Sustainable Journalism

The snow dusted Palace of Westminster currently looks like a scene from a fairytale, but we’re barely a week into 2010 and the pantomime of the forthcoming general election is seemingly in full swing, with rumours of sinister plots and leadership coups all over the headlines. Some have the misfortune of a giant David Cameron gawping at them on the daily drive to work from 1000 billboards across the land, and the policy tittle tattle has begun in what will no doubt seem like an excruciatingly long election campaign.

However after a report I read in the Sunday Times, the wait this general election could be made even longer, as government spending cuts look like they may scupper the traditional intensity of election count night.

You see, results from the Electoral Commission watchdog have suggested that 1 in 3 constituencies won’t be able to declare their ballot count until the following day, due to the fact that local authorities don’t have the room in their budgets to employ temporary staff to count throughout the night. You may be wondering why I’m harping on about this in terms of journalism. Well with this delay it will certainly take the drama out of the election television coverage that gives a blow by blow account of which seats have been lost or won into the wee small hours and beyond. And it’s not only in the world of journalism that this potential future stumbling block is causing ripples. Here’s an example of the BBC’s coverage of the last general election in 2005.

When we started our Broadcast Journalism course we were told how lucky we were that it was a general election year, as it’s a great time to learn the ropes of live reporting. We’d get in as runners on the multitude of  various television and radio programmes broadcast throughout the election.

So the live drama after polling booths close at 10pm, whenever that day may be, looks set to be a rather more drawn out affair. This seems absolutely baffling considering the strident technological advancement of our digitally orientated world.  Whilst our ‘online networks’ are getting faster, it’s madness the democratic process in this country is getting slower due to lack of funding and bureaucratic red tape.

The article states that new rules surrounding postal ballots and almost 3.5 million voters being disenfranchised by not being included on the electoral register are two areas for blame. Alarm bells should be ringing in Parliament that its high time they revolutionised the way people can cast their votes and move some of it online. Okay, it’s been attempted before with the pilot held in 2003 for the Local elections in England heavily criticised, but rather than learning from it and developing it as a system, it was steadfastly abandoned. There are many arguments about voting security and the risk of vote rigging and hacking, but its obvious there needs to be a step change to encourage more people to cast their vote and help combat the general public’s apathetic view of the political process.The Conservatives certainly see developing an online network as paramount to future success> With the offer of a £1 million prize for the creation of a new social platform with which they can carry their message, they are moving in a progressive direction, but is it really a holistic approach or just a facebook or bebo in a politically biased skin?

Back to the point – the tension of live television coverage should not be degraded or robbed of the blow by blow account as it always has done – this would be an absolute travesty.

Perhaps the bright side for us lowly runners is that we may get more tea and fag breaks throughout the night. And boy are we going to need them as it could be the longest election night coverage in history; especially if the rumours circulating from the BBC have any truth to them.

Can Archie work his magic this time too?

So the seven month long debacle is over, ITV have found themselves a new chairman, in the form of Archie Norman corporate business saviour extraordinaire. It’s been an embarrassing time for ITV, and news has been greeted by shareholders with a share price rise of 3%. Amazingly, the announcement remained unleaked, so came as somewhat as a smack in the chops to the press.

So what of the appointment. Well Archie certainly doesn’t have any media experience under his belt but he is renowned for his knack for corporate restructuring. Much has been said about his previous role as ASDA’s chief executive and he’s already been dubbed by some as ‘ASDA’s TV repairman’; he brought the supermarket chain back from the brink after it grew too quickly in the 90′s. Also does media experience really matter that much – Michael Grade has bags of it and he hasn’t been able to sail the sinking ship ITV safe of trouble.

And what of the future then? Well hot on the heels of this news we’ll expect a new chief executive chairman to be appointed and you’d hope that a candidate for this job would be of suitable media industry calibre. Norman’s tory roots may also hint at where ITV may well be headed. The Conservatives will not subsidise the channel with the licence fee so Archie will no doubt have been chosen to play the pivotal role of finding a sustainable commercial business model so ITV can survive the long term.

If ITV were as buoyant as ASDA none of us would have to worry about a graduate job!

Corporate restructuring will undoubtedly ruffle a few feathers,  and who knows how this may affect journalistic output. With the news this week that ITN can’t get to grips with its pension scheme, announcing a £3 million pre tax loss,  29 more jobs are to go and a pay freeze is on the horizon in the new year. From the regional perspective, there have been more details this week on who may run the first pilot that will replace ITV’s local services in 2012. The Conservative backed ultra-local TV news replacement is that independently financed model I spoke of in a previous post. At present its a two horse race between Newcastle and Manchester based consortiums that want to have a go first.

