Lecture 3 - Pretty much History

Our third lecture in the History and Context of Journalism was pretty much a history lesson but it did help to contextualise all the information we had been receiving over the past few weeks by placing it in time.

Journalism is turning information into money. Classy way to open a lecture but it's true. it began in Holland and England in the 1600s and has evolved into the money making leviathan that you can observe today. But how did we get to the point where journalism was even possible? As early as 6000 BC the first recorded system for writing came into being (Chinese pictographic script) begging the question, what were people doing in the millions of years before this. We then moved in the next thousands of years through the Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Sumerian Cuneform script, both ideas slightly too complicated to become standard. A big jump takes us to Latin from which much of our language is taken today. Looking at the picture below of the Lindisfarne Gospel you can see that some of the characters have survived to modern times.

In the 1440s Guttenberg's printing press was invented. Singularly the 'most important invention in history', says Einstein and he should know. He went on to say that: 'it gives man a kind of immortality'. Whereas before, ideas could be written down and lost just as quickly, the printing press gave you immortality because your ideas could live forever in books. This led us on to the Renaissance (for more depth on the subject of the Renaissance, check out my older blogs) where the ideas that had come from the Greeks could finally be written down, recorded and saved before another Dark Ages.

As far as journalism goes, not much happened for a few hundred years until the pamphleteers of the Civil War. Before that though there was one publication that got particular mention in the lecture for its significance to news. Foxes Book of Martyrs turned the pulpit into news media as it documents the persecution of all the important martyrs in history. This was one of the first uses of the printing press that wasn't The Bible; OK so it involved the Bible but it opened the door for the printing press to be used for other more diverse practices. The restoration of the Stuart monarchy brought us not only Charles II but John Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, one of the most important pieces we have studied so far, (once again check my previous blogs for notes on John Locke). Eventually, this leads to one of the most important events in the history of journalism; the publication of the first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant (picture below). This was the time of the Whigs in Parliament and Daniel Defoe, sometimes thought of as the father of English journalism, was pamphleteering at this time and was often pilloried for it showing the dangers of journalism in these times.

Comment papers such as The Spectator then began to crop up in the Whig Ascendancy, the content was commercial but witty. This was the time of Joseph Addison and the like whose observations are still wholly readable today. The next real innovation in journalism came with Hogarth and his photo journalism. The minute observations that could be seen within his paintings were able to reflect very accurately whole stories that could not be revealed by the actual articles. His most famous work Gin Alley is often referred back to as one of the best examples of photo journalism, even though it is not really a photo.

From this moment on, the aspects of journalism developed until we get to Fleet Street and then modern journalism. It is these early journalists, (Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison, not forgetting photo journalist Hogarth), that helped pioneer journalism and make it the profession it is today.

Apologies for taking so long on this blog but it made it eventually.

Stay Classy Internet.

Journalism Now Project - The Press in the 17th Century

When I discovered my topic for the ‘Journalism Now’ module was ‘The Press in the 17th Century’ my initial excitement was tempered with worry as I knew that there was more research material on the subject of the 18th century, (Daily Courant, Joseph Addison etc) than the 17th century. I needn’t have worried though as I soon found that the 17th century was one of the most fast moving and interesting periods of history to study in terms of journalism. The printing press had long been invented, the first newspapers began to emerge, the pioneers of journalism began to emerge and the groundwork was laid for the press that we know today.

In The March of Journalism; Harold Herd calls British journalism, “the product of a slow moving evolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries”. The earliest writers who could be compared to journalists today would be the pamphleteers of Cromwell’s Commonwealth who bear more than a passing resemblance to today’s more opinionated columnists. Before that though, as early as the 1620s there had been sheets called corantos which Andrew Marr’s book, My Trade, discusses briefly.

“As early as the 1620s there had been the corantos – as in ‘current’, as in ‘current affairs’ - which were semi regular bulletins of news from the continent, picked out from similar papers there and translated without comment into English”.

These were the earliest forms of newspapers and are more commonly referred to as ‘newsbooks’, of which there were many examples, but they do not resemble the press as we know it today. Before, there had been such strict rules on printing in Britain that the first English speaking paper was actually produced in Holland by Joris Veseler around 1620[1]. This influenced the newsbooks which lasted throughout Cromwell’s Commonwealth.

The nearest things to newspapers - as we know them - following Charles II’s restoration were the official newspapers, the Intelligencer and the News, published by Roger L’Estrange, England’s official censor under Charles II[2]. My Trade notes that the newspapers were thought very dull by the public and the greatest reporter of his day, Samuel Pepys.

Quickly though, other newspapers began to appear such as the Oxford Gazette in 1665, the first official newspaper which we would recognise as such. As the court returned to London following the plague it became the London Gazette, and whilst hardly a good read by today’s standards, it was all the public were allowed at the time[3]. This paved the way for the first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, sadly just outside of my timescale.

Journalism and the press as we know it today has come a long way from their humble beginnings in Grub Street as single sheets of news, containing barely relevant foreign affairs. However it is not for us as students of journalism to wonder at why the press began, there is no absolute truth anyway, it is only for us to wonder upon ‘Journalism Now’.


Footnotes:
[1]Wikipedia – History of British Newspapers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_British_newspapers
[2]Andrew Marr, My Trade – A Short History of British Journalism, Macmillan 2004
[3]Harold Herd, The March of Journalism – The Story of the British Press from 1622 to the Present Day, Unwin ltd, First published 1952

Woops

Somehow managed to get my last two blog posts in the wrong order.

I'm confident you (the reader) are intelligent enough to work it out though and hopefully I'll be intelligent enough at some point to swap them round and we can forget this whole thing ever happened.

Stay Classy Internet.

Media Law 5 - Confidentitality amongst other things

Our fifth Media Law lecture was focused on the subject of confidentiality but also took in the related subject of Official Secrets as the two are very much related. It helped to explain the difference between stories of confidential information being leaked such as the WikiLeaks scandal and tabloid fodder like John Terry's alleged affair with a teammates fiance, Vanessa Peroncell, (more on which later).

