BethMellor’s Weblog

The Hackney branch of Stop the War continue to protest every fortnight about the opening of an army recruitment centre in Dalston Kingsland shopping centre, which I reported on for the Hackney Post last month.

Here again is Lieutenant Colonel Paul Meldon speaking to defend the centre.

PR Week’s ‘Regional PR’ supplement included an interesting article this week on the growing importance of community-focused microsites in British media.

ABC have now started tracking user numbers to local news websites, such as Newcastle’s ‘Journal Live’, which runs 22 microsites for specific towns and communities in the area. The ABC results show that local microsites are netting impressive totals of up to 270,000 users/month.

Indeed, the website our City University journalism class set up to cover news in Hackney achieved more than 4,000 hits after just a week. Demand for local news clearly still exists, even if demand for local newspapers doesn’t.

Yet whilst it is encouraging to see that the web is becoming a growth area for local journalism, a sustainable business model is desperately needed if microsites are to survive.

There are two possible solutions. Microsites either need to become more commercially-savvy, and prove to businesses that they are a viable way of reaching specific local and demographic communities. The danger with this is that including too much advertising on online news sites is a big turn-off to readers.

Alternatively, microsites could gain funding through collaboration with local Councils – PR Week reports that Newcastle City Council director of communications is considering investing in Journal Live as an alternative to the council’s own website. Of course, microsites would have to ensure that this type of arrangement would not affect their editorial independence.  

If microsites can develop a solid business model, the future for local journalism looks brighter than the recent spate of closures and redundancies at local newspapers suggests.

Hitchcock's thriller

Paul Iredale describes the day he was shot and injured by communist guerrillas as one of the luckiest days of his life.

The former Reuters chief had just arrived in El Salvador to cover the tail end of the Central American wars. Guerrilla troops had launched a last-ditch offensive to overthrow the Government and, in November 1989, they were fighting for control of the capital, San Salvador.

He was on his way to open the Reuters office when they opened fire on his car. “One of the bullets came through the side of the car and splayed into the metal part of the seat I was sitting on, so I got lots of metal in my side. Apart from that, none of the bullets hit me. My hat was on the seat next to me and a bullet went right through it. I was very, very lucky that day.

“But I had a white shirt on and, when I looked down at my side, it was starting to go red. I knew I had to get out of that car.”

Lying next to the car, Iredale noticed that one of the fuel lines had been hit, and that petrol was leaking onto the ground next to the car, so he rolled into a ditch by the side of the road and crawled back down the hill.

At over 6ft tall, with a shock of white hair and an unruly beard, it is hard now to imagine Iredale being able to sneak away unnoticed.

Yet with 35 years of experience as a foreign correspondent, including stints in South Africa during apartheid, South America, India and Yugoslavia during the Yugoslav Wars, Iredale, now 58, has had an action-packed career. Just four weeks after his car came under fire in San Salvador, he – along with four other journalists and six businessmen – was taken hostage during the United States invasion of Panama.

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One of the main reasons that many people embark on a career in journalism is the desire to hold Governments and big business to account. The Sunday Times undercover reporters who revealed in this article that four Labour Peers would be prepared to amend bills in return for hefty cash sums did exactly this, and their work is an affirmation of the important role that journalism plays as the ‘fourth estate.’

Jeffrey Archer is a life Peer despite having served time for perverting the course of justice

The four Peers in question deny wrongdoing and will be tried in a few weeks, facing possible suspension if found guilty of accepting cash for influence. Yet the real significance of this piece of journalism is that it has highlighted clearly the need for reform in the House of Lords and for more checks and balances on the power of Peers, who currently hold their titles for life – no matter how grave their crime. Peers are currently allowed to act as ‘consultants’, as long as their work does not influence their decisions in the House – a grey area which most certainly needs to be made more transparent.

Whilst the Sunday Times has faced some criticism for the ‘deception and attempted entrapment’ undertaken by its journalists, it is sadly the case that underhand methods are sometimes necessary to discover the underhand practices of those in power.

