Working harder and more online work

The shift from print to online is giving journalists more responsibility, changing job requirements, and more awareness of the commercial side of the business,

That's according to a survey carriedout by PR week( via Editor and Publisher)

The key findings in a survey of 1231 people include

1. Fifty-seven percent of respondents feel they are being asked to work more today that in the past few years
2. Sixty-seven percent of newspaper journalists anticipate "declines in print circulation and increased focus on the Web" over the next three years.
3. few reporters believe their publications in their current state will disappear
   
   

Both traditonal and new media still frames our views of the world.

A fascinating study into how the media frames our view of the world over at Paul Bradshaw's blog.
Nicolas Kayser-Bril has created a series of diagrams of the world which show how a number of news organisations focus on different parts of the world.

Nicolas makes a number of observations,firstly that traditional newspapers have a very insular view of the world,favouring the more developed countries that are closer to home.Secondly the web based media has much the same views and it is only the blogosphere that covers a widerrange of topics and countries.

A way to get young people interested in the news

An interesting post by Martin Moore on a subject much written about on this blog,the youngs lack of interest in Hard News.

Martin laments

Us older generations (i.e. post 35) have spent alot of time over the last decade lamenting the decline of 'news duty' amongst the young

but

This lament has slowly died down as we older generations ourselves have become less and less prone to plough dutifully through a daily paper and then sit patiently through a couple of evening news bulletins

He claims that the younger generation have taken a new step,active participation and points towards a site called Avaaz

Avaaz is not a news outlet in the sense most of us would understand one. It doesn't have breaking news stories. It ignores lots of world events most of us would see as significant. It has no big name columnists voicing their opinions.
Instead, it motivates. It stimulates. It galvanises people to take action.

It is an interesting development and will hopefully encourage young people to participate more in matters that should concern them a lot more

It was 5 years ago today

Greg Mitchell writing on Editor and Publisher reminds us of a 5 year anniversary.

Five years ago tonight, on March 6, 2003, President Bush conducted a televised press conference – less than two weeks before he would order the U.S. invasion of Iraq -- stating in his intro, “We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction.”

It was a time as Greg reminds us that journalism failed in its role as the 4th estate,something that some organisations have yet to get over.

As Greg describes

It was the mood of the affair that was most noteworthy. Bush smiled and made his usual quips, and many of the reporters played the game and did not press him hard. This was how these press gatherings had gone throughout the run-up to war. But this meeting was heavily scripted with Bush looking at a slip of paper and calling on reporters in a pre-arranged order. No one challenged him on this.

To make up for it,he lists the qusetions that should have been asked including

If our allies have the same information on WMD -- and the Iraqi threat is so real -- why do some of our friends refuse to take part in your coalition?

The most important thing to happen top journalists in 10 years

Paul Bradshaw,who is getting quite a few mentions on this blog writes on the ten changes that have effected journalists in the last ten years( Only Ten Paul?)


The usual suspects are there including the web,multimedia and the rise of the amateur but for Paul the biggest is

the increasing involvement of – and expectation of involvement by – “the former audience”. Readers’ letters and phone-ins were one thing – this new relationship between publisher and reader is something else entirely.

And I have to agree,the profession is no longer the provider of information.Instead journalists must be prepared to engage with the audience,be prepared to be challenged over their assumptions and conclusions and be corrected.

Does anyone deserve this (2)?

The coverage given to the speech and interview that Rowen Williams gave on Thursday has been unprecendented across the media and especially in the papers.

If you listen to the interview and read the transcripts of the speech,he certainly doesn't advocate bringing full blown sharia law into the country.He recognised that the nature of sharia in some Islamic countries is not what he is talking about,speaking specifically that the law relating to women would not be appropriate.

He also says that any system would have to give the right of appeal,and that he is talking about the civil law with regard to divorce.

What certain parts of the media has read into the interview is that he wants to bring a parallel system into the country,that Muslims woyld be above the rule of British law and we would soon be subjected to viewings of stoning and floggings on our streets.

The usual supects have led the way,headlines in the Sun along the lines of Bash the Bish ,the Express reporting that sharia is alreadt with us,linking it to terrorism,

These have all fuelled what has turned into outright Islamaphobia.Even the qualities have jumped on the bangwagon and this morning's stories such as the Sunday Times,Minister warns of ‘inbred’ Muslims and the Independent's A question of honour on thess papers front pages only add more fuel to the fire.

I am also sure that it is more than mere coincidence that the Sunday Express chooses to lead with SUICIDE BOMBER, 12, AT UK SCHOOL and could even point a finger at the Observer which tells us Top judges in key ruling on sharia marriage

So what is the solution.It was interesting watching Amanda Platell and Martin Amis discussing the papers on Sunday AM this morning,with the later frankly mistified by the coverage and the former claiming the papers were only responding to what the public wanting debating.

Well is that the case? The arguments about newspaper ideology will run and run but do papers set the agenda or respond to it?

More on lack of trust

Following up Alistair Campbells words on the publics perception of the press and the lack of trust,an interesting piece over at Poynter Online by Roy Peter Clark.


The dangers of this lack of trust are all too obvious in that the press loses its position as the fourth estate od the guardians of checks and balances.

Clark attempts to formulate why this has happened,proposing a number of reasons including the fact that

All journalists understand that the personal bias of the writer or photographer can ooch its way into a story, which is why the protocols of "objectivity" were established to create checks and balances within the systems of news judgment, reporting, writing, editing and publishing. But sometimes the system fails.

but he

holds journalists less responsible -- and the public more responsible -- for misperceptions of news media performance

including an interesting example of why

Media credibility continues to fall during a period when America's political culture has become dangerously polarized. On radio talk show after talk show, in best-seller after best-seller, an industry has grown up with many agendas. Among the greatest of the agendas is to destroy the credibility of the mainstream press. A case can be made that sensitivity to such criticism -- along with accusations that journalists are disloyal to American interests -- softened the skeptical edge of the news media during the lead-up to the Iraqi war.