First I feel the need to talk about the Official Secrets Act 1911 which is not strictly confidentiality but which it is necessary to talk about in relation to confidentiality. The WikiLeaks story is not confidentiality for example but it does deal with Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act. I can end the discussion on Section 1 quite easily. Don't break it ever, it's basically treason. Section 2 however covers basically everything that the government does so using an example given to us by Chris, his 'Silly Secrets' column once featured a 'How to Put on Camouflage' diagram which when published is technically a breach of Section 2. Obviously this wasn't something that the MoD felt it necessary to deal with as Chris was never arrested for breach of the Official Secrets Act.

Trade secrets are protected by civil law, it is a 'tort', i.e. concerning civil wrongs. If you were to tell Pepsi the secret ingredient of Coca Cola for example, it is a breach of their commercial confidentiality. Some students believe they can get away with reporting a secret leaked by someone else; this is not the case. Even if you were not the person who leaked the trade secret, you are responsible as well in a case of third party breach. The example was given of the hospital worker, Graham Pink, who told the papers that the geriatric ward in his hospital was dirty. This was wrong and he probably should have told his boss first, not a journalist. It's dangerous reporting on anything that isn't from the courts or from Parliament because you are not protected by your qualified privilege in these places. If say 40% of news is Parliament and 40% is the courts, the final 20% is legally dangerous and probably best avoided if you are not confident in the story.

If you are going to print a story that is particularly dangerous in terms of confidentiality (using the example of commercial confidentiality), then there are certain things you need to do in order to publish it. First of all make it clear to the person that you are a journalist. Often this will probably mean they will stop talking to you but it is a necessary evil if they were just about to tell you a wholly confidential and wholly dangerous piece of information. Ask the person if they are still prepared for you to run the story, even though you will probably be sacked for a prima facie (at first sight) breach of confidentiality. Often with some peoples jobs they will have a gagging clause, e.g. Nurses working for the NHS. If you are running the story, you must protect the source at all costs, the only alternative is to not run the story. If you tell them, you break code of conduct (which of course is not as bad anymore without the unions) but if you don't tell them, you can be done for contempt of court. The best example of this is the case of Bill Goodwin who obtained a draft plan for the purpose of negotiating the struggling Tetra Ltd. out of financial difficulties. Goodwin phoned the company to check the details and they brought an injunction against revealing the information and Goodwin did not comply with the order, being fined £5000. Years later the European Court of Human Rights held that the court order and fine violated his right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. If you don't want to reveal the source, really the best thing you can do is have thousands of other ways in which the information could have got to you: found it in skip, anonymous envelope, the list is probably endless.

Occasionally however, there are perfectly innocent cases of breaking the Official Secrets Act. All army bases are protected places under the act and so a general view shot that takes in an army base is a breach, and you will be tried. You need to get written permission because otherwise it's illegal. Probably safer in a way never to point a camera at the army, they might point a gun back...

Confidential information needs to conform to a certain amount of things before it can be considered confidential.
It must:

Have 'the necessary quality of confidence'

have been imparted in circumstances imposing an obligation of confidence

have no permission granted

be shown to cause detriment.

Finally I will move on to the more usual definition of confidentiality which deals with Section 8 of the Human Rights Act - everyone is entitled to the normal enjoyment of private life. You cannot without permission photograph or film anybody and publish it unless they're involved in a clear public event. This means that all those pictures of celebrities you're constantly poring over in newspapers and magazines are posed, no matter how spontaneous they may appear. In the case involving Princess Caroline, she was photographed riding a horse which she claimed was part of her private activity and the Court of Human Rights found that the respect for her private life had been breached. In general view shots, you need to secure the consent of everyone who appears in the shot, this is why many of the shots you see on television feature so many people with only their bodies. There are different types of consent; there is explicit consent where a person agrees to an interview or similar, (can't complain about invasion of privacy then), and implied consent, for example when someone is waving or looking into a camera, (if they're attention seeking, they can't say it invades their rights, a streaker can't sue for breach of privacy).

Often in these cases an injunction will be brought out which leads us to the John Terry story. A while ago now a story emerged alleging that John Terry had had an affair with Vanessa Peroncell, made even more interesting because she was the fiance of his team mate, Wayne Bridge, at the time. A super-injunction was initially brought out as the alleged affair was not reported until some time after it was supposed to have taken place. Once it was reported however, the gloves were off and Terry was defamed across the media. It is interesting then that recently, Ms Peroncell has released a statement saying the affair never took place and this only garnered a few lines of print, instead of the few months that the allegations got.

In summary: Confidentiality is a tricky thing. But it's no secret (pun quite clearly intended) that dealing with it is one of the most difficult aspects of a journalists life.

Stay classy Internet.

Media Law - Current Example of Confidentiality

In my last media law blog I gave my lecture notes on the subject of Confidentiality and went into some detail about injunctions and rights to privacy. In the Tuesday, 26th of October edition of The Daily Mail there was a prime example of both of these issues.

The headline reads, "Blackmailer who tormented pop star over her laptop photographs" and details the case but, crucially, the main details which would interest the public of who the 'international superstar' is are left out. The paper acknowledges to the audience that they musician's identity 'is known to this newspaper but cannot be revealed because of a strict court order, which also bans [them] from revealing her age, nationality and whether she is in a relationship or has children'. This is an example of an injunction but clearly she has not imposed a superinjunction against the newspapers because this would prevent them even reporting that she was blocking details.

The case involves the theft of two laptops from the pop stars home after losing her house keys, possibly at the hairdressers. One of the laptops contained photographs of a senstive nature, the details of which were not discussed. Anonymous hand delivered letters and e-mails began arriving in which the blackmailer threatened to sell the photographs on to the media. A Sebastien Bennett, 24, unemployed from London, was convicted of blackmail and handling stolen goods. The offence carries a maximum 14-year term and he will be sentenced this Friday.

