Heated debate on press and privacy
May 21, 2009
A heated debate featuring Nick Davies and Kelvin MacKenzie took place at the Journalism in Crisis conference in a session on privacy and the media heavily criticising the Press Complaints Commission.
Davies and MacKenzie discussed with Jennifer McDermott, Head of Media and Public Law and partner at Whithers and Jonathan Coad from Swan Turton solicitors, the potential impact of recent court judgements on journalism.
The main questions that were raised during the session was whether responsible journalism will become more difficult and whether the current system of self-regulation should be reformed.
Nick Davies, left, speaks at Journalism In Crisis as part of a the Privacy And The Press panel. Listening are panel members Jennifer McDermott, Robin Lustig, and Kelvin MacKenzie
Jennifer McDermott
With the scandal around the MPs’ expenses reaching heights, Jennifer McDermott reminded during this debate how MPs asked a few years ago for the Freedom of Information Act to be amended so that they could hide their expenses. She said that details about someone’s private life should only be published if it is of public concern.
She also mentioned that the privacy law can go too far in protecting private lives, such as in the case of princess Caroline at Montecarlo, but that this was “more an exception than a rule”.
Kelvin MacKenzie
MacKenzie, targeted Justice Eady throughout his speech labelling him as “overprotective of privacy” and “biased against the media”. He argued that privacy law is ludicrous and added: “It isn’t true to say that what you get up to in your sexual life does not have an effect on the outside world.
“As Eady is fighting a one man campaign, I am rather interested in his private life. I’d like to ask him ‘Do you wear French knickers? Thongs?’”
McDermott defended Justice Eady, saying he “weighs up all factors” when issuing an injunction to stop stories being published.
MacKenzie said that the theory against the PCC was “made by conspiracy theorists who only want to get more money”.
Kelvin MacKenzie, right, addresses audience questions during Journalism In Crisis as part of a the Privacy And The Press panel. Listening is Robin Lustig.
Nick Davies
The famous journalist was at his usual passionate best, launching a broadside against the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and criticizing MacKenzie’s stance along the way.
“The PCC is a structurally corrupt body,” said Davies, emphasising that Fleet Street has been embroiled with phone hacking scandals and tapping into private banking data of everyday citizens without reprimand from the commission.” He said that too many claims are rejected upon technical reasons and that the system was “ludicrous”.
He “profoundly disagreed” with MacKenzie, saying “there is no reason for you or anyone else to be filmed while having sex unless it is a crime, and even then you shouldn’t film it, but try to stop it.”
Nick Davies declared that the reason why the press is getting so much into people’s private life is because of the relentless commercial pressure on journalists to give stories. He added that “technologies enable people to pirate emails and hack into mobile phones, something we could not do a few years ago and that give more opportunities to journalists for getting information illegally.”
“Unfortunately, Davies argued, “newspapers are now competing with the internet where there is no regulation at all.”
Jonathan Coad
Jonathan Coad further exposed the PCC as corrupt, and pointed out its “rank hypocrisy when running its own affairs”, in light of the recent MPs expenses scandal. “Parliament make their own rules, but so do the PCC”.
He presented the results of a research study showing that the PCC code is incredibly weak. “We have had a law of breach of confidence, breach of privacy for well over 100 years. The real issue is where should the line be drawn and who should decide where the lines are drawn?”
Q&A
Questions were opened to the floor, and heated debated on whether stories should be published if they cause “harm” to third parties followed.
Kelvin MacKenzie stated he had never considered the potential for harm when publishing a story, and MacDermott went as far as saying that the PCC should become a part of OfCom, explaining that it would enable the same regulations to be applied to all media.
Davies and McDermott agreed that people should go straight to court instead of contacting the PCC since requests are too often rejected and for very questionable reasons.
Citizen Journalism conference
May 21, 2009
The second day of Journalism In Crisis just started and renowned academics gathered in the Old Cinema to discuss the concept of “Citizen Journalism”.
Journalism’s paradigm shifts: a model for understanding long-term change
Colette Brin, from the Universite Laval, Quebec, opened the discussion with a presentation on the patterns of change in the journalism practice.
“The current context of intense and rapid changes is a cause of great uncertainty and concern as to the future of journalism, mostly among journalists themselves, but also among educators and scholars.”
Colette Brin presented a theoritical model of long-term patterns of change in journalistic practice. She demonstrated how the crisis journalism is facing today actually began around the 1970s and has progressively replace the “information journalism” by an emerging “communication journalism paradigm, characterized by intersubjectivity, intense information flow and a hypercompetitive media market”.
She explained her theory in further details by introducing the example of Quebec’s first tabloid newspaper Le journal de Montreal who recently created a website called Rue Frontenac, which illustrates this new “communication revolution”.
