in to a lot of trouble, one case that came up in the lecture was that of Phil Woolas, the former Labour MP who ran this campaign against his Lib Dem rival. Reporting that as fact would have got us journalists into a lot of trouble; about as much trouble as Phil Woolas got himself in and you can read more about that in this article here.

An odd thing that I didn't know anything about before the lecture was that journalists can't report on opinion polls or exit polls once the election is underway. Now I know this it seems pretty obvious to me that it would be bad. I mean think of the consequences of reporting that Labour are currently ahead based on exit polls on the day of a general election. Would this make people who would normally vote Labour less likely to go out and vote, thinking they already had the victory sewn up? Or would it influence Tory voters or Lib Dem voters to get out and vote when they weren't sure whether to vote before, swinging the election their way. How reliable can these polls be anyway? You might find yourself reporting all sorts of things that have no real basis in fact.

All of this came to a head for me really with WINOL's work on the HPCC debate we put on. For those of you that aren't aware, my course hosted a debate with all six candidates for the position of Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner, a post that was new and was being covered in lots of places where other elections were also taking place. In the build up our political editor, as I'm sure he likes to be known, was running profiles on each candidate, building up balance over time as he wasn't afforded the time to have what would have been something like a two and a half minute package which would not fit in a standard WINOL bulletin. He had to be very careful about how much time was afforded to each candidate as he would be the one blamed if the campaign turned sour (see above). You can see all of our coverage of the HPCC elections around and about on the WINOL website here.

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.

Courting Controversy

I didn't blog last week and if by some strange quirk you are a regular follower of my blog then you may wonder why. Well the reasons are twofold; we put on our huge Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner Debate, which I took part in on the day of last week's lecture, and also the last two weeks of lectures were on court reporting so I felt it would be beneficial to just put my thoughts on both lectures in to one single, easy to digest blog.

When talking about court reporting, the most important thing to remember in my opinion is privilege. There are a few other situations where privilege comes into effect, the House of Commons for example, but it is most commonly used in court. What privilege allows journalists to do is write and publish or broadcast material which may be defamatory or untrue, simply because it is said in court. We have protection in reporting these things as long as, yep, you guessed it; we are FAST, ACCURATE and FAIR. People in court have what is known as ABSOLUTE privilege but journalists only have QUALIFIED privilege (QP) in reporting on them. Your reports need to be fair, accurate, without malice and on a matter of public concern for QP to come into effect. It is the same rule for reporting on the House of Commons where as long as your report follows the regulations for QP then you can report anything said by MPs in the Commons. This is the way that recently many injunctions and super injunctions have been broken with MPs naming and in some cases shaming those with injunctions so that the paper can break the story without fear of reprimand. Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming was famous around the time of the Ryan Giggs super injunction, calling injunctions an "affront to democracy," and breaking a few using his absolute privilege in parliament. You can read a comment piece here about how that process works and the worries parliament have about this kind of conduct and you can read about how the Ryan Giggs story broke using several links; here, here and here. It's interesting to see there one of my mini blogs from a long time ago with a mention of another sports star with a super injunction who I'm not sure we ever found out about.

Qualified privilege has two levels: with or 'subject to' explanation or contradiction and 'without' explanation or contradiction. It is also subject to the Reynolds Test, the 10 point test which I listed and went through in my last blog. There are a few other events covered by privilege, pressers and public meetings are covered but again, only if they follow the rules for obtaining QP. Written handouts are also covered according to the lecture. This is something I'd never heard before and it made me wonder whether that defence would also stretch to a press release. Say for example you receive a press release from an outspoken, right wing, extremist group about a demonstration and you report what they have to say. As long as you give a balanced report, giving the other side a chance to respond and that your report is accurate and without malice; would it be legally safe? I genuinely don't know so a little more research is needed and perhaps an update to this blog will be in order. Stay tuned. It is also worth thinking about the risks of live broadcast when it comes to privilege. What can you broadcast when you're filming something live which is protected by privilege? We had to deal with this ourselves recently with the Hampshire Police and Crime Commissioner debate mentioned above. We were streaming the event live to the world (although more likely a few people in Hampshire and my mum) and so anything the candidates said would be transmitted to the world whether it was defamatory or not. Was that safe legally? Well it was a public debate but it was up to us as to whether there was balance or not. Fortunately the candidates were very well behaved on that front and we were lucky but it is good to show we have thought about this kind of issue.