The original story can be read here on the Daily Mail website:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323744/Popstars-tormentor-used-Google-Facebook-aid-blackmail-campaign-facing-jail.html

Media Law 4 - Privilege

In our fourth lecture on media law, as the title suggests we looked at privilege. This is one of the main defences we as Journalists have against defamation as it is a protection that makes you exempt from law in some way. The Queen for example has absolute privilege. She can do whatever the hell she wants and that's fine by us as loyal subjects, in fact, it's the law that it's fine. Journalists aren't so lucky but any type of qualified privilege (there are two types, Statutory and Common law) is a better defence than no privilege. The main defence to Libel is of course justification as we explored last week, i.e. the defamatory comments were true and you can prove it.


Often Journalists seem to think that being coy about what you really mean in an article defends you from defamation but often the innuendo is worse than ordinary defamation; it shows you have no defence because you are admitting something is defamatory. Defamation really comes from impression though. Using an example from the lecture where an article inside the Daily Telegraph was advertised on its front page with a headline that suggested the Bishop of Canterbury was tearing down the Church by placing his picture next to the offending headline. Sometimes though you can escape libel action through the defence of fair comment, opinion if you like which is well protected in section 10 of the Human Rights act. We live in a free country and can therefore express any opinion but you always have to think about what is fact and what is comment.


Back to Privilege:
As stated earlier, privilege means you are exempt from the law in some way. For journalists, this often means being exempt from libel law which is brilliant but you can only have privilege in narrow circumstances. For Statutory Qualified Privilege to apply, it needs to be reporting in court as it's OK to libel people in court; as long as you have your shorthand. Anything said in court can be reported no matter how libellous or defamatory. The example we had was of a case (coincidentally played out in Winchester Crown Court) where a paedophile ring had finally been ended by the final persons conviction. The article was written in The Sun newspaper and had lines in the article calling those convicted 'sick' and 'evil'. First of all, this is defamatory because it lowers their reputation in the minds of right thinking people, causing them to be shunned, etc, etc. Either way, the story is defamatory but the Journalist cannot be sued for libel because it was said in court and (possibly more importantly) because they also have the defence of Justification, most people would term them sick for what they did and their conviction for paedophilia is a statement of fact before it is anything else. We can report anything in the courts but when it comes to the article, we lose our right to privilege if our comments come from malice, the big M which takes away many of our rights as Journalists. Big tip coming up. Stay away from malice!!!

You have to be careful even then in reports where you think you have privilege. Often the smallest detail can mean you end up libelling someone else with a confusion of words and their exact meaning or worse; a confusion of identity. This makes positive identification very important, you have to properly identify the 'evil' paedophile or suddenly you've got a bunch of other people with the same name who you have accidentally libelled. The report on the paedophile conviction named a 'Tracy Dauber, 44', but another completely oblivious Tracy Dauber, 44, could suddenly start getting connected to this case, purely by their name. Fortunately this wasn't The Sun's first time out so they supplied a photo with the article, hopefully negating any possibility of accidental libel.

Qualified Privilege is difficult to get and just as difficult to keep. You only have it in certain circumstances and if your report isn't fast, accurate and fair; you lose it. If the story isn't in the next available edition then Qualified Privilege is lost and this goes for Court Reporting as well.

'You are the eyes and ears of the public' - Justice Eady

You need to have the story out immediately with no errors, even trivial errors. The errors will make you lose your privilege as they could change things completely, (Tracy, Dauber 44 is a convicted paedophile. Tracy Dauber, 34 might run a care home). To keep it fair is the most difficult. Fast, easy, get the report out the next day; accurate, just don't make any mistakes, I'm begging you not to make any mistake; but fair is tricky. Really it comes down to the usual, keep it without malice and you should be fine. You also can't do a report if you have a vested interest in the case, (i.e. it's a friend or family member). 'The case continues' or 'they are pleading not guilty' has to be in there somewhere or it loses privilege for being unfair. No matter whether the prosecution was the only person who talked throughout the day, it needs 'the case continues' or else you are being biased and libellous. If in doubt, consult the Ten Point Test, (Reynolds Test) and make sure you go to the best possible source for information, most people are lying to you; you have to verify the information or else you wont get common law Qualified Privilege. End of.

Tune in next time for more 'Tales of Journalism Law!!!'

My Seminar Paper

Sorry it's a bit late and sorry it's a bit rubbish but I was asked by a few people to upload my seminar paper onto the blog and here it is...

Machiavelli is the figure that we have studied so far that interests me the most so for that reason he will be the focus of my seminar paper. This does not mean however that I will ignore the rest of the subjects we have read about. For example I will not be able to ignore the Italian Renaissance because of its relationship to Machiavelli and its huge importance to our study. I also will not be able to ignore the likes of Descartes and also The Scientific Revolution. The importance of the work of Descartes and the Scientists like Galileo et al cannot be overstated. They are the founders of our modern philosophy and science respectively and so whilst Machiavelli may be my main interest in this paper, I will not allow myself to become too distracted by him.

Machiavelli is thought by many to be the beginning of political science and philosophy. He lived in the time of the Renaissance and so his influence on that period is huge. His alliances with some leaders (Caesar Borgia), and his feuds with others (The Medici’s), are what made Machiavelli such an interesting character to study. At times in his life Machiavelli was a diplomat in Florence, one of the many separate states that made up Italy. He was representative of the Southern Renaissance Humanism that ran through this period of history but his theories and ideas laid down in his most famous work The Prince still seem incredibly modern. The Prince was written in the hope of securing the favour of The Medici family but its claims were actually quite provocative. The main point made is that you should secure power by any means, something that many would do but the stark realism in his suggestion of acquiring power by any means necessary would be quite shocking to some. On doing some more research into Machiavelli his professional relationship to Caesar Borgia is quite an interesting one considering that some of the correspondences he sent back to Florence from the court of Caesar Borgia still survive today in Machiavelli’s collected works. Caesar Borgia was an important figure in the time of Machiavelli and had influence across the Renaissance period due to his father being the Pope in the time, one of the most controversial Popes of the renaissance era. Machiavelli writes about Pope Alexander VI in The Prince as a successful politician but as the term Machiavellian came into usage as a pejorative term after this book, so it could possibly be a backhanded compliment.

