January 2006


Editorial carelessness could be dangerous

WHILE much of the debate about ‘citizen journalism’ in the UK since July 2005 has centred on the implications for photographers, this phenomenon presents potential problems for editors and executives too.

Many aspects of the debate are not new, but as the costs of video and digital still cameras and camera-phones have decreased, the numbers of individuals buying and using such devices has increased.

The internet and mobile telephony have meant that ‘witness contributors’ can submit material far more easily and cheaply than was possible even in the 1990s

Authenticity and checking
In September 2005, the newly-appointed BBC head of television news Peter Horrocks told Press Gazette that: ‘Much of the proposed savings in news will be used to invest in new technology. For instance, we hope to have the capacity to increase interactivity further.’

PG then reported that Horrocks ‘paid tribute to citizen journalists journalists who he said had shown their deep trust in the BBC on 7 July when they sent (in) more than 1,000 images’.

‘We need to get even better at inviting such information, checking it and getting it on air quickly,’ Horrocks told Press Gazette.

Such views are worrying. The implication, be it real or in Press Gazette’s reporting, is that ‘interactivity’ is ‘cheap’.

Horrocks can also be seen as naďve in expecting that all images and information supplied to the BBC will be provided honestly and in good faith.

Exposed executives
The temptation for bringing the Corporation into disrepute is already great and will increase. One aspect of the otherwise weak Hutton Report was to reveal the vulnerability of BBC news executives.

The BBC was hit in December 2004 by a hoax about a potential settlement of claims from the Dow Chemical explosion in Bhopal, India, 20 years after the disaster.

After broadcasting an interview with a man claiming to represent Dow, the Corporation had to back down with an embarrassing apology and a claim that it had been the victim of ‘an elaborate hoax’.

The following day, The Guardian reported that the hoaxer had targeted Dow Chemical in the past.

Confusion followed the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menenzes at Stockwell Underground station in London in July 2005 apparently because the authenticity of those claiming to be eye witnesses was not checked adequately before they were interviewed live on air by the rolling TV news channels and radio stations.

Fleet Street was, in the past, regularly taken in by the late Rocky Ryan, despite his notoriety.

Also, in 2005, reports were emerging of experienced video journalists and film makers who had been taken in by an individual purporting to be an independent producer who was allegedly selling on their material by misrepresenting its content to major international news broadcasters.

If broadcasting organizations and newsdesks can be taken in by individuals presenting themselves as bona fide professional journalists, then the scope for problems becoming more frequent and more serious because ‘citizen journalists’ are misleading editors – for whatever reason – has serious implications for those organisations and their credibility.

Checking has to be done by journalists. The process is time-consuming and expensive.

BBC News Online editor Peter Clifton has said the Corporation will apply the same editorial guidelines to using witness images as any other material. Ensuring this does happen will require monitoring, especially in the heat of a major event.

In January 2006, the BBC did confirm that it was expanding the team checking user content from three to six.

Speaking at the Society of Editors conference at Windermere, in October 2005, News International chairman Les Hinton accused witness journalists of ‘amateurism, misrepresentation and failing to emulate the standards of traditional news organizations’.

Mr Hinton said bloggers were responsible for ‘bad information’ coming from New Orleans during coverage of Hurricane Katrina and called on journalists to maintain their status as experts to bolster trust among readers.

Blogging
The demise of newspapers and television as reliable sources of news in the United States has co-incided with the increase in ‘blogging’ there.

However, abuse of blogging for political purposes is regarded by some to have already discredited the concept, to the point of being entirely unreliable.

The domination of the US media by commercial interests, and continual political and financial pressures on the only alternatives – National Public Radio (NPR) and PBS television stations – is not however replicated in the UK.

Other bodies, such as the National Union of Journalists, can – and should – take a lead in reminding ‘media consumers’ that blogging is primarily opinion and not news per se.

Where, especially with daily newspapers in the UK, the personal political agendas of proprietors and the columnists who reflect their views are well-known and quite apparent, with interests usually being open and declared, such cannot be said of blogging.

Newspapers are not immune from such deceptions. A trainee journalist working at The Guardian in 2005 was effectively dismissed after writing a comment feature without declaring links with an Islamic political group.

In October 2005, it also became clear that the Bush administration in the US had ‘violated’, according to the International Herald Tribune, the law by ‘purchasing favourable news coverage of President George W Bush’s education policies by making payments to conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.’

US broadcasters were relieved of any legal obligation for fairness by a law change during the first Reagan administration. The effects for the political health of the USA did not become fully apparent until 20 years later.

Blogging also came into disrepute during the 2004 US election campaign, with commentators failing to declare their interests and agendas.

As News International chairman Les Hinton said, blogging is no alternative to ‘proper’ newsgathering.

Although managers in UK newspaper groups do seem to be following the lead of their US counterparts by putting ‘reader value’ ahead of news reporting and its importance for the broader political health in a democratic system, there is a role for online news and online publishing – with adherence to either the Press Council’s Code of Practice, a part of many journalists’ contracts of employment, or the NUJ’s own Code of Conduct.

Authenticity and credibility
Life may not be ideal for journalists. Pressure from proprietors may limit the scope for newsgathering and reporting, and even with the dominance of the Press Association monopoly, the authenticity and credibility of the UK’s newspapers and news broadcasters remains infinitely greater than almost any blog.

The scope for the promotion of alternative ‘quality’ statements – such as the NUJ’s Code of Conduct – remains (in January 2006) very great indeed.

Some working for online outlets have a naďve belief that there is an untainted, benevolent ‘web community’. If such a community ever existed, it may have been good.

However, by 2005, it was clear that many online outlets had to be regarded with scepticism. The most trusted websites seem to be those of ‘established’ news organisations, such as the BBC and The Guardian.

While there are genuine circumstances when witness contributors can greatly add to the understanding of events, how they are unfolding, their causes and consequences, experience also shows that such material has to be used with great care.

In another context, the artist David Hockney posed the question of whether any photograph – digital or ‘conventional’ could ever be trusted, especially in court cases or other similarly sensitive situations.

Popular television crime dramas such as CSI have shown how time-consuming and expensive it can be for highly-skilled experts to establish the provenance of such images.

If it hasn’t happened already, it is only a matter of time before an audacious, but highly effective confidence trick is pulled on editors.

Indeed, editors may be tempting revenge too.

Early in 2006, The News of the World, the high-selling Sunday tabloid published by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in the UK, set a weekend’s news agenda by reporting how the England football coach Sven Goran Eriksson had made allegedly injudicious remarks to a reporter in disguise.

It would only take one individual, with sympathy for a public figure they believed to have been slighted, to try a similar ruse on a high-profile editor.

Unless editors have enough, sufficiently skilled and adequately paid staff on every necessary shift to scrutinise ‘witness contributions’ properly, they cannot blame anyone but themselves when they are, probably inevitably, taken for such a ride.

It will only take on hoax picture to be published and serious damage could be done to a title's credibility.

Indeed, the Daily Mirror lost an editor over pictures that executives later, in Press Gazette, conceded had been 'a calculated and malicious hoax'.

The Mirror had, by January 2006, largely recovered from that incident, but next time, the consequences could be worse.