I'm planning to update this blog with a few more thoughts and examples but if you feel you haven't learnt enough about court reporting you can see my first year blog here and my trip to the court from around that time (don't worry, I wasn't IN court, just visiting) can be read here.

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.

Defamation, Defamation, Defamation

Hosted by Kirstie Allsop for Channel 4.

Yeah, not really though. Defamation is essentially the legal term for saying bad things about a person. I've rather oversimplified things there but there is a simple bullet point way of defining defamation, and guess what? Here are the bullet points now!!

If what you write or broadcast about someone or a company 'tends to...'

• Lower them in the estimation of right thinking-people.
• Causes them to be shunned or avoided.
• Disparages them in their business, trade or profession.
• Exposes them to hatred, ridicule or contempt.

There are many different forms of defamation, the most common for journalists being libel. Now do not get the two confused; it's the classic all cod are fish but not all fish are cod, so all libel is defamation but not all defamation is libel, sometimes it can be slander. "Whoa now Graham, you've said another confusing word!" And you'd be right, so now is the time for me to explain these terms. LIBEL in all caps is the written form of defamation. In a really poncey algebra kind of way, Publication + Defamation + Identification = Libel. The more you know. SLANDER on the other hand (also in caps lock) is the spoken form of defamation; it does not need publication to be defamatory or for a person to be taken to court which is the likely outcome of a defamatory statement.

Fortunately there are some defences you can apply when it comes to libel. The best defence you can have for  libel is justification. Justification is simply that your statement is true and you can prove it in court (beyond reasonable doubt etc). The second is fair comment which is technically defined as an honestly held opinion based upon facts or privileged material which is in the public interest (check back to last weeks lecture for the PCC definition of public interest). One of the most solid defences though is absolute privilege which is based on your notes from court reporting mostly; if a judge says something in court and you report it word for word using your shorthand notes and it is FAST, ACCURATE and FAIR as it should always be then you can report any statements made, even if they are highly defamatory. The fun legal loophole here though is that you cannot defame a dead person. I can call any dead person I want anything I want and be completely safe legally. Yay for loopholes!

Defamation cases can often become quite famous as the cases rumble on, for example the Max Mosley case has rumbled on for so long, it's no longer about defamation (because it turned out for the most part to be true), it's now a case of privacy. One of the best (depending on your perspective) cases of defamation in recent times was the Chris Jefferies case. OK so I've definitely mentioned it before but it's because it really has changed things in journalism and in defamation law. Chris Jefferies was the landlord of Joanna Yates who went missing in 2010 later to be found dead which put Jefferies at the centre of a murder enquiry. Nothing wrong with that so far (except the murdering obviously) but what did go wrong next was the fact that newspapers reported Jefferies arrest as if he was definitely the murderer, simply because he looked a little eccentric. It eventually transpired that the murderer was a man named Vincent Tabak and the newspapers did a lot of backtracking, a lot of apologising and a little paying of substantial damages. The reason though that the papers jumping to these conclusions was so bad is that it could have caused serious problems in court. Had Jefferies gone to trial it would have been near impossible to find an unbiased jury who didn't already assume he was the murderer from the character assassination he was facing from the papers.

While that was one case of defamation where an out and out nasty thing was actually said of a person, that isn't the only way to defame a person. You can defame someone simply with the pictures you use in a package with the careless use of a voiceover. So for example in a story about football hooliganism a panning GV of the crowd with a voiceover like, "The (insert your clubs rival team) fans then took to the pitch and wrecked the goals, causing havoc," would be defamatory to the people in that shot as they might be completely innocent bystanders who just happened to be in your GV. The most likely explanation for something like this would be a story has broken and the only footage a reporter has is GVs of the previous weeks game; notice I said explanation rather than excuse as there is no excuse for that kind of mistake, you can and will be sued. The newspaper version of this is juxtaposition libel which can happen when a headline relating to one story saying, I dunno, "serial murderer finally captured," is put slap bang next to a picture from another story, leading the reader to assume the two are connected and therefore it libels the person in the picture. I've been doing a bit of reading and it appears the first case of juxtaposition libel involved a certain Madame Tussaud. Now you wouldn't think waxworks could cause much of a problem but in a blog from an old WINOL-ite you can read all about it