In The Prince, the ‘how to’ guide for leaders, Machiavelli lays down some main rules: Firstly that you should support the weaker side in any conflict, this is so that when you prevail together with them, you will be the most powerful. Secondly, centralised regimes are difficult to conquer but easy to hold. Lastly that Armed prophets always succeed but unarmed ones fail. In The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell notes that Machiavelli puts prophets like Moses in the armed category and someone like Savonarola of whom Machiavelli would know very much, into the latter category. Here is a quote illustrating that point from Machiavelli’s The Prince, “If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long — as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe”. The problem in this is that Machiavelli also asked you to be feared and not loved, because “it is better to be feared than loved, for love is fickle but fear is constant”. How do you become feared though without being hated? Well Machiavelli had an answer for that as well, as cunning and ‘Machiavellian’ in the negative sense as you can get. The answer to the question is that you must never take someone’s property. Kill people if you have to but with good reason but never take someone’s property “for men forget the death of their fathers more easily than the loss of their inheritance”. You can refer this back to Caesar Borgia who used a tactic just as clever to keep the favour of the public whilst keeping his power. “If you are going to take power by villainy – it is best to do it all at once, and get someone else to do it”, the example given in the lecture was that of Caesar Borgia’s governor who Borgia had to do all the things that would make Borgia himself unpopular. Once Borgia had power he killed the governor for the public to see and so had power and was feared but was more popular than ever.

I think I have talked about Machiavelli for long enough and of course if you wanted to know more there are extensive notes on him across the internet, in the library and reading The Prince itself would probably not hurt. Just before I move on however there is something interesting that I found whilst researching Machiavelli that The Prince has been read by some as a Political Satire. Admittedly I found this information on the internet and more specifically Wikipedia so there is no certainty that it is true on a free to edit website but it does have information to back it up.

The contribution of the early scientists like Galileo and Kepel and even earlier figures such as Copernicus, (who according to Russell is too early to be part of the ‘Rise of Science’) is huge on the development of the world, (without Galileo would we have Newton and then no laws of motion) but I did find it difficult to understand its relation to philosophy. In some ways it is the natural progression of philosophy, instead of just thinking about the world you are actually testing and evaluating these theories. Even with this in mind, it is still an important part of history and an interesting part of history to study. This becomes even more relevant when you consider that Galileo himself claimed he was merely following Pythagoras’s ideas that “nature [is] the book of God and it is written in the language of mathematics”. His claim is that he is uncovering God’s will through mathematics in this ‘new priesthood’ of Science.

I’m not sure how long seminar papers are supposed to go on for, in fact I’m not sure if this has really been a seminar paper, but I’m going to end this now with a few thoughts on Descartes. Descartes began as a contemporary of Galileo, believing that the universe could be explained by mathematics. His most repeated idea “I think therefore I am” lead to the idealist philosophy of someone like Hegel. Descartes is one of the most important philosophers as he took philosophy into the modern age, eventually leading on to thoughts of Berkeley and Hegel who believed that everything came from the ego. This came from Descartes total certainty of his own thoughts and his existence. Thanks for listening to my poorly constructed and confusing seminar paper.

Did you enjoy it? Didn't think so.

Seminar Notes - John Locke

This week, with my Seminar paper out of the way with a small degree of success I looked forward to someone else giving it their best shot on the subject of John Locke.

Notes on John Locke

Locke was a man who was not keen on innate ideas. Experience was his reasoning for knowledge and it was through experience that Locke thought we gained our knowledge. How do we know what we know? Well Locke puts it down to experience. All ideas come from observation and sensation, without them, how would we reflect and therefore gain knowledge. Sensation is the source of all ideas and he uses the example of a child as a blank piece of paper to explain this. When we are children, we have not yet experienced enough to conceive certain things. A child kept in a black and white room for all his life will not be able to perceive of other colours like scarlet and green. This links to Berkeley whom I may blog about subsequently. Reflection is another concept that Locke explores and he suggests that the mind collects information and the soul considers it. In this way we gain knowledge. Some people never truly reflect, Locke argues, and these people then never form actual ideas.

Much of his writings in his Essay on Human Understanding (especially in our specific chapter of interest) focus on the soul. Locke believes the soul is as inseparable from thinking as it is from the body. He claims that the soul doesn't always think, you need to have organisation before it can begin to interpret things. His thoughts on dreams are sceptical as the idea that you can stop thinking worries him. What also worries him is the idea that you can be thinking in a dream, be woken up, and have no recollection of what you were thinking or 'dreaming' about. There is a lot of thought on whether you are the same person asleep and awake; you could have the exact same thoughts as your asleep self and never know it. It is like the soul and the mind are together but are almost unaware of each other. He reasons that the soul must have some ideas that are not from sensation but is sceptical of this as it would mean that a 'perfect being' would have given you these thoughts, (and we know how he feels about innate thoughts...), so he doesn't like it. He in fact sees dreams as a collection of thoughts from a waking mind. Nothing we dream can be something we haven't already experienced and reflected on. The soul is always reflecting and thinking but this cannot be observed by the body, it can't remember, but this worries him too. It doesn't make sense to him that the soul and body could be separate and it also suggests that some people who do not think whilst asleep are actually soulless. We discussed in the seminar that Locke's dependence on the soul as a definitive article is much like Descartes dependence on God to bridge the gap between his theory, (see previous post on Descartes God Shaped Hole). I do not think however that he is using it for the same reason that Descartes is; i.e. for convenience and to placate the Church. But I do think the use of the soul is slightly contrived in that Locke explains away innate thought using the idea of a perfect being (i.e. the soul) in much the same way Descartes uses God.

In a kind of round about summing up way. Locke then says that the more experience you get, the better thinker you become; a man can have no original thought without context and experience; the mind can receive intrinsic and extrinsic info; you need to walk before you can run in thinking, think little first before you tackle the real issues and interpretation can skew meaning. An example of Locke's principles came up during our seminar discussion. We could see a tree outside the window of the meeting room but how do we know it is a tree? We have been told it is a tree and experience has taught us that objects with a trunk and leaves are trees but how did this idea come about originally? Do we just assume, as Locke does, that the knowledge came from our experience or do we already have the image of a prefect tree in our minds (Plato's forms) and so we can know the image of a tree as long as it conforms to this perfect tree image. This is a little similar to the work we have been doing in Media Key Concepts as it links to Semiotics and Signs. The sign and the signifier concept with the example of a cat, we see a four legged creature with a tail and we know it is a cat. How do we know it is not a dog? Well because we have the referent of the cat already and so can perceive it to be a cat.