There will no doubt be some interesting interplay between ITN who don’t want a ‘patchwork’ of news regions under different guises, but united under one brand, to the way the conservatives see it. However with their financial precariousness, a conservative government looking likely, and Archie Norman’s new appointment, it still all remains very much in flux.

This week ITV national news has had a bit of a revamp. What do you reckon? It’s certainly dividing opinion out there in the ether; people don’t take too favourably to change to begin with. Message boards and forums are rife with comments slating the colour scheme, the new title music arrangement, the loss of big ben from the titles, but I’m sure people will warm to it in the long run. How long the ‘long run’ may be still begs the question though.

A few weeks ago we were visited by Michael Jermey who is the Director of ITV News, Current Affairs & Sport. I have always admired ITV, and in my household when I was a child we predominantly watched the ITV regional news. Being from Nottingham this was a big deal, Lenton Lane studios were a mammoth complex where they produced game shows like Bullseye and Drama’s like Boon and Crossroads and their local news output was second to none.  Yet over the years as the separate regional independent companies merged to form Carlton television which is now ITV, funding and output has gradually been eroded.  If you’ve got a bit of time to spare I found this half an hour documentary on 20 years of Central News made in 2001.

The news nostalgia in all of that is certainly interesting to see for a news geek like me. It’s also intriguing to note the challenges that they’ve had to face along the way. The internet is being heralded as the greatest invention to journalism since the advent of the printing press, and for weeks guest speakers have been coming in to tell us that they’re either jealous to not be entering the profession now, at the very cusp of all this new technology, or that we as new journalists should be very afraid of the unknown change it brings. Over the 20 years depicted in the documentary charting the development of Central News, technology has advanced, digital TV has expanded, new studios have been built, news output has grown and then shrunk again and companies have rebranded, changed hands and in some cases folded. That is the nature of progress. I particularly like it in the film when veteran news reader Bob Warman likened a change in newsroom editorial control in the early eighties to the arrival of the Television Taliban. I wonder then what he makes of the internet and the digital revolution?

With ITV regional news output looking set to end in 2012, Central News will at least survive to see its 3oth birthday. However the future as yet is hanging in the balance, and will depend on the decision the government will make after the 2010 general election. Ofcom’s suggested alternative to ITV Regional news is for Independently Funded News Consortia to take the reins and this is favoured by the Conservatives. Labour think that merging facilities with the BBC might breathe more life into ITV regional output, yet this is a further erosion in my view.

There aren’t any definites, except for falling advertising revenues, and  Michael Jermey spoke with great gusto and enthusiasm for a brand which until recent cuts had been the market leader in local television news production. He spoke of the rebrand of ITV network news reinvigorating this news service, but perhaps skirted around what the future holds. As trainees we’re all pretty anxious about getting a job when we finish, and there are still many unanswered questions with where local TV news is going.

Anxious- yes, but it’s also very exciting. ITV regional news as we know it could be reaching the end of its days, and I’m sure we will all give Central News a good send-off when (or if) the time comes. Once its pushing up the daisies, we’ll all be there to witness the birth of a new regional news service, and lets only hope it lives to the grand old age of thirty and beyond.

Usually Radio 5 live in the morning ends for me at 9 – the phone in subjects don’t normally warrant making me late. However yesterday was different, as listeners could have their say on the BNP’s forthcoming appearance on Question Time.  I don’t think there has ever been as much anticipation for the BBC’s flagship political programme as this, well not in my adult lifetime anyway. And its developing by the hour with opinion very much divided. The main dissenter is Welsh Secretary Peter Hain who’s latest move has been to lodge his objections to the BBC trust to try and convince them against letting Nick Griffin on the programme. Hain fears giving the BNP such a platform will award them political credibility if Griffin is allowed to appear on primetime television alongside the main parties.

All this on the subtext of last weeks court case that the BNP had broken the race relations act in not allowing non-white members to join the party, which therefore made them ‘illegal’. Apparently they will be recruiting non white members – I don’t reckon they’ll be inundated with applications, do you? Here’s Peter Hain being interviewed on Newsnight by Jeremy Paxman.