Connecting with audiences
May 21, 2009
My PSB Online: investigating patterns of news personalization and customization in Britain and Denmark.
Benedetta Brevini came to JIC last Tuesday to introduce an interesting comparison between the English and Danish model of Online News websites.
“People are more and more able to personnalise their news consumption according to their interests and preferences,” she declared.
Many news websites have introduced a system of “news recommendation” and widgets produced according to target groups so that “the users can not only get faster to the news they are interested in but also aren’t shown the news they don’t care about”.
Mit DR is the new website for Denmark’s Public Service Broadcasting. The original idea was to make Mit DR an interactive platform where people could personalize their news page.
The BBC news website, as for it, does not provide full personalization of their news page and quoting Sophie Walpole, senior staff from the BBC Online team, Benedetta Brevini added: “This certainly does not work for us. I think we will never provide a full personalization of our content. It is very important to make sure that all the content we produce is fully available to people.”
Being able to personalize your news page is a really interesting option and proves how technologies can help journalism evolving, yet it raises concerns. “The adoption of news recommendations could undermine the PSB original role, Brevini argued, and I am not sure that putting the audience “under surveillance” is a good thing.
Journalism’s crisis, journalism’s opportunity. A comparative appraisal of the state of the news business in the United States and the Middle East.
Philip Seib, from the University of South California, then delivered a speech on the crisis journalism is facing today in different countries.
Seib blamed the Western news media for not adapting to new technology faster: “Many people say that journalism is in crisis, but it really depends on where you are. In the West, we witnessed media organizations failures to keep pace with the development of new technologies. In the developing countries, they learned a lot from it.”
He then focused on the news business in the United States explaining how much it changed in the past few years. “Before it was a one way communication, then CNN introduced all-day long news bulletins.
“The newest technologies changes this relationship much more. You are not just glancing at some paper or television, you participate. If you see something that you think is newsworthy, you ‘tweet’, take pictures and share.”
Most of Seib’s students never read newspapers for news, they go online: “The rising generation will mark an even more pronounced shift to technologies.”
New technology was thought to supplement the original model and not replace it, “that is not the case for the US,” Seib argued. “It amaze me how some news organizations are slow to keep up on these new technologies.”
“There is no reason to pay $50 every month to get your favorite paper on your doorstep every morning when you can get it for free online. And the public is getting used to get things for free.”
Philip Seib believes that news organization should gather and come up with an economic model to handle this problem. They need to agree on what the viewers should pay for and what they can give for free. “Otherwise people will all go on the Washington Post’s website which is totally free instead of paying a premium fee on other websites.”
“Journalism is facing a number of issues. When you add the economic crisis on top of that, you get a real storm. Many news organizations will suffer from this.”
Seib then tackled the topic of citizen journalism, arguing that “anyone can be a journalist today” and reach millions of readers. “It is free press in its true essence.”
The academic from South California then referred to the CNN effect by introducing the “Al Jazeira effect”. Al Jazeira is a famous arabic news channel. “Its recent coverage of the Gaza war had a big political impact,” Seib revealed. “It was condemning governments of countries such as Egypt for not coming to help.”
“When a crisis breaks out, everybody is watching Al Jazeira,” he said. This proves how much political power news television channels can have.
Reflections on Journalism
May 19, 2009
Three cheers for Subjectivity: or the crumbling of the seven pillars of journalistic wisdom
Ivor Gaber from City University London and University of Bedfordshire came to Westminster this afternoon to discuss the notion of Subjectivity in journalism.
The base of journalism practice is often recalled as “the inverted pyramid”.
” Students are taught to start a news story with the “5W” (Who, What, Where, When and Why) before dealing with important facts and finish with the background,” he said. “But the most important part, I keep repeating my students, is the ‘So What?’, what relevance does your story have for the reader.”
“Different news organizations will have a different opinion on which angle of a story you should take.”
Ivor Gaber illustrated his speech with Sky’s new unofficial motto: “Never wrong for long”.
He then made an interesting observation on the opposition between journalists and blogger: “The new blogosphere is chattering the journalistic wisdom. Journalists are impartial & interested in the truth, bloggers aren’t. Journalists are unbiased, bloggers are proudly biased,” he declared.
Gaber finished his presentation with the seven pillars of journalistic wisdom that he thinks are primordial to a professional practice:
- Thou shalt recognize one’s own subjectivity
- Thou strive to be fair
- Thou strive to be accurate
- Thou strive to be thorough
- Thou seek verification
- Thou strive to be transparent
- Thou be accountable
One striking example of how our vision of the world is conditioned by the media coverage is well embeded in a research study Paul Shaw mentioned during his speech.
“We asked young children which words best describe the notion of ‘Third World’. The answer was striking: poverty, war, starvation, refugees, death, disease, drought, dirty water.”