I'm going to finish now, having just briefly mentioned perception, which is Berkeley's area of expertise really, with the poem from Berkeley's chapter in the History of Western Philosophy as I think it actually sums up his theories better than I ever could:

There was a young man who said, 'God

Must think it exceedingly odd

If he finds that this tree

Continues to be

When there's no one about in the Quad.'

REPLY

Dear sir: Your astonishment's odd:

I am always about in the Quad.

And that's why the tree

Will continue to be,

Since observed by yours faithfully, God

Thanks for reading the ramblings of a confused student. Stay Classy Internet.

Lost in Copyright

The time was 12 o'clock. The place the stripe auditorium. The lecturer? Nowhere to be found actually and this put me in a pickle. I had to use all my cunning to wait around for a whole hour(!!) before the lecturer actually turned up, (apparently it had been moved back an hour but us Journalists didn't get that memo). Once we actually got the lecture going it was actually quite interesting. Because we shared the lecture with Media Production students it did not of course have the same Journalistic focus as our Tuesday Law lectures but it was useful all the same.

The main point of the lecture really was to show us all how important copyright really is. As Journalists you may not think it directly applies to you but copyright covers virtually everything and that means everything you publish so it matters a lot. We were given the example of a CD; on it the album artwork is copyrighted, the band logo is copyrighted, so is the record label logo, the music is copyrighted as well as every song being individually copyrighted. We were given many other examples, (in fact examples of copyright made up the majority of the lecture, probably because it was tailored towards the media production students). Strictly Come Dancing was another example of something that has more copyrighted material than you would necessarily expect. Of course there is the obvious that the music used is copyrighted but you also have the steps in the choreography, the costume design, the sets, layout and even lighting are all copyrighted to the show. An example tailored towards the Journalists was that of filming a busker in a street shot for a news report. If you do this you would need a signature from the busker and then would have to clear the copyright on the music they were playing. The only defence you have to not doing this is the incidental inclusion of the busker and the music. This can only work if you didn't intend to film the busker and it was just something going on in the background. This is actuality.

The owners of copyright can prevent people performing it or using it i.e. The Beatles music is still heavily copyrighted, an alteration can also be prevented and the media production lecturer gave us an example from when he used to make documentaries where he had altered a song for use in the show and only found out shortly before airing that they had not secured copyright for the song. A few hours and a few hasty phone calls and a message passed on by the Swiss police force later they had the copyright but it is worth checking and double checking that you have the copyright on almost everything. The lecture ended with us watching two film clips, one from a Verdi opera and the other a Mel Gibson movie, Conspiracy Theory. We were then asked what were the copyright issues within the clips and how had some of them been resolved by crediting. In the opera the music played whilst credits rolled over telling us the composer, the librettist and the Orchestra. Credit people and copyright wont be a problem, or at least that's how it seemed. Really though copyright is a necessary evil as it enables us to go ahead in our work whilst still staying within the boundaries of the law.

Sorry that this was quite a short blog post but it wasn't a particularly content heavy lecture. Maybe I should just read the Copyright chapter in McNae's?

Media Law 3 - Defamation

In our third media law lecture the focus was on defamation and the legal issues that come with it for a Journalist.

The charge of defamation is more than personal, it is related to how you appear to the outside world and is related to profession. To give the example used in the lecture, if you were to tell me that I can't cook, that would fine, it has nothing to do with my profession but if you (hypothetically of course) were to suggest that Gordon Ramsey couldn't cook, this would be defaming him because, as a cook, it would lower his reputation in the minds of right minded people. The Judge and Jury decide whether something is defamatory so the claimant does not even need to prove the statement has lowered their reputation. The definition of defamation is a statement that tends to lower the reputation of someone in the minds of right thinking people. The use of a word like 'tends' gives it a sense of possibility so people can sue on their interpretation of a statement. Only the jury can decide whether the statement really was defamatory but at the end of the day the Journalist is the one who has to prove it wasn't, not the other way around. Because of the nature of our culture there are some people (who will go unnamed for fear of defaming them) who will sue for practically anything which can take damages into the millions. There is an issue with defamation being linked to the thoughts of "right minded people" because as individuals we do not always think the same. What seems defamatory to someone (particularly the claimant) may not seem defamatory to others.

Defences
As a Journalist you do have a number of defences to being sued for defamation with the best probably being Justification. Essentially it is the defence of truth, you do have to prove it is true but if you can do that then even if the statement is defamatory then you still have the defence of Justification. In The Sun of that day the front page had George Michael and a story about him 'coming out' of jail. There are two things that could be seen as defamatory in this story; firstly the fact that he was in jail which in the minds of right thinking individuals would lower your reputation. Secondly there is the insinuation through the use of 'coming out' that he is homosexual which would be defamatory to someone with a wife and family but in the case of George Michael, these statements are truth and therefore the paper is protected by the defence of Justification.

In some cases, a Journalist has the defence of Privilege, mostly this is qualified privilege such as in Parliament but in court you have absolute privilege. This means as long as it has been said in court you can say the most dangerous and defamatory things because the public needs to see that justice is being done so you are protected. For the defence of Privilege to be held up you need to follow certain rules. You can't bring recording equipment in to the court, you can only have your shorthand notes (which is why shorthand is so important). Good shorthand is your shield as a journalist because it can prove what was said in the court. The report also has to be fair, i.e. not one sided. If you only reported the prosecution in court and the person being prosecuted turns out to be innocent, there could be a case for defamation. The next rule may seem obvious but it needs to be said, don't make anything up, it has to be accurate no matter what. Finally it must be contemporaneous, (basically next day publishing), if it isn't then it cannot be protected by the laws of Privilege.