There is no doubt that the Freedom of Information Act has been a great boon to journalists. It has given us the right to access important information about public bodies and elected officials which not only makes for great stories but also helps to hold these organisations and individuals to account – perhaps one of the main reasons that many of us wanted to become journalists in the first place. The Press Gazette reported earlier this year that over 1,000 stories had been written in the past two years based upon disclosures under FOI, including stories revealing significant information about the Iraq War and about corruption in many public bodies.

However in some cases it seems that the FOI Act has actually made it harder for journalists to get hold of information within a reasonable time-frame. Chasing up councils for information about test purchasing schemes for cigarettes (where the council sends under-16’s to attempt to buy cigarettes in shops) for a colleague at The Scotsman made for an incredibly frustrating morning last week. Whilst the information I wanted was very straightforward, and would have taken council press officers about 10 minutes to find out, several councils refused to give me the information. Instead, they said they were going to treat the query as an FOI request, and were passing it on to dedicated FOI officers who would get back to me in 20 days.

Colleagues at The Scotsman said that although they thought the FOI Act was invaluable in terms of holding public bodies to account, it had also provided organisations with someone else to pass the buck to, which, on occasion, has made their jobs harder.

Pursuing other FOI requests has also been a learning curve. Having obtained some potentially newsworthy information about the Scottish Parliament, I called up the press office to try to get some supplementary information to back-up my findings. The FOI officer, unsurprisingly, told me I would need to put in another request for it, which would take another 20 days.

I then got into a conversation with the FOI officer, who was formerly a journalist. She advised me that the best strategy with FOI requests is to put in as many as possible, because 90 per cent of the time they don’t reveal anything newsworthy. On the other hand, she said, you have to remember that you use tax-payers’ money each time you make an FOI request. Paying FOI officers to pursue countless requests which have no real focus is arguably not the best way to spend public money.

Heather Brooke's book about the FOI Act

Of course, it is important that the FOI Act exists as an incentive to openness in public bodies. When used by experienced journalists like Heather Brooke as a way to hold organisations to account, it is a fantastic aid not only to journalism but to an open democracy. But it is not safe from being abused by either side: organisations can use it as an excuse not to reply any sooner than 20 days, and journalists can perhaps be guilty of using it a bit too indiscriminately.

Coverage of the European Union in the British media is, quite frankly, awful. With the exception of Tony Barber’s excellent Brussels Blog for the FT and occasional articles in The Telegraph and The Times, reporting about the European Union is patchy at best and frequently completely negative about EU institutions and legislation.

In comparison, newspapers in other EU countries have dedicated daily pages to cover news from Brussels.

The reasons behind Britain’s haphazard and cynical coverage of the EU were debated at a journalism course I attended in Brussels this week. The first, and perhaps main reason, is that most newspapers do not even have a correspondent in Brussels. This makes it practically impossible for newspapers to understand the full story about developments in Brussels. Under this logistical pressure, it is easier for the journalist who has the task of writing an EU story from their desk in London to focus on the simple and quirky story, such as the recent coverage of the relaxation of EU legislation on the shape of fruit and vegetables.

The Sun campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty

Secondly, MEP Richard Corbett told me he believes that media ownership is a factor: the main media moguls in Britain – Rupert Murdoch, Lord Rothermere and the Barclay brothers – are all eurosceptics. In addition, Mr Corbett pointed out that it is easy for eurosceptic political parties to use a one-line soundbite to promote their views, whereas making a reasoned debate about the positive aspects of EU membership is not so media-friendly. The media is often guilty of using the quickest and most sensational line – such as The Sun’s 2007 campaign after Gordon Brown’s signing of the Lisbon Treaty “Never Have So Few Decided So Much For So Many” – without presenting the other side of the debate and, in this case, without explaining what the treaty actually means.

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In the media, speed is everything. ‘Get the story, and get it first’ is what reporters are paid to do.

But, according to Charles S. Feldman and Howard Rosenberg, the speed of news delivery and the 24-hour news cycle has now become dangerously fast. Their new book, No Time To Think, argues that there is:

 “an insidious and increasing portion of the news media that, due to the dangerously extreme speed at which it is produced, is only half thought out, half true, and lazily repeated from anonymous sources interested in selling opinion and wild speculation as news.”