Finally I want to give a brief mention to the Reynolds defence. The points that make it up are as follows, laid down by Lord Nicholls during the Reynolds vs Times Newspaper case:

1. Seriousness of allegation - The more serious the charge, the more the public is misinformed and the individual harmed, if the allegation is not true.
2. Nature of information - The extent to which the subject matter is a matter of public concern.
3. Source of information - Some informants have no direct knowledge of the events. Some have their own axes to grind, or are being paid for their stories.
4. Steps taken to verify the information - It is always important to check whether the information is true.
5. Status of the information - The allegation may have already been the subject of an investigation which commands respect.
6 . The urgency of the matter - Is the news perishable? Courts must take in to account the need of journalists to work and publish quickly.
7. Whether comment was sought from claimant - The person who is defamed may have information others do not possess or have not disclosed. An approach to the claimant is not always necessary.
8. Whether the articles contained the gist of the claimant side of the story - the journalism must be fair.
9. Tone of the article - A newspaper can raise queries or call for an investigation but need not adopt allegations as statements of fact.
10. Circumstances of the publication - Is the story really so urgent that it had to be published when it was.

I've talked a lot about defences but what about the times when you can have no defence? You can have absolutely no defence when you have not checked the facts, when you have not 'referred up', when you have not put yourself in the shoes of the person or company you are writing about, when you have got carried away by a spicy story, when you have not bothered to wait for a lawyers opinion. On WINOL the system works like this; if a news reporter doesn't show the news editor their package before it goes in to the bulletin or includes something the news editor hasn't seen then it is their fault, if the news editor sees it and defamatory material still goes in then it is their fault, if it is a particularly complicated issue then the editor may be called in until eventually it may go all the way to a lecturer who will pass final judgement on the most legally delicate stories. As always though, recognise the risk.

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.

Gallery Gripes - Vision Mixer

We've been having quite a lot of problems the last few weeks with the WINOL and Sportsweek backgrounds being deleted from the memory card in use in the gallery. Essentially what this has meant is I've had to remake the backgrounds using former production editor Domonique Jenkins' blog on the subject when this happened around this time last year. It's a simple enough process which shouldn't slow us down if we're all aware of the problem and how to solve it.

With that in mind, here is the link to Dom's blog which features the backgrounds we've used and also the process you need to go through to make a background and put it in to the memory card for the green-screen.

Dom's Blog: http://domoniquejenkins.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/guide-to-putting-image-on-to-vision.html

WINOL Background:













Sportsweek Background:

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.

Media Law - Regulation and Codes of Conduct

This lecture was our first with Ian Anderson, former News Editor on the BBC 10 O’clock News; so Dan, when you think your job on WINOL is hard, try and fathom how much of a step up it would be to do that on a national programme like the 10 O’clock News.

So to start it is important to remember that regulation and codes are not laws, but often are of the same or higher importance to journalists. With the shadow of Leveson looming large over the whole industry this is an extremely important time in regulation; the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) has been held up in ridicule, journalists are less trusted by the public than ever and newspapers are closing down faster than you can say News of the World. Regulation and codes must work in practice because if they don't then the public does not trust us; if the public doesn't trust us, where do our stories come from? Why do codes matter though? Well all professionals have codes of conduct which occupy the space between actual laws and what is right ethically; so if you break one of your codes of conduct you may not actually be breaking the law but you can still damage your career or even lose your job. Journalism is all about having the trust of the public so it's good to have these codes to guide us in areas like; how far can we go to get a story, what practices are legitimate and when do circumstances make a difference? The Jimmy Savile case which is currently playing out across the media has been extremely damaging to the bond between the BBC and the public. These codes are in place to stop bad practice in journalism in order to gain and maintain public trust.