The last defence is the defence of Fair Comment. This is probably the most difficult to prove as it still has to be provable even if it is your honest personal belief. For example if your honest personal belief was that this blog was absolutely shockingly written and not very good at all, it would still be defamatory to me as a student of Journalism and you would have to prove it was true. Often opinion columnists base their defence on this so Charlie Brooker for example would have had to use this defence many times, although not so much any more as he has just practically given up his Screen Burn column in The Guardian.

You could also argue that the rarely used and very dangerous 'Bane and Antidote' is also a defence but saying something nice after something nasty is a very dangerous tactic and not one that should regularly be used. Any and all of these defences are lost however if the comments come from malice and for something to be defamatory it has to be published, even if it is only to a couple of people it has still been published (even blogs with tiny audiences such as this one need to be careful).

Almost finished
I'll finish the blog with one last example of defamation and defence from it. If you wrote an article saying that the gardener doesn't cut the grass and the gardener sends a letter to you saying "Yes I do." You can post a correction before anything gets libelous but if you send a letter to the gardener apologising it is essentially an affirmation that you were being defamatory. Putting 'Without Prejudice' on the top of the letter however makes the letter practically untouchable by law. Worth knowing I think.

Lecture 2 - John Locke (mainly)

In the second lecture of our History and Context of Journalism module our focus was John Locke. This was reflected in the reading as the Bertrand Russell chapters contained a lot of chapters on Locke, signaling his importance to modern philosophy. The other set text for us to read was John Locke's own work, 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'. I found the Essay quite difficult to read, (not only because I had to read it from a computer screen, perhaps investing in the actual book might be a good idea), it is of course a fairly archaic text and although the ideas that Locke conveys in the Essay can be applied to a modern context it took a lot of thought for me to understand them in comparison to other contemporary texts.

John Locke was a key exponent of Empiricism which is what British Philosophy is mostly known for. His work was mainly focused on the idea of a Social Contract, i.e. people agreeing to a government which was especially interesting given the historical context of his writings as he wrote in the years following the English Civil War. He was an extremely political man, involved in the Restoration of Charles II and also in The Exclusion Bill Crisis of 1678-1681 which aimed to prevent there being a Catholic King. The reason Locke opposed a Catholic King was not a religious one. Although Locke was religious he believed that religion should be kept separate from politics whereas James II believed in the divine right of Kings. Eventually however, history shows the Exclusion Bills failure as James II became King and John Locke left the country to escape possible persecution as a leading figure in the Bill. Locke did eventually return after the Glorious Revolution in 1688 led by William of Orange.

Social Contract
As I said previously, one of John Locke's main focuses was the idea of a Social Contract. This applies also to Hobbes Leviathan and the 'state of nature' hypothesis of the condition of humanity before the state's foundation. Locke's views on state of nature are collected from his Second Treatise on Civil Government written during the 1680s. For Locke, the state of nature has a law of nature that governs it; this law is reason. Reason teaches us that "no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty and possessions" although this is at least partly deduced from Locke's prior Christian theology.

The state of nature theory would have appealed to Locke because it reiterated some of his own ideas that power is not a God given right. A leader is chosen by the people and agreed on creating this 'mortal God'. It is essentially the demystification of Kings as it shown that the power would have originally rested with the people, we just lose it by choosing someone to be an absolute leader. More will be written on this blog about 'The State of Nature' in the coming weeks and months.

Locke... again
Locke was also very famous and respected for his Treatise of Government writings which attacks not only the divine right of kings but was also a light bit of banter between himself and Hobbes. He believed in a similar way to Descartes that everyone begins with a 'blank slate' upon which we gain our knowledge, this links back -as everything seems to- to epistemology. Locke believed that there is nothing in your brain that hasn't come from experience, but he was not an atheist, he believed that God gave us this brain and there does not seem to be the same sense of convenience within his inclusion of God that you feel in Descartes work. He also gave a set of natural laws, the right to life, liberty, and property and enshrined property as the most important.

<-------John Locke------->

His writings almost give us a manual for a revolution as he shows that the citizens could rebel if the government disobeyed the law, another natural right and an inalienable truth. In summation, our understanding comes from experience, our reasoning produces real knowledge, the discovery of knowledge and morality comes from God, you should be guided individually by private revelation and faith and religion can be strong but kept separate from politics. He was also against innate ideas which are ideas that already exist in our minds from birth because it contrasted from his own theory of independently building up knowledge through experience.

Newton
I'm sure I will talk more about Newton in subsequent blogs but the lecture ended with brief mention on Newtons early work and his life. Locke was a kind of 'humble under labourer' who cleared the ground for scientists like Newton. Newton was able to convince people that the world was ordered and knowable through mathematical demonstrations of Copernicus and Kepler. He never got stuck on why things happened, he was purely interested in the how. Science can only demonstrate that a force operates, not why. Newton believed that the universe demonstrated God's freedom and omnipotence; the limit to our knowledge was why God had done this so science shouldn't make things up. I would like to speak more about Newton and of course his most famous work, his Prinicpia, but I do not yet know enough about Newton to talk with any air of certainty so I'll leave it here.

I hope you found this blog and if you did then I hope you also found it interesting.

A Day at The Court - How everything ends with Pizza

As part of our Journalism course it was suggested it might be a good idea for us to head down to the Ol' Crown Court in Winchester Town Centre. It was also suggested that it would be a good idea to blog about it, this is the result.


The day started like any other Tuesday. Not wanting to wake up when my alarm went, having my breakfast (Cereal and Toast for you food lovers), and heading off down to the Law lecture, today on Defamation (notes to follow soon). We had checked off Court Reporting last week and so with the latest lecture securely fastened in our mind we headed off to the Court, safe in the knowledge that we were unlikely to be done for contempt of court or libel. Would be a particularly bad way to start the course at any rate. The first problem was a very serious and real one. None of us had any clue where it was. Fortunately we had some GPS to help us out and arrived at the courts without having to ask for directions, (well we were 6 guys).


Inside the building the anticipation built. What cases were we likely to see? Would one of us be done for contempt of court? What did the security guards think that 6 confused looking students were doing wandering in off the street? Well all of these questions and more can be answered but after all of us managing to look respectable enough to pass through security, (And it was quite clearly my belt that set the scanners off...) we headed up to the courts.