Mr. Feldman argued on Radio 4 this morning that the increasing speed of news delivery has also had an impact upon government leaders. There is so much media pressure to move the news agenda forwards that not only the public but also key decision-makers don’t have enough time to think about the gravity and consequences of events.

 If the Cuban missile crisis had happened today, he said, we may not have had the same outcome.

This increasing speed of news delivery – and the consequences of inaccurate and unreflective journalism – completely undermines the valuable role that the media play in society.

It seems to me that we have now come to a breaking point where news is practically instantaneous. Now, media providers need to concentrate not on skimming another second off their news delivery times, but on ensuring that the product they deliver has integrity. As with internet journalism; anyone can set up a news website or a blog, but it is the ones which are accurate and reliable which will – in the end – win out.

There’s a great excerpt from the book here.

Any publicity is good publicity, according to Nick Griffin, BNP party leader. Until last week, that is.

The BNP have long argued that coverage in the press – whether positive or negative – is a good way to raise their profile.  

Indeed, the mainstream media seemed to reach a consensus that reporting about the BNP helped to give the party a veneer of respectability. See more about this debate here. As such, their party conference in November was barely reported and, until recently, coverage was generally confined to specialist publications, such as the excellent Searchlight magazine.

But the furore over the leaked BNP list last week brought the party firmly back onto the agenda of the mainstream press. And this, I believe, can only be a good thing.

As great a resource as Searchlight is, it is surely mainly preaching to the converted.  The horror and revulsion about the BNP generated by the mainstream media last week helped to do what will hopefully prove to be irreversible damage to the reputation of the BNP.

With the European parliamentary elections coming up, in which the BNP hope that a disproportionate amount of ‘protest voters’ will enable them to win seats, it is increasingly important for the general public to realise what the BNP actually stand for – and for this to motivate them to go out and vote for parties which actually represent what Britain stands for.

Anna Politkovskaya: Murdered in 2006

The trial of several men charged with the murder of Anna Politkovskaya began in Moscow today, but according to Politkovskaya’s supporters it is highly doubtful whether the real killers will actually be brought to justice.

As Russian Journalist Grigory Pasko told the BBC: “How can you say the investigation is complete if you have neither the killer nor the person who ordered it in the dock?”

Politkovskaya, who wrote for Russia’s Novaya Gazeta, was shot as she left her home in October 2006. Her articles were highly critical of the Kremlin and revealed human rights abuses and corruption during Russia’s two recent wars with Chechnya.

The type of journalism that Politkovskaya practised epitomises what the press is for: to critically scrutinise those in positions of power; to shed light on what others would keep hidden; to act as a spokesperson for those who have had their freedom of speech taken away.

For these reasons, this courageous woman deserves real justice, not a farcical trial.

As Barack Obama cruised to victory in the American presidential election this week, the global news media celebrated the result with headlines such as ‘One Man Changes Entire Nation’ (Daily News, New York), and ‘Historic First; Fulfilment of a Dream’ (The Houston Chronicle).

In the aftermath, the impact of the media on this seminal election deserves some analysis. Were the media merely reflecting public support for Obama or were they, in fact, an important factor in fomenting his support base?

Was coverage of the elections biased?

Whilst I too am thrilled by Obama’s win, and hope that he will be able to deliver on his promise to bring change to America, I think that there could be a small grain of truth in Republican blogs such as this one, which argues that media support for Obama made John McCain’s task all the more difficult.  As this study details, coverage of McCain was far less positive than that of Obama in the run up to the election. And, according to award-winning media commentator Evan Thomas, media bias can add 5% on to vote totals.  

What is more, and with parallels to the coverage of John F. Kennedy in the 1960 American election, Obama’s celebrity seems – at times – to have overshadowed a more detailed analysis of his policies by the media.

Yet Reuters, on the other hand, claim that media bias was “largely unseen” in the presidential race in this article.

This subject desperately needs to be studied in more detail, because it has a bearing upon the fundamental principle of objectivity in journalism. In the words of foreign correspondent Christine Amanpour, journalistic objectivity means “giving all sides an equal hearing”. Whilst I am pleased about this week’s election result, I am not convinced that the media achieved this in their coverage.