There are 3 main codes for journalists to remember plus one other which I'll mention briefly later. For newspapers and magazines it is the PCC which of course is in transition at the moment. It's very difficult to define the PCC code at the moment but essentially it is a regulator which deals (or perhaps dealt?) with complaints submitted to them where a journalist has perhaps made a mistake which cannot be rectified by a simple apology in the next edition. Often the PCC has to be the middle man between the complainant and the newspaper, such as in this case, now resolved, where Gordon Brown MP complained to the PCC about something written in The Times about money given to MPs in addition to their parliamentary salary. Since the PCC is run by ex-press people pretty much, the question of how it can be fully independent is ever present. It also has no real power to regulate, offering as it does apologies and a slap on the wrist. The code and regulator for broadcasters is Ofcom who are arguably much less ineffectual than their newspaper regulating cousins. This is mainly because they have real power to regulate in being able to fine people or pull their programmes off air. Think back to the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross saga, Ofcom fined the hell out of them and it eventually caused the pair to lose their jobs. This was nothing though in comparison to the breach of trust the incident caused. If you don't keep to the Ofcom codes though they can and will take you off air; they license people to broadcast and have no hesitation in giving with one hand and taking away with the other. In comparison to the timid PCC, Ofcom really can hurt an institution with its powers which have to be there to enforce impartiality as well as any legal issues. Impartiality is something which doesn't matter to newspapers, there is no requirement for them to be impartial, yet broadcasters have to be impartial or risk the wrath of Ofcom. Finally we have the BBC code of conduct, available for all to read here and which are, by all accounts, "a great tool for how to do your job well," as spoken by Ian Anderson in our lecture. I won't go into detail on the BBC guidelines as they will only affect you if you get a job with the BBC and since that's a little more niche than getting a job in journalism in general I'll leave it up to you as to whether you want to find out more.

There are times however when as a journalist it may be necessary to not adhere to these ethical rules. In the search for a story, how far is too far? In investigative journalism it may be necessary to secretly film someone or lie in order to get the story. This is obviously not ideal and the only real defence you can have for these sorts of actions is public interest. OK so the story could be true but if it is not in the public interest you lied and cheated to get the story and deserve to be reprimanded. If however it is in the public interest then you should be home and dry. The fake sheik stories in the long gone News of the World were a great example of investigative journalism where rather dodgy tactics were employed to break codes for good reasons. At the moment there is a consultation by the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) which is hoping to put a real answer to the question of whether the public interest served by the conduct investigated outweighs the overall criminality of the means of acquiring that information. If yes, run that story dammit; if no, you're going to jail lad.

Finally (oh you thought I meant finally when we were talking about the BBC? Well this is awkward) let's talk about the NUJ. OK so the National Union of Journalists hasn't been as strong ever since Murdoch came along but there are some journalists who still hold its 12 key points sacred. In most other codes there is a focus on privacy but there's a fair more laissez faire attitude to that in the NUJ code of conduct; you can read the whole list here but the one that all journalists should adhere to if they are to be respected and considered trustworthy is the protection of sources. If you are given sensitive information which is entirely possible as a journalist then it is your solemn duty not to reveal the source of this information if you publish the story which you gained from said information. Really though, as long as you make every piece of work you do FAST, ACCURATE and FAIR then you shouldn't have any problems. And how hard can that be?

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.

Media Law - Copyright or Copywrong?

This week's law lecture was taken by a guest lecturer, Peter Hodges. An expert, if not THE expert in copyright law (who some long term readers may remember visited once before). Having started on the other side of copyright as a music producer which helped him when he made the transition to the BBC advising on the use of music and other copyrighted materials in BBC programmes. Copyright isn't too difficult to define but it has changed over the years since its first use in 1640 with Paradise Lost. It can cover all manner of things, not just music and films but even this blog. Although it's been updated often throughout European law and with the advent of the Internet it matters hugely to us as journalists because we should be thinking about our own rights. To protect your work you need to have it published. You can't just write it down and let that be that because if it isn't published then it isn't covered by copyright. Some rather obscure things can be copyrighted; for example the Eiffel Tower when illuminated at night is copyrighted because the lighting company has the copyright on the lighting configuration. Insane.