We chose a court on the stupidest reasoning possible and headed to our first court case. We entered cautiously because we could see the jury just filing in, were we late? Sitting down in the public gallery we could see the accused, the prosecution, the defendant, and the judge. I tried to keep my eyes of the jury, (difficult when one of them seems to be falling asleep) so as not to accidentally 'intimidate' them. Then suddenly it had started, the news came thick and fast, first we found out that a jury member had been removed from the case because they knew the defendants friends father... I think. Then the actual case began, testimonies from Forensic Scientists, real evidence in a bag (oh it's just like on the telly box). The Judge wrote down almost everything that was said whilst a lady typed faster than Mach 4 in front of him. The Prosecution began with some forensic evidence from a note which allegedly had the DNA of the defendant on it. After a short while and some explanation of Alleles (Thank you GCSE Chemistry) the suggestion was made apparent that the defendant had indeed handled the note. This would be the end of it if it were not for the defence lawyer who stepped up next to attack the points the prosecution had made. I have never really been interested in the courts before but as I turned to my side and saw that the others were as in awe of the process and the pure news that was pouring out of the court.

We left after the second testimony convinced that Court Reporting was the real thing when it came to reporting. There was no messing around in there, it was just news, plain and simple, (as were the 4 papers I then bought). Unfortunately, it was about half 12 and we were a long way from our flats and houses. This meant only one thing. Pizza Hut. Lunch Buffet. All you can eat. Sounds like a challenge to me.

We took All you can eat to its logical conclusion whereby I didn't have to eat again for the rest of the day. I really did eat all I physically could. the thought behind this was that as poor, starving students; to make our money back we would have to eat at least one pizza and a bit. With that in mind we all ate as much as possible and waddled off back to History and Context, (Lecture notes of which will follow soon along with Law notes).

Not a bad day really.

WINOL

I was very interested to hear that the Online news service that is provided by Journalism students from this University was back online. It had been interesting to see, before I even decided upon Winchester as my University, that they had a fully functional news program, about as good as any local news show. Although it was not part of the course to blog about the latest bulletin, it had been suggested on the course website that it might be worth a look and might be worth a blog especially as somewhere in it was a possible small breech of the media law we have currently been studying.

The webcast opened in much the same way as any other news broadcast and it was interesting, looking down the side bar on the Winchester Journalism YouTube channel to see that the House style for WINOL had been long established. I also enjoyed how democratic the show was in that everyone seemed to be able to do their bit, if you weren't live on camera you had put together a bulletin, if you weren't doing that you could be on the camera or up in the gallery controlling which shot we see. I for one am looking forward to getting my own chance in the studio somewhere or out in the field reporting. My only taste of that so far at Winchester has been the brief but enjoyable screen test that I and all the other first year students did on our introductory lecture. After so far doing only theory/blogging based subjects which have been interesting and in some cases quite enlightening, it was nice to see the practical side of Journalism again.

It was good to see how far students had managed to come in only a year. For example at the moment, I do not think I would be able to put together a news show just like that but in a year. Who knows. It'll be the news that me and this years students report on and create that the next crop of Journalism students will write about. If I was to give it some criticism however, I might suggest that the sound quality was not perfect, sometimes strap lines disappeared before you had a chance to read them and on a few of the reports, the voice over was less than enthusiastic which seemed odd when this is the practical part of the course and supposedly the thing you are working towards in your first year.

Overall though a very good job for the first broadcast. I'll be looking out for the next one and any changes that are made throughout the year.

Seminar Paper Points

Although in the seminar paper we were discussing certain aspects that we have covered before in lectures, there was a point we discussed which I felt important enough to cover in this blog.

Descartes God Shaped Hole:
Before the seminar paper I had not previously thought much about why Descartes decides suddenly that everything he believes is true because God put it there. I originally believed it was because Descartes had a strong personal faith but through discussion in the seminar I came to rest on another possible conclusion.

Descartes was writing at the same time as Galileo and in fact was a contemporary of the Italian scientist. With this is mind it is possible that the use of God to bridge the gap between his thoughts would have been very useful, having seen Galileo condemned by the church and placed under house arrest for his theory of heliocentrism, (Ironically, Galileo did some great work 'Two New Sciences' whilst there).

It is quite cynical in a way to suggest this but by the principles of Descartes own philosophy, isn't it a least a bit possible that he could have been using God to disguise his true thoughts.

Thanks for reading.

More will be added about the seminar to this post soon.

Media Law 2 - Court reporting

The law is an extremely important aspect of society for any Journalist to learn. It has a relevance in all that journalists do because reporting on it is the backbone of our work. It is also extremely important because there are restrictions on us as Journalist sand it is important to know these, you don't really want to be done for contempt of court do you? Well obviously the answer is no, the fine for it can be up to £30,000 or 6 months in Jail. With that in mind, here are my Law notes with some top tips to avoid being done, (now all you need to do is avoid being caught and you're set).

There are three basic legal principles we have to observe as Journalists with the first and in sometime most important being The Presumption of Innocence. Everyone who is being accused of a crime by the police, defended in a court and tried by a jury has to be thought of as innocent until it is proven beyond reasonable doubt that they are guilty. Just because someone has been charged does not make them guilty. This leads on to the concept of prejudice. It is used in law in a similar way to the rest of the world, i.e. that before you have gained any evidence to the contrary, you have pre-judged the person and you have your own preconceived ideas about them. This takes us to contempt of court for which there is no defence. If you in any way shape or form are seen to have prejudiced the jury in some way you WILL be done for contempt of court; it's a strict liability offence and will cause a mistrial. The court is one of the few places where you can't be done for Libel though which will be fully explained in later lectures on the subject of Libel. If you are caught out for libel however, you can occasionally use your 'Qualified Privilege' as a Journalist to grant you exemption from a law in certain cases. These cases are often where the Journalist believes the information they are giving is in the public interest so it is in the public interest to practically destroy someone in the public trust who is lying and doing bad things. If however you are just attacking someone from your privileged position as a Journalist then you lose your qualified privilege because of your own malice. The opposite is the working in the public interest, the public interest is the rock on which we as Journalists stand on.

