This took a couple of weeks for Eva and I to put together but finally here it is. There's a lot of talk in the online world about how this web 2.0 malarkey is going to change the way journalists work. You could read about it on thousands of blog posts or you could just watch this.
Showing posts with label journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label journalism. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Policing contempt law on the web
This last week the web has been coming into quite a bit of conflict with the law. The cases of Baby P and the leaked BNP list raise questions for how our legal system safeguards information in a world where it changes hands so rapidly with only minimal accountability.
In both cases information that is potentially damaging to people involved has found its way into the public domain in spite of the co-operation of the big media channels. To distribute either the BNP list or certain information in the Baby P case would be breaking either an injunction or court reporting restrictions and potentially leave you open to being found guilty of contempt. It’s still happening.
So there are two options either further cyber police are needed to lock all the virtual doors, or we just let everyone have it.
The first is too expensive and most probably won’t work.
The second option could leave all sorts of sensitive information in the public domain. The names of the people in the Baby P case are widely available, even by text, despite the fact that they may threaten future legal proceedings.
Perhaps what we need to do is move towards a system where the onus is on the jury to exclude this material from their decision, rather than ban the press from distributing it. After all is the reason that people want to know this information not at least partly linked to the fact that they are not allowed to.
Derren Brown knows the power of this all too well.
What might this new law look like?
Well I should probably start by saying that no-one really knows. Even any solution devised today may well be outdated tomorrow. The internet moves fast; Westminster does not.
It seems clear that we have to trust jurors to do their job properly and stop viewing them as the weak link in the chain. Perhaps the only way to gain that trust is to study their workings. This is still prohibited by today’s law.
New contempt laws might:
- Allow publication of material, but put emphasis on the jury to exclude this information.
- Include provisions for extra days to give jurors detailed guidance on what they can and cannot consider.
- Put up jurors in a hotel without access to the net or other media.
- Monitor media use from their homes for the period of the trial.
- Allow for jury members to be struck off or replaced at early stages if they are found to be taking onboard outside influence.
- Include harsher penalties for obvious use of outside influence.
- A thirteenth lay person to monitor impartiality in each case.
- Allow better external monitoring of decision making to refine the system, but not to influence individual cases.
These are just ideas and at this moment in time there is nothing more concrete in place. The contempt of court laws look set to remain inadequate for some time yet.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Telling stories with pictures
‘A picture is worth 1000 words.’ At least that’s how the saying goes. So how many words does a video say; or stills plus voiceover; or interactive clickable maps containing video, pictures and audio? It all depends what you’re trying to say I guess. Journalists are in the business of telling stories and, more often than not, telling them efficiently. So anything that says 1000 words while keeping me in my word count sounds like a good idea to me.
It would seem that the best, and most obvious, application of multi-media is for human interest stories or to give a personal angle to universal issues. All this week BBC Breakfast's Richard Westcott has been running reports on how the credit crunch has hit real people. This has been done in a pretty traditional way. I can't help but think that they've missed a trick here. This is an ideal opportunity to get people involved in the reporting of their stories. Instead they remain the subject rather than the creator of their own news.
It seems there is a real lesson about the difference between timeliness and topicality here. Many of the times when users create their own stories with big media it's relegated to either stories that aren't time sensitive or soft stories which may not even fall into the category of news. While working with citizens to tell their own stories is unlikely to be able to cover breaking events, it could be used to deal with harder issues which are still relevant in the here and now.
There would be huge scope for a series of citizen generated stories to move into an online environment after its 1 week run. People will still undoubtedly have stories to tell and I suspect there will still be people willing to listen. The recession is not about to disappear tomorrow. It'd offer a new perspective on a series of events that has, so far, been focused very much on the elites of bankers, politicians and big businessmen.
Could we not have a patchwork of storytelling from everyone else affected by it? Would that not be an interesting angle and perhaps it would tell that story in a more effective way than traditional talking heads ever could.
Just because we are not in the business of writing history does not mean we cannot help people document it. Westcott's reports will most probably be consigned to the archives in future years. If the public had ownership is it not possible they would create a documentation that's timeless?
It would seem that the best, and most obvious, application of multi-media is for human interest stories or to give a personal angle to universal issues. All this week BBC Breakfast's Richard Westcott has been running reports on how the credit crunch has hit real people. This has been done in a pretty traditional way. I can't help but think that they've missed a trick here. This is an ideal opportunity to get people involved in the reporting of their stories. Instead they remain the subject rather than the creator of their own news.