The phone in itself was fairly compelling, and there were surprisingly very few callers who thought that it was wrong for the BNP to appear. Arguments for included the fact that as soon as Mr Griffin gets going it’ll become clear what his party stands for; he’s going to need to spin their ideology to within an inch of its life to avoid being verbally ripped to pieces by the audience. Also that if you try and silence fascism it will only come back stronger, as happened historically with the rise of the Nazi’s in Weimar Germany. But the most poignant of contributors was a black muslim caller from Coventry, who said that freedom of expression and tolerance to hear their viewpoint should pervade in this case. It’s about 20 mins in, all makes for an interesting listen.

Anyway you haven’t got long until it disappears forever, or until i learn how to record off iplayer! Yet this morning the plot thickens, the Guardian (them again) have got their hands on a supposed database of BNP members, which has yet to be authenticated. It has been leaked online to the site Wikileaks who say they’ll be publishing it tomorrow, with an apparent snapshot of how the BNP’s membership stood in April this year. Most surprising in this for me is that the East Midlands seems to have the highest concentration of party members. All but my home county of Nottinghamshire appear in the top four including Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Leicestershire. How have people become so disillusioned in the midlands?

Also today a number of former Army chiefs have denounced ‘extremist groups’ who hi-jack the success of the British military for their campaigns. ‘Stolen Valour’ have not named the BNP outright, but its obvious who they are targeting.  So if its downright campaigning for them not to appear, or undermining them before they do, there are plenty of attempts at derailment. The BBC are being extra cautious in terms of security for thursday night’s broadcast and are carrying out extra checks on the live audience before they arrive to ensure that protesters do not sabotage the recording, that itself taking place within the confines of television centre for the first time in 4 years.

I’d have to agree with Jon Snow though; if they have been elected democratically then it’s a broadcaster’s responsibility to report on it demonstrating impartiality and fairness. Nick Griffin may gloss over and give well rehearsed answers, but the majority of the room will be against him including the rest of the panel, so it’d be a miracle if he comes out of it on top. And moreover I think it’d be more damaging if it doesn’t go ahead, the sooner we face the BNP head on, the sooner they will crumble.

Its been twice in the space of a week that we have seen the ever powerful force that twitter commands to create a media storm. It might now be a good time to admit that I’ve spotted the humble pie and I’m not that adverse to a slice, in response to my previous misgivings. Jan Moir’s disgustingly insensitive and homophobic article in the Daily Mail being the more recent example, was first attacked using said social networking site. On this I will not dwell too much, Charlie Booker’s done a stellar job already, and I urge you to take a little bit of time to pay attention to the hint at the very end of his piece. It doesn’t take long. And he’s right, I’m sure the Daily Mail would love the attention.

Anyway, the occasion with which I am referring to is the super-injunction that lawyers Carter Ruck (acting on behalf of their client, British Oil giant Trafigura) tried to impose upon the Guardian at the start of the week. Until Tuesday I was blissfully unaware of this story at all, so if you’re as ignorant as me here’s a quick rundown. I had tried to explain this weeks furore in my own words in a previous edit of this post, but it made it almost 800 words long and I don’t trust my own ability to hold anyone’s attention for that long. Therefore I’ll bat you back over to the Guardian and Robert Booth’s ever so eloquent version of events instead.

So back to my consumption of that ever so small slice of humble pie. This whole debacle has demonstrated the power of collective wisdom and citizen journalism at work. Twitter was able to overthrow the courts, as on Thursday Carter Ruck backed down and the Guardian was free to print as it pleased. The Internet has completely bypassed the legal system, and this time has proved extremely powerful for the right reasons. Freedom of Speech in Parliament has been restored, but does it jeopardise the legal system at large? The answer is plainly yes.

When the Baby P scandal unearthed itself last year the court rightly placed an injunction on the media, preventing them from revealing the identities of those accused so as not to jeopardise the trial.  However, anyone can say anything they like on the internet, and if you so wanted you could find their names using a search engine and a few clicks of a mouse. In the old days all you had to do was silence print, radio and tv and such a media blackout would be more than capable of protecting those involved. This included witnesses and ensuring the jury could not be influenced by what they read in the paper or saw on the news. Now the almost omnipresent force of the internet can expose the details of practically anything, as it can be done anonymously and spread like wildfire.

What I am trying to say is, hoorah for twitter for unearthing the corrupt actions of massive corporations, and vilifying those trusted in the public eye for publishing extreme discriminatory views. But booooo for its potential to undermine the judicial system generally. With a lack of regulation, the Carter Ruck vs The Guardian case only demonstrates the futility of trying to keep sensitive information under wraps, and it poses rather wider questions on the inherent weakness that the entire legal system has against the internet.