Journoblog.com

Remember when the press assumed Chris Jeffries killed Jo Yeats a while ago? He was never charged, and yet he was horrifically demonised in the papers and life will never be the same again for him. People are arrested and released without charge all the time. It could easily happen to any of us. I think we can all agree we shouldn’t be attacking people before they even get to court.

But we do. The internet is a funny thing; it grew outside of authoritarian radar, somehow giving users the impression that cyberspace is different to the real world, with different rules. But we need to remember that our online actions still have real-life consequences, especially when we behave badly en masse, as we seem to when there is a high-profile criminal investigation like the current Sian O’Callaghan murder case.

According to reports, a 47-year-old minicab driver named Christopher Halliwell has confessed and even shown police to a body.

Even if someone has killed someone, and even if they confess, they are not legally a murderer until they are convicted in court. If you call someone a murderer on the internet when they’ve not been convicted, that is libel (defamation, identification, publication) and that person could sue you. So why do people feel so comfortable calling for the hanging of “murderers” who have not yet appeared in court? The accused could end up suing everyone on Facebook, Twitter and any other site who branded him a murderer. (Elton John won a libel case against a newspaper for calling him gay before he came out, even though it later turned out to be true). Read the rest of this entry »

Gizmodo is demonstrating the newsgathering capabilities of  a technologically equipped nation by collecting all the videos it can of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Most of these were taken by locals on their digital cameras and phones. Click the quote below to view:

The 8.9 magnitude Earthquake hit Japan today and a zillion-strong army of Japanese digital cameras and cellphones were ready to record its effects. This is it, as seen by the digital eyes of those who have suffered the shock.

Clearly, if the apocalypse ever comes, it will be recorded from two billion different angles. Until that day comes, we will be publishing videos of the Japan earthquake as they come here. - Gizmodo

My efforts in WINOL last week looked successful, but weren’t. I got a lot done, but could have done so much more.

On Monday, Charlotte was away and so I stood in for her. One of the first things to do was make a decision on a live outside broadcast which was planned for Sport. The problem was, it was really a technical exercise, but would have added nothing to the program as there was nothing going on “live” at the time; the OB would simply have been from outside an empty football ground. I made the decision that a live OB will be great to do at some stage, but not until we have some live action to report. Angus Scott and Will Cooper supported this and so it stuck and I think the bulletin was better for it.

Another thing we tried for sport was to have the presenter standing in the corner rather than sitting at the desk. I think this looked much better, although there is still work to be done with regards to camera positioning and background graphics, but it holds a lot of potential and with a bit of polish it could give the whole  bulletin a slicker, more professional look.

The big news was that Colin Firth won an Oscar. He is from Winchester and his parents still live here, so I went and interviewed a teacher from his old school. Unfortunately, no one at the school was there when Colin Firth was, and didn’t know much about him. I was persistent with uni staff in trying to get hold of his parents, who used to lecture at the university, but no information would come my way.

In the end, I put together some pictures and a script for an OOV. My big mistake here was giving up, which isn’t like me and I don’t know why I chose to do something so out of character on such a massive story. I could have done more and I’m still angry with myself as, even if I continued to try and fail, I wouldn’t be living with the knowledge that I didn’t try hard enough.

Still, I presented the bulletin and did an okay job. Every time I talk to a camera I’m more relaxed about it and feel like I’m close to getting it right.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/mar/07/charlie-sheen-fired-warner-brothers

Richard Peppiatt was, until recently, a reporter for British Tabloid, The Daily Star. He quit his job for reasons which he put more savagely and eloquently that I could manage on this blog; so read his letter for yourself here:

Dear Mr Desmond,

You probably don’t know me, but I know you. For the last two years I’ve been a reporter at the Daily Star, and for two years I’ve felt the weight of your ownership rest heavy on the shoulders of everyone, from the editor to the bloke who empties the bins.

Wait! I know you’re probably reaching for your phone to have me marched out of the building. But please, save on your bill. I quit.

The decision came inside my local newsstand, whilst picking up the morning papers. As I chatted with Mohammed, the Muslim owner, his blinking eyes settled on my pile of print, and then, slowly, rose to meet my face.
“English Defence League to become a political party” growled out from the countertop.

Squirming, I abandoned the change in my pocket and flung a note in his direction, the clatter of the till a welcome relief from the silence that had engulfed us. I slunk off toward the tube.
If he was hurt that my 25p had funded such hate-mongering, he’d be rightly appalled that I’d sat in the war cabinet itself as this incendiary tale was twisted and bent to fit an agenda seemingly decided before the EDL’s leader Tommy Robinson had even been interviewed.

Asked if his group were to become a political party I was told the ex-BNP goon had replied: “Not for now.”
But further up the newsprint chain it appears a story, too good to allow the mere spectre of reality to restrain, was spotted. It almost never came to this. I nearly walked out last summer when the Daily Star got all flushed about taxpayer-funded Muslim-only loos.
A newsworthy tale were said toilets Muslim-only. Or taxpayer-funded. Undeterred by the nuisance of truth, we omitted a few facts, plucked a couple of quotes, and suddenly anyone would think a Rochdale shopping centre had hired Osama Bin Laden to stand by the taps, handing out paper towels.
I was personally tasked with writing a gloating follow-up declaring our postmodern victory in “blocking” the non-existent Islamic cisterns of evil.
Not that my involvement in stirring up a bit of light-hearted Islamaphobia stopped there. Many a morning I’ve hit my speed dial button to Muslim rent-a-rant Anjem Choudary to see if he fancied pulling together a few lines about whipping drunks or stoning homosexuals. Read the rest of this entry »

This week, we needed some lighter stories. I took the chance at this, making a lightweight news piece requires a different kind of presentation and I was keen to have a crack at it.

I put together a piece about the move of Winchester’s Fire and Rescue Service (Fire Brigade, to you and I) to a new, eco-friendly station. I concentrated on making the story visually rich, as the story itself wasn’t that engaging, or so I thought. More on that shortly.

My favourite shot of the piece was that of a fireman carrying a box, viewed from between two appliances (fire engines, to you and I). I it worked well and conveyed the feeling of the piece.

But one thing came out of the blue which suddenly took precedence over the the move itself; to the new station, they brought with them a bell that was cast in memory of three firemen who were killed by a bomb in Southampton during WWII. They ring it at the start of each shift. Suddenly, a potentially bland piece had some soul.

This shows the importance of staying switched on. It would have been an easy thing to disregard and miss completely; you must always be looking for that human ingredient in a story.