It seems there is a real lesson about the difference between timeliness and topicality here. Many of the times when users create their own stories with big media it's relegated to either stories that aren't time sensitive or soft stories which may not even fall into the category of news. While working with citizens to tell their own stories is unlikely to be able to cover breaking events, it could be used to deal with harder issues which are still relevant in the here and now.
There would be huge scope for a series of citizen generated stories to move into an online environment after its 1 week run. People will still undoubtedly have stories to tell and I suspect there will still be people willing to listen. The recession is not about to disappear tomorrow. It'd offer a new perspective on a series of events that has, so far, been focused very much on the elites of bankers, politicians and big businessmen.
Could we not have a patchwork of storytelling from everyone else affected by it? Would that not be an interesting angle and perhaps it would tell that story in a more effective way than traditional talking heads ever could.
Just because we are not in the business of writing history does not mean we cannot help people document it. Westcott's reports will most probably be consigned to the archives in future years. If the public had ownership is it not possible they would create a documentation that's timeless?
Monday, October 20, 2008
The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged
Is the idea of networked journalism really so different? Has it not always been the case that “professional journalists” have sought to maintain a set of contacts in their given specialism? Have these contacts not always informed the journalist's reports as either source, specialist or outspoken viewer? Sure the internet has made this process more fluid and we now have an instant means of reply, (which we did not have before) our networks of contacts are now bigger, more global, but it’s still just people that are typing those tweets to you.
Fact is that journalist have always needed participation of other people in order to report news. We have always needed to know how houses were blown away; what it felt like to lose a son or where those pesky kids really went in their bus at the weekends. We’ve also always had the means to listen back through the traditional means of communication.
So what’s changed? Well the speed with which all these stages can take place seems to be a key factor. We are writing news not history here, by the time the mail bags get heavy enough with reaction a story may well have run it’s course. In the net age however people demand up to the minute information and so we need to give them up to the minute reporting. One of the only ways to do this is to have big, mobile, communicative networks of people. This means the information more and more has to come from those individuals with the shortest time lag between them and events. That, more often than not, is the public. Consumers demand it and so journalists must supply it, this much is clear.
Not so clear however is how, if at all, the public should be involved in the editorial process. Do they decide what they want to see. Well I’m fairly sure they do this already, by not reading the stuff they don’t want to. Could they suggest story ideas, like on spot.us? I’m pretty sure they already do that as well, isn’t that what comments sections are for? If journalists just aren’t paying attention that’s a different matter. They already write up their own stories on blogs, so what is the role of the professional in this exchange?
It seems professionals are destined to be the dispensers of the seal of approval or the teachers in a new age of journalism as a collaborative classroom. Our role is to facilitate the telling of people’s stories in an accurate, articulate and informed way. That to me doesn’t sound far from what has been going on for years, it’s just we may not always be doing the telling anymore.
Fact is that journalist have always needed participation of other people in order to report news. We have always needed to know how houses were blown away; what it felt like to lose a son or where those pesky kids really went in their bus at the weekends. We’ve also always had the means to listen back through the traditional means of communication.
So what’s changed? Well the speed with which all these stages can take place seems to be a key factor. We are writing news not history here, by the time the mail bags get heavy enough with reaction a story may well have run it’s course. In the net age however people demand up to the minute information and so we need to give them up to the minute reporting. One of the only ways to do this is to have big, mobile, communicative networks of people. This means the information more and more has to come from those individuals with the shortest time lag between them and events. That, more often than not, is the public. Consumers demand it and so journalists must supply it, this much is clear.
Not so clear however is how, if at all, the public should be involved in the editorial process. Do they decide what they want to see. Well I’m fairly sure they do this already, by not reading the stuff they don’t want to. Could they suggest story ideas, like on spot.us? I’m pretty sure they already do that as well, isn’t that what comments sections are for? If journalists just aren’t paying attention that’s a different matter. They already write up their own stories on blogs, so what is the role of the professional in this exchange?
It seems professionals are destined to be the dispensers of the seal of approval or the teachers in a new age of journalism as a collaborative classroom. Our role is to facilitate the telling of people’s stories in an accurate, articulate and informed way. That to me doesn’t sound far from what has been going on for years, it’s just we may not always be doing the telling anymore.
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