Leveson report…hmmmm

In the past week the long awaited report from Lord Leveson has been released to explain his findings and solutions to the British press. Due to a minority of misbehaved British journos the Prime Minister, David Cameron, put together an inquiry into the press standards to see what could be done to prevent any further wrong doings.

The report that came out is long and winding as expected so I am just going to talk about a couple of the main points.

What Lord Leveson proposed was an independent regulator of the press that was underpinned by statute but had no involvement from any journalists or politicians.

To me this line doesn’t actually make sense. No politicians but it’s underpinned by statute laws. Laws and politicians go hand in hand. They may not be controlling the regulator as yet but if anything goes wrong with it they will be the first in to take control. And they will be the ones that have the power to change the law given the right opportunity.

Journalists cannot be accountable to the government. It is journalists the keep government to account it is one of the key roles of the press.

This in itself is worrying and it has worried many newspapers and people in the media industry.

I do believe however a new independent regulator has to come in to place. The previous regulator was the Press Complaints Commission but it pretty much waited for complaints to be made which in affect meant that it was already too late. What this new regulator should be able to do is investigate organisations and their practises before a complaint is made. They should have the power to check up on how the journalistic practises are working in each establishment.

And that is what Lord Leveson is proposing to happen. But, with an underpinning of statute law.

The other problem is that the question remains who would appoint the panel for the new regulator. If it doesn’t have journalistic or political influence, who will be the right person to appoint them. And if they have no motive within the industry who says they will hold the right determination to investigate the industry.

The other important point made was the creation of a whistle blowing hotline for journalists to call if they are feeling under pressure from their editor or colleagues or if they believe there is malpractice within the workplace. The idea of this sounds good to help crack down on issues such as phone hacking from the source itself. But the worrying side is of course what could be the misuse of the hotline as an escape route. It could lead to false claims if someone just has a grudge against a fellow employee. The newsroom sure is a fight-to-the-finish kind of place.

The important thing to remember is the press is free. They have a freedom to write and report without government involvement or pressure. So to have an underpinning of statute would risk possibilities of future censorship. Unlike in the USA, we don’t have the First Amendment to protect our freedom of speech which makes it all the more important to keep government as far away as possible.

The problem now remains as to what the solution to the Leveson report will be. David Cameron has said he does not like the idea of government involvement but he was the one who commissioned this report and will need to find a settlement between the press and the Leveson report.

 

Radio Drama

As you may have seen in the news today a nurse in London committed suicide over a phone hoax to the hospital she worked at from an Australian radio station.

The station hosts put on accents and pretended to be the Queen and Prince Charles as they asked to speak to Kate’s nurse to hear about how she was. The nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, believed the hosts and put the call through to the nurse who went on to tell the presenters about Kate’s condition and how she was feeling.

The hoax caused huge controversy all over the world as people felt the presenters over stepped there mark by attaining private and confidential information through false impersonation. Less was said about the security breach with more being laid on the presenters’ thoughtlessness. The presenters defended their actions by saying they never though they would be put through as their accents didn’t seem believable.

An article in fact stated that it was only Britons who took offence to the hoax with Australians finding it a harmless prank and “inoffensive”. Yet in an Australian online poll, 2 out of 3 said that it was “childish and embarrassing”.

Prank calls are common on radio shows and are often referred to as harmless fun. But this prank call was putting people’s jobs at risk and it involved the health of a member of the Royal Family. That is two serious factors to take into the equation. By trying to have a joke they were testing how the nurses would deal with calls, they were in fact testing their jobs which is not a responsibility they hold.

Personally I have never had the Queen phone me, so if someone put on an accent and persuaded me they were the Queen I might just believe that. But the hosts just picked up on the fact that they couldn’t believe they had fooled the nurse.

Of course this is now beginning to fall under a journalism scandal linking it to the phone-hacking days of the British press. But I really don’t feel these presenters can fall under the journalism bracket.

They are presenters of a radio show out to provide entertainment, not reporters trying to find facts to inform the public with. There is a difference and a big one at that.

But for some reason people are taking it out on the ‘media industry’ and therefore saying journalists have to be controlled.

Journalists (the real ones) are the people who are condemning this hoax and reporting on the wrong-doings of the presenters. They are the ones trying to hold them to account which is the job they do, not prank phone calls. They know and understand that information on the Royal Family must come from St James Palace, the media hub. (We’ll minus the little Prince Harry phone hacking incident)

But to see that something of this sort can end in such horrific circumstances is really upsetting. Nurse Saldanha, a 46 year old mother of two, decided to take her life, for reasons not entirely known at this point. What we do know is that it had a lot to do with this prank call and the scrutiny from the world she had entailed.

For most people though, it is the presenters that we see completely in the wrong and they are certainly not journalists.

Lets Unbundle

We’re used to hearing how everything is aggregating, that the way the industry is moving is to aggregate. There’s no other way, lets just make one giant news service that serves everyone (sounds a bit like the Murdoch empire).

But there is hope!

We have seen niche sites targetting specific audiences with news solely for that market but a clever little journalist called Lara Setrakian decided to tell her stories of Syria on a newsite.

Typical Syria Deeply website page

The website is called Syria Deeply and allows all stories of Syria to be published. Not just what the news organisation wants but what the journalist deems important.

These sites  are really important in a news industry where too much is bundled together thus creating stories that are all so similar. From one newspaper to the next there is a definite pattern in the stories as it is only the top news that makes it. But in times of war and political unrest it is the off-beat stories that captivate us the most and deliever us the real understanding of what is really going on.

The Syria Deeply website says that “By mixing user generated content with the insight and oversight of seasoned journalists, we merge the power of citizen journalism with the standards of the professional press.”

That is what makes this site quite different as a lot of niche sites seem to end up more citizen journalism which although can be of good quality, often lacks the journalistic edge.

FCC to Change? Lucky for Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch isn’t someone I really rate too highly. After the Leveson inquiry in the UK it certainly raises questions as to just how involved he is in the news companies he owns. He says he was unaware of the phone hacking scandal but that’s almost more worrying since he owns the company and yet doesn’t really know exactly what is going on at it.

This is the problem with big media moguls and their attempts of monopolising the market. It turns journalism into the business structure that families years ago made sure to stay away from. Journalism should be about the reporting and investigating and holding organisations to account. But we have seen the financial struggles deepen in the past few years showing that the business side has to be a priority.

The Federal Communications Commission

Until now, although there have been conglomerate organisations, the chance of a monopoly has always been held back by the FCC rules. The Federal Communications Commission is in talks to change their media cross ownership rules which could lead to Murdoch being legally allowed to purchase a whole lot more.

The changes in regulation would allow companies to own ‘the major daily newspaper and radio outlets in the same market, and would allow one company to jointly own a daily newspaper and TV stations in the nation’s top 20 markets.’

This allows owners like Murdoch to monopolise markets by gaining a large majority of control. Why this is bad? Well if you look at a few of Murdoch’s acquisitions there is a tendency to have a very biased opinion in them such as Fox News and the Sun newspaper in the UK. He is also out to make money which, as we have seen, isn’t always the best thing for journalism.

Also soon to be under the Murdoch name

Are they ready to change?

According to the article his next big ventures include the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. The FCC regulations as present prevent his from doing so but if they change as reported there is very little stopping him. Could be potentially life changing for the two major newspapers.