The second principle is that Justice must be seen to be done. This is where the innocence project that we will tackle in our third year becomes particularly interesting because, using Chris Horrie's example of The Birmingham Six, there is nothing like getting innocent people freed when they have been convicted wrongly. As a journalist you have all these legal rights in the court because you are the eyes and ears of the public. If the Judges had it all their own way, everyone in the country would be at every single trial. Since this isn't practical we have to report the occurrences in the court to make sure justice is done. Finally, the law must be based on evidence, or more specifically admissible evidence. Introducing evidence that is not strictly related to the case or the charge is actually contempt of court. If someone is being charged for a murder, bringing up a bunch of previous theft charges is a serious contempt of court as it would prejudice the jury.

There are two types of court, the criminal court and the civil court. The civil court tends to deal mainly with divorce and libel and so it is not as newsworthy as the criminal court, (except for maybe Celebrity Divorce). As Journalists we tend to stick to the criminal court, again because it is more in the public interest. Barristers are normally found in the Crown court (criminal) with, in the most intelligent way, short wigs. It's the best way to describe them. They have to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt using witnesses. I'm finding it interesting as well even having only been on the course for such a short time that the lectures cross over quite a lot. Proving the case beyond reasonable doubt for example is a form of Descartes Cartesian doubt from the History and Context of Journalism lecture. The idea that you cannot believe a certain thing until you have rationalised it and proved it beyond reasonable doubt is one that resonates across the board to Journalists. There are of course two teams of barristers in the court, prosecution and defence, and for the first day in crown court (cases can go on a year if necessary) it is purely prosecution, the evidence in chief.

It would be wrong to call the Magistrates court a collection on old Tory women who were in some ways busybodies if it wasn't also so right. They have to volunteer for their position and so do not have the same power as a qualified Judge, and with good reason. The most Magistrates can dish out is a £5000 fine or a 6 month jail sentence which is quite enough really. They can also send things to a higher court if necessary because in fairness, all cases have to begin at the Magistrates court, no matter how bad the crime. Indictable crime though, (the kind that gives a sentence of 5 years or longer) cannot be dealt with fully in a Magistrates court using summary justice.

Thanks for reading my Law notes from the second lecture. Hope they were as helpful to you as they are to me.



I'll be updating my blog from now on when I hear of a case that I can apply my new knowledge of the law of Journalists to so look out for new posts as often as I can write them.

Media Law - Lecture 1

Unfortunately the first lecture in our series on Media Law did not go ahead as planned due to problems with room suitability. This initially worried me but I had done the reading and so wasn't entirely panicked. After the History and Context of Journalism lecture it was explained to us that a video version of our missing lecture would be on the Winchester Journalism website (see related links) for us to watch. These are the notes I made and my thoughts on what was said in the video.


Much like the first History and Context lecture, this was mostly an introduction to the course and what we would be studying. It also helped explain the importance of crime and court stories to journalists. Look on any news website and open any newspaper and there will be a crime story somewhere. In fact as I was writing this blog I had a quick check around the National Newspapers websites and found that crime or the court were somehow involved in the majority of stories, (for example, there was a story running on the Daily Telegraph website about the Police being given the right to strike under new Home Office proposals).


One of the sections of the course that interested me most was defamation and the three main defences journalists have against it. Firstly it interested me that almost all things that Journalists report could in some way be seen as defamation, not in the sense that we might understand fame today, but in the sense of taking away someones reputation. The example given here was of Wayne Rooney. It is possible to say that Wayne Rooney is not playing very well at the moment but this is defamation. Without the three main defences that Journalists have, (of which I will explore in more detail next), even the most innocuous of things could be construed as unfairly taking away someones reputation and defaming them. There are defences against this for Journalists as defaming someone could lead to the even more serious charge of libel. Firstly you have the defence of Justification, i.e. you can prove it. If the accusation is once again that Wayne Rooney is not playing very well or more specifically not scoring, the way to avoid the libel would be to prove this through factual evidence, proving that it is not just your own malice that lead you to the statement. This can be linked back to our other topic, The History and Context of Journalism where our study of Philosophy asks us to question everything we know in a search for the facts. The second defence is the similar defence of Comment. In other words, if it is just your opinion on a person and it really does just come from something that could be fact then as long as there is no malice, this could be your defence. Lastly and probably most importantly since it has its own lecture is the defence of Qualified Privilege. This is the legal right that Journalists have to report something from a court even if it may not be true. As this particular defence does have its own topic there will be more extensive notes on this to come.

Other important topics such as Confidentiality, Copyright, and Freedom of Information will be covered in later lectures and in my own notes more extensively but another thing that interested me was the topic on Investigative Journalism. It interested me mostly because it had reference to the Innocence Project which as a Journalism student I will become involved in in my third year. The Innocence project interests me because it seems to be the culmination of everything we will learn in our three years here. All the practical skills we pick up and the theory we learn over the coming weeks will really be building up to the point when we can do a serious piece of investigative journalism.


Finally an overview of the court system was given which of course we will go into more detail about in later lectures but I did find it interesting that even for the biggest crimes, the criminal still goes to the lowly magistrates court first. The magistrates court is the starting point for all crimes and are able to send the criminals for sentencing or to a higher court for trial depending on the plea of the accused. There are also two types of law, Civil law and Criminal law. Civil law deals with conflict between citizens so for example divorce or libel. The Diane Blood case mentioned in the video lecture is a good example of a civil court case. Often though it is the Criminal law that journalism focuses on because, rather cynically, it is often the more newsworthy of the two. As horrible as it seems, a murder case will always have a bigger audience than a divorce, (unless of course it is a high profile celebrity divorce).

As an indicator of how closely Journalism and Law are connected I will leave you with the opening statement from the lecture notes of Chris Horrie. "It is no coincidence that Fleet Street, the original physical location of the Journalism profession in the UK is a street running down from the High Court (The Royal Courts of Justice) to The Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court)".


I'm off to do the reading for next week now but I hope these notes and also my thoughts that I tried to get across were useful to anyone reading them. Feel free to leave comments on any of the points I made and I'll try to answer them as promptly and as well as I can with the limited knowledge I currently have on Law for Journalists.