Copyright doesn't last forever though and the laws about how long copyright lasts are quite specific. For a literary piece of work like a book it is covered during the life of the author and then 70 years after that, for music the same rules apply except it is 50 years after the death of the author. In the case of films though, the normal rules apply but it continues to stay in copyright for 70 years after the death of the director, the screenwriter and many others. But what can a person do to protect their work? Well the simplest thing is to prevent it being copied. That's why you often see on DVDs a little symbol saying copy protected or similar. Watching a film in the home you don't need to clear that copyrighted material but if, for example, you had the film on your website or played music underneath it which isn't yours, you could be prosecuted. The performance still has to be paid for. There is an exception though and it is the glorious world of 'Fair Dealing'.  Fair dealing is essentially the acceptable face of taking and using copyrighted material. You can use anything you like for research or public study but you're probably wondering how much of a song or how long can a clip from a film be if I use it on my hipster blog. Well the good news is yes you can under the fair dealing usage of comment and review. How long you can use a piece of copyrighted material for is up for some debate however. In the WINOL Games series I produced last year with course mate Ewan Kennerell we had to come up against fair dealing quite regularly; here's a typical episode. We were told by Peter Hodges that up to 2 minutes would have been acceptable so it's a real relief to know that every episode we made of WINOL Games was totally safe legally. In news you can also use fair dealing but it doesn't cover photos and is much harder to prove that the material is safe under fair dealing.

"But what about live broadcasts?" You're probably not saying. Well in a live broadcast if there is music playing and it is included incidentally, there's nothing you can do about it. It's live. But record the live broadcast and rebroadcast it at a later date without clearing that music and you're in trouble. Basically, everything is copyrighted. Even Happy Birthday is copyrighted! And all artists, authors, movie makers, photographers have the right to be credited. Always remember though that there is no copyrighting ideas. If someone says, "let's have a show that does football highlights," Gary Lineker is unlikely to head round to your house and tell you to stop ripping off Match of the Day.

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.

P.S. Previous copyright blogs 1 and 2

The 2nd Law

Not just a Muse album but also an incredibly cheesy way of introducing the second week of law blogs.

This week it was Confidentiality and Privacy. Two subjects close to journalists' hearts but with one in particular sliding out of relevance rather rapidly, (try saying that three times fast).

We'll save the best 'til last then and start with confidentiality which is really a technical term for secrets. Obviously it's more complicated than that but at its root, something confidential is often something secret. For example, let's pretend a hospital is fiddling its numbers, causing patients to suffer; if a hospital worker were to tell a journalist this it would be quite clearly something which is secret but definitely something which is confidential. It is often in cases like this where confidentiality is of the utmost importance and sources need protecting that we look to the journalism code of conduct. Much has been made in the last few months and even years about the character of journalists, arguably we're worse than lawyers and politicians now in most peoples eyes, but yes, we do have a code of conduct. One of the most sacred and important parts of said code of conduct is the protection of sources. Where do people think stories come from if not sources? And if we go around whistle-blowing on the whistle-blowers then who will trust us? We as journalists need to be prepared to go to court and even jail to protect our sources. Outside of journalism Bill Goodwin is probably not all that well known but to journalists he should be considered a hero. As a young, up and coming reporter on a business trading magazine he broke a story using his sources that quite frankly angered the company he was writing about. They took him to court and he was asked again and again to identify his source; he wouldn't do it. Goodwin was eventually cleared and the story revealed to be completely true if memory serves me but it is for his dogged protection of sources that he deserves to be remembered.

Confidentiality though has become a little niche since 2000. The European Human Rights Act is what caused it and the two most important articles for journalists to remember are Article 8 and Article 10. Article 8 concerns the right to privacy and Article 10 is essentially freedom of speech which is why it is so important to journalists to have a good understanding of what can be protected under it. A journalist also needs a basic understanding of the difference between statute and common law. If statute was the only kind of law then you could probably get a law degree in a couple of months, fortunately (or unfortunately if you're a law student reading this for some reason) common law stops that by being absolutely insanely complicated as it is the law made by judges over the years in past cases. This means that despite statute laying down the main laws, any slight changes made by judges in their handling of cases and their sentencing can have huge legal ramifications down the line. You don't need to do a law degree and understand all the ins and outs of common law, I reckon even lawyers would admit they don't know absolutely all common law, but just have a understanding of the dangers this presents. Similarly you don't need to understand every point of Article 8 and 10 but just to understand the dangers and the defences. The Leveson enquiry may return a verdict that calls for what will amount to fixing the regulation of journalists, but this would not be needed if all journalists could recognise the dangers present in law.