Paul Shaw then introduced his “Typology of Negativity” whichgoes as following:
- the act of simplifying the facts of an event for easy comprehension by the audience
- taking things out of context
- the process of seeking out conflict, dissent, disagreement
- news as tragedy
- in the inter-war period, the country lived a professional, moral, financial and identity crisis
- at the beginning of the 1990s, there was a crisis for political, ideological and economic reasons
- nowadays, the emergence of new technologies with the rise of online journalism created a new crisis for French journalism
James Curran speech: “Journalism in Crisis”
May 19, 2009
James Curran, professor at Goldsmiths College and Director of Goldsmiths Media Research Center opened the day of conferences with “Journalism In Crisis”, a speech on the issues the media industry is facing today.
JIC marks the 20th anniversary of the British Journalism Review and James Curran declared it makes it “a double pleasure to be at the University of Westminster today”.
The major cause of the crisis journalism in facing nowadays is the emergence of internet as a popular medium. Since 1999, the proportion of UK households using the internet rise up to 62%. Two third of the nation is connected which makes us to wonder “What’s the impact of the internet on news production?”
James Curran pointed out that many people believe the internet is not creating a “crisis” but an endless list of opportunities and quoted Jim Callaghan who once said: “Crisis? What crisis?”; words that many academics and media personas echoed in the recent years.
The Goldsmiths professor then dealt with what he thinks are the main issues journalism is facing nowadays. The first one is what he calls “the tabloid approach”. For him, too many newspapers are trying to catch the reader’s attention by any means.
“We must make the readers crossed” seems to be journalists’ new let motive. “If one way to gain a reader’s attention is to make them angry, another one is to make them frightened”, he added.
Curran also believes that today’s journalism encourages excesses and inaccuracy. Too many stories have been “sexied up” to make them more attractive to the readers.
He later outlined how British media are unrepresentative of the nation’s real political views, arguing that the UK press’s political views are way more conservative than the population’s.
An other problem Prof. Curran mentioned was the increasing pressure journalists have to face in order to produce stories fast. They don’t get the time to “think” their angle anymore and most of the time recycle the information they get from a limited number of sources. The consumer ends up reading the same stories in different websites, which undermine the value of news production today.
Professor Curran cited the failures of both PSB and commercial broadcast models, illustrating his point by examples of the Iraqi War coverage in the New York Times.
“The American media tradition is in crisis because it is being converted to the net,” James Curran argued that many newspapers in America are in serious trouble because of the emergence of the internet. “It’s beginning to look as if the business to produce news by advertising is in crisis,” Curran said.
“About 60 newspapers has died in the last year in the UK. Yet, the web apocalypse that is hitting journalism in western countries is not happening everywhere else in the world. In eastern countries such as India, newspapers sales are on the rise.”
James Curran believes that the web is giving the British PSBs a way to reach a younger audience.
Citizen journalism and web-based journalism are getting global. But James Curran insisted that “dominant news brands are still dominant”, user-generated content has not taken over as the favourite form of journalism yet.
First day of Journalism in Crisis
May 19, 2009
There is a feeling of excitement as the first day of Journalism In Crisis is about to begin. Last minute checks are being made, cameras are ready, journalism students from the University of Westminster prepare their interviews while the Regent Street Campus is hosting one of the most exciting journalistic events in the capital.
Today, James Curran (pictured) from the Goldsmiths College will start a day of discussions with “Journalism in Crisis”, a keynote speech about the dilemmas the industry is facing today.
A series of conferences will then take place covering topics such as investigative journalism or the evolution of online media.
You have many ways to follow the action. A multi-media coverage has been set up where:
- students from the University will be blogging live on Westminster News Online
- a livestream broadcast has been arranged so that anything said or shown in the Old Cinema will be available online
- photographs will be taken throughout the day and published on the University’s Flickr account
- and since new technologies are at the centre of many discussions, there will also be “tweets” posted on Westminster’s Twitter account.
TODAY’S SCHEDULE
12:50 This fantastic day of conferences will begin with a welcome speech by the Dean of School of Media, Arts and Design Sally Feldman.
13:00 Professor James Curran from Goldsmith College will deliver a keynote speech untitled “Journalism in Crisis”.
14:00 Three conferences will then follow: “Investigative Journalism” chaired by Xin Xin, “Connecting with Audiences” chaired by Annette Hill and “Journalism and Politics” chaired by Naomi Sakr.
16:00 The second half of the afternoon will be dedicated to a series of discussions over “Journalists Training and Working” chaired by Anthony McNicholas, “Reflections on Journalism” chaired by Steven Barnet and “New Developments-Glasses Half Full?” chaired by Peter Goodwin.
17:45 The University will establish a Skype connection with Professor Todd Gitlin from Columbia University for a keynote speech on “The Crises in Journalism: Business, Attention and Authority”.