How do we put thios right? Clark offers some solutions of which one may be a path to go down

Journalists tend to despise public relations and marketing, but if we believe in our calling, we may have to find ways to reveal our best practices and best consequences to anyone who might be receptive. Let's remind them of the journalists who have risked their lives as war correspondents, or who have worked hard to create an environment on the home front

Well at least I agree with some of what Alistair Campbell says

Whatever our own personal opinion of Alsitair Campbell and his role in the culture of spin and manufactured news,he made some quite poignant remarks during his speach to the London College of communication


None more so than the responsibilty that journalists have

The media needs to face up to the need for a genuine debate about its own role, and to understand its responsibilities in a modern democracy go beyond making money and filling space.

This to me underpines all the other arguments that surround the role of journalism and the media in today's society.There are several reasons why this is not the case.The media will argue that they are giving the public what they want which is or appears not to be hard news.

But there are others amongst which Campbell argues

The pressures to get the story first, if wrong, are greater sometimes than the pressures to get the story right, if late

There is also the fact that

The bad news for journalists today is that the media, however seriously people who are in the public eye take it, is not taken as seriously as it once was - by the public.

The question for the media is two fold.How does it win back the trust of the public and secondly how does it convince them of the importance of hard news and debate

Why journalists shouldn't take the polls too seriously

I blogged yeterday about the rsults from New Hampshire and how some papers were more prudent than others over the Democratic opinion polls.

Live science carries a post which attempts to explian why Why Presidential Polls Are Wrong

Blame bad timing and bad media practices for the surprise in the New Hampshire primary on the Democratic side, two political watchers say

For journalists a particular warning from Shawn Parry-Giles, a political communications professor at the University of Maryland

The media should stop treating polls as if they are factual information

and continues

"

Media aren't going to be self-reflexive about their poll," Parry-Giles said. "The journalists themselves just bought into the fact that [Obama] was so far ahead and it was inevitable. I was stunned by the coverage."

Another bad year for Journalism

Reporters without frontiers rounds up 2007 with the news that 86 journalists lost their lives around the world.

These are the statistics

In 2007:
86 journalists and 20 media assistants were killed
887 arrested
1,511 physically attacked or threatened
67 journalists kidnapped
528 media outlets censored

Online:
37 bloggers were arrested
21 physically attacked
2,676 websites shut down or suspended

47 of those killed were in Iraq,6 in Somalia and six in Pakistan.

On top of that at least 2 journalists a day were arrested,mostly in Pakistan,Cuba and Iran.In cyberspace over 2600 sites were shut down,the main culprits,China.Burma and Syria.

Why was the media quiet in the run up to Iraq

As mentioned earlier in the week on this blog,I attended the War media and the Truth conference in London at the weekend.


You can watch the video opening of the conference here,but I have finally got around to putting down some thoughts.



The first speaker at the conference was Tony Benn.In his opening remarks he made the point that information should always be at the core of all decisions.He remarked that journalists have a moral responsiblity to report what is actually happening and explain the alternate arguments.Thus the media should set the agenda.In the run up to the Iraqi war,this was not the case and the agenda was set by government.

Peter Wilby reminded us of a leader that he wrote in the New Statesman during the dossier crisis."Deployed how,where and against whom.

Critical voices on the evidence of weapons of mass destruction were simply not heard.He cites in particular the case of Scott Ridder who was vilified in the press for claiming that the weapons did not exist as being an apologist for Saddam.

As he so aptley put it the headline "Saddam not much of a threat" wouldn't make good copy.


Sami Ramadami,an Iraqi exile talked of his pessimism for the media and described them as being frankly off beat.He dsimissed talk of a conspiracy in the media over the war,instead blaming journalists for having an establishment background.

There was no esrious opposition to the war and the media played the patriotic card once it broke out.Those that questioned it were effectively sidelined.

The day of the Churnalist and the Belly dancer

The question that came up over and over again at the conference( The First Casualty-War Truth and the media today)was why journalists in the run up to the Iraq war choose to ignore the evidence that the war was unjustified.


Blame "CHURNALISM" Guardian writer Nick Davies at the conference as he tried to identify a systematic weakness in journalism today.

So what is churnalism? Davies will publish a book next year which he kindly previewed for the audience.It is called "Flat earth news" and the title is a reflection on the way that journalism works today.

For Davies journalism changed in Jan 1986 when Rupert Murdoch broke the resistance of fleet street to commercialism.From Wapping onwards,his research has shown that the average journalist is filling three times more space today.Staffing levels have been cut but output has increased.The journalist has been turned into a "passive processor".

The consequence of this-there is no time for fact checking and news is now created by the PR machine.This can take many forms from the spin department of Alistair Campbell to the corporate generated press release.

Davies cites the systematic manipulation of the Observer in the run up to the Iraq war,a paper that you would have expected would have campaigned against the war was fed constant information by the security services.It is read by Labour backbenchers,those same backbenchers who choose to support the vote on the War

Sharing the stand with Davies was Andrew Gilligan who has first hand experience of the mechanisms of war reporting.He gave the humorous example of the Telegraph which published a report in 2001 about Iraqi belly dances infiltrating Britain with the intent to assassinate opponents of the Saddam regime.A story that was blatant rubbish especially when a journalist on the paper checked to see how many visas the immigration department had issued for belly dancers,the answer being none.

Wars for Gilligan,create a sellers market with greater demand for news and space that has to be filled.Perversely the supply can collapse often due to logistical reasons and therefore the media has to publish rumours and spin