Tag Archives: news

Richard Desmond and the PCC

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This week saw the news that Richard Desmond‘s Northern & Shell publishing organisation are no longer under the jurisdiction of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

The PCC is funded by contributions from the publications they regulate, and N&S have decided not to continue to pay. This means that there is no one to complain to if you disagree with a story in The Daily Star or any other N&S titles.

The story is well covered by Tabloid Watch: Tabloid Watch: Richard Desmond and the PCC.

Following the move, the PCC have dropped all outstanding complaints against N&S.

A long list of complaints upheld against The Express and Star since March 2008 are listed here, along with payouts.

WikiLeaks: The revolution has begun – and it will be digitised | Heather Brooke | Comment is free | The Guardian

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Another decent article on the significance of the WikiLeaks cables

Thanks to the internet, we have come to expect a greater level of knowledge and participation in most areas of our lives. Politics, however, has remained resolutely unreconstructed. Politicians, see themselves as parents to a public they view as children – a public that cannot be trusted with the truth, nor with the real power that knowledge brings.

Much of the outrage about WikiLeaks is not over the content of the leaks but from the audacity of breaching previously inviable strongholds of authority. In the past, we deferred to authority and if an official told us something would damage national security we took that as true. Now the raw data behind these claims is increasingly getting into the public domain. What we have seen from disclosures like MPs’ expenses or revelations about the complicity of government in torture is that when politicians speak of a threat to “national security”, often what they mean is that the security of their own position is threatened.

WikiLeaks: The revolution has begun – and it will be digitised | Heather Brooke | Comment is free | The Guardian.

via We Study Media

A few questions about the WikiLeaks release – Dan Gillmor – Salon.com

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The current furore surrounding the WikiLeaks release of the US Embassy cables is fascinating for anyone interested in news or journalism. It poses all kinds of ethical questions, many of which are raised in this excellent article from Dan Gillmor:

For journalists who get the documents directly from WikiLeaks:

  • You are treating WikiLeaks as much as a partner as a source, no matter how much you might deny this. How comfortable are you in this bargain?
  • Why does it take WikiLeaks to get the information you agree is so worthy of public exposure? Why aren’t you doing your own jobs better in the first place?

For the U.S. government:

  • When it comes to invading other people’s lives, with increasingly oppressive security and surveillance, your mantra is “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.” Will you give that a little more thought in the future?

This is essential reading.

A few questions about the WikiLeaks release – Dan Gillmor – Salon.com.

via Boing Boing

How framing can affect the way we trust an image

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Pete Fraser’s blog has a new post about Twitter. The second half covers the joke trial and more, which is deserving of a post in itself. The intro, however, covers the student riots from last week and has an interesting point about the way the framing of an image can affect the way we view it:

Last week saw the first stirrings of rioting in response to the coalition government’s policies as students holding a demo in London broke into the Conservative Party HQ in Millbank Tower and smashed some stuff up. On Thursday, almost every national paper had the same picture on the front page, but with a variety of different headlines, offering slightly different perspectives on the whole event. there is an interesting analysis of the coverage on the POLIS blog here while this montage from Political Scrapbook shows just how dominant the image was.

I was quite struck, however, by this slightly wider shot of the moment which someone tweeted on friday:

In this, we can clearly see just how many photographers are there with a ringside view so that what seems like chaos starts to look…set up?

Twitter was a good source for inside material on wednesday during the demo when people were tweeting about what was happening as it happened and others were re-tweeting and commenting upon the flow of events.

Note – if you visit the original post you will be able to view larger versions of the two images.

via Pete’s Media Blog: Twitter on trial: #iamspartacus.

The Times’ Paywall and Newsletter Economics « Clay Shirky

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Interesting blog post by Clay Shirky looking at the effect of the Times paywall

You can see this contraction at the Times and Sunday Times in the reversal of digital to print readers. Before the paywall, the two sites had roughly six times more readers than there were print sales of the paper edition. (6M web vs. 1M print for the Sunday Times* .) Post-paywall, the web audience is less than a sixth of print sales (down to <150K vs. 1M). The paying web audience is less a twentieth of print sales (<50K vs. 1M), and possibly much less.

and

The classic description of a commodity market uses milk. If you own the only cow for 50 miles, you can charge usurious rates, because no one can undercut you. If you own only one of a hundred such cows, though, then everyone can undercut you, so you can’t charge such rates. In a competitive environment like that, milk becomes a commodity, something whose price is set by the market as a whole.

Owning a newspaper used to be like owning the only cow, especially for regional papers. Even in urban markets, there was enough segmentation–the business paper, the tabloid, the alternative weekly–and high enough costs to keep competition at bay. No longer.

The internet commodifies the business of newspapers. Newspapers compete with other newspapers, but newspaper websites compete with other websites. As Nicholas Carr pointed out during the 2009 pirate kidnapping, Google News found 11,264 different sources for the story, all equally accessible.* The web puts newspapers in competition with radio and TV stations, magazines, and new entrants, both professional and amateur. It is the war of each against all.

None of this is new. The potential disruptive effects of the internet on newspapers have been observable since ClariNet in 1989.* Nor has the business case for paywalls changed. The advantage of paywalls is that they raise revenue from users. The disadvantages are that they reduce readership, increase customer acquistion and retention costs, and eliminate ad revenue from user-forwarded content. In most cases, the disadvantages have outweighed the advantages.

via The Times’ Paywall and Newsletter Economics « Clay Shirky.

Indian papers pioneer talking adverts | Media | guardian.co.uk

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When the paper was unfolded – as you can see in the video clip here – a light-sensitive speaker chip was activated. It’s doubtful if you’ll hear the blurb. For the record, it says:

Best-in-class German engineering is here. The new Volkswagen Vento. Built with great care and highly innovative features. Perhaps that’s why it breaks the hearts of our engineers to watch it drive away. The new Volkswagen Vento. Crafted with so much passion, it’s hard to let it go. Volkswagen. Das Auto.

via Indian papers pioneer talking adverts | Media | guardian.co.uk.

Who do you trust? | YouGov

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A YouGov poll just published shows that 76% of British people trust teachers. Obviously, as a teacher, I’m pleased to hear that. However, I’d be less pleased were I a journalist, particularly a tabloid one – red-top writers are trusted by just 10%. Those who write for the mid-market papers are distrusted by 71%, but BBC news journalists are trusted by 60%:

Trustworthy and untrustworthy Bar Chart

Who do you trust? | YouGov.

via Tabloid Watch, who notes that trust in all the media has declined significantly since 2003 – even that 60% trust for BBC news journalists looks bad compared to the 81% it was 7 years ago.

Urban fox hunt video was hoax aimed at the media, say film-makers | World news | guardian.co.uk

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You may have seen the news stories earlier this week about the video posted online showing a group of urban fox hunters drugging and beating a fox to death with cricket bats – it was very widely covered in the media.

It transpires, however, that it was a satirical hoax video inspired by the media coverage of urban foxes recently, with an anti-fox hunting message as well.

Chris Atkins and Johnny Howorth, the film makers (the team behind the controversial Starsuckers) , deliberately made the video as silly as possible and were surprised that it was taken seriously. Atkins explains the events in the video that accompanies the Guardian article linked below, well worth 5 minutes of your time.

Perhaps my favourite part of the media coverage is this:

In today’s London Evening Standard, columnist Sebastian Shakespeare went so far as to celebrate urban fox hunting as the first and best example of David Cameron’s “big society” in action.

Urban fox hunt video was hoax aimed at the media, say film-makers | World news | guardian.co.uk