Remember when I got all obsessed about secrets a few paragraphs ago? Well there was a reason, and it's as follows. Sometimes a journalist can come across something like the Official Secrets Act which, whilst designed to protect national security, can be a real thorn in journalists' sides as it completely takes away our trusty public interest defence. Although you could possibly claim a defence under Article 10 or perhaps ask them to show how the information you published actually damaged national security, you'd be walking on thin ice. Not to be confused with common law, there is such a thing as common law secrets which essentially gives us the right to have secrets and to pass those secrets on with the expectation that it won't be passed on to others, (Bill Goodwin again). For something to be a breach of confidence it has to have four things present. You are in breach of confidence if you pass on info which:

1. Has "the necessary quality of confidence" (eg is important and not already known) - "not just tittle tattle." AND
2. was provided in "circumstances imposing an obligation" (eg - when a reasonable person would think  it would be kept secret). AND
3. There was no permission to pass on the information. AND
4. "detriment" is likely to be caused to the person who gave the information.

If any of the above are missing then the information is NOT confidential, in law at least, and it can be revealed without breach. An example would be a doctor telling someone they have an STD, let's say it was a politician who he was talking to, if the doctor tells a journalist this then they cannot publish this information without a breach of confidence, it would be defamation and I haven't got time to do that blog now. All in good time. It is not a very recent case now but the Michael Douglas case where wedding photos were published by a forgettable gossip mag (I genuinely have forgotten, oh the irony) that were taken by an unofficial photographer. The judge in the case called privacy "a fundamental value of personal autonomy." The key thing to remember about this case though is that it is a privacy case because they were taken by an intruder. Had the photos been taken by a guest at the wedding and leaked by them it would have been a breach of confidence. Pictures of the young girl who ran off to France with her teacher are now sailing dangerously close to the wind. When the search was on it was possible for journalists to print pictures of her under public interest and qualified privilege defences but now... be careful.

Journalism is selling words for money but that should never mean you compromise your legal safety. An important case to remember here is the continuing saga of Princess Caroline which has come to define privacy over and over again. In the original case photos of the princess eating in a restaurant were published. I could comment on the cult of celebrity and why anyone would want to see those photos anyway but this is a law blog so shut up. Those photos were a breach of her privacy but why? She's famous, surely she expects it. No. Not how it works. She was sitting inside the restaurant at the back, clearly trying to conserve her privacy, not performing a public duty so she had the expectation of privacy in this case. Publishing photos of her would be - and was - a total breach of privacy. There isn't a public interest defence here. This ruling essentially meant that an activity can be private even it occurs in a public place and the person concerned is famous. It doesn't always work that way for ol' Caroline though as this more recent example shows. Personally I don't want to see pictures of Princess Caroline but anything about her daughter is welcome as far as I'm concerned.

What our mate Carol (can I call you Carol?) should have done is whack an injunction on everything that moves like everyone with the money and the lawyers does these days. When a journalist has a juicy story, the person or group the story concerns has the right to reply, that is the journalist must let them know the story is about to break if they are to be free from defamation claims. Unfortunately this means the person can go "Right..." and grab an injunction hot off the presses from Lord Justice Eady or similar. An injunction against one is an injunction against all, so if I took out an injunction against you for threatening to print the extremely damaging story that I am completely and utterly terrified of wasps then no one else can print that story either as the injunction stops them too. What journalists took to doing in the early days was reporting the fact that there was an injunction so, using the wasp example, "A student journalist has taken out an injunction... etc," and that would be enough but now we also have super injunctions which prevent even the mentioning of the original injunction. This was what happened in the now famous Ryan Giggs saga. Giggs had taken out an injunction preventing journalists from saying he had been a bit naughty but then also took out a super injunction preventing journalists from saying he'd taken out an injunction. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you're Ryan Giggs) it all got published on Twitter, tweeted and re-tweeted, breaking the injunction and making a farce of the whole affair (poor choice of words there). It was a similar issue in the Max Mosley case where the newspapers reported that Mosley had indulged in some weird sex orgies, knowing it was true but thinking they were safe anyway because surely he wouldn't take them to court and drag that considerable dirty laundry through the public washing machine... too many metaphors spoil the broth. Well it turned out that they vastly underestimated Mosley as he did take them to court and is still taking people to court.

Finally I want to finish with the PCC definition of Public Interest as often it is the last refuge for journalists.

It is as follows:

The public interest includes, but is not confined to:

i) Detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety.

ii) Protecting public health and safety

iii) Preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation

Until Next Time. Stay Classy Internet.