I don’t believe in an absolute right or obligation to publish everything. I know that newsrooms saw imagery from Woolwich that they did not put on screen or in their pages. Imagery that is full of gore may be a realistic portrayal of an appalling act but showing it all can actually stop people from watching and distance them from the act itself.

It’s also not good enough to say that these images would be published online anyway, though that is certainly true. The video and photographs of the immediate aftermath were taken by citizens and some were broadcast on social networks as well as offered to the news media. But journalists still have to reflect on their ethical, social and political responsibilities before using them.

When I asked this question on Twitter [@CharlieBeckett] I got a range of replies.

Journalists tended to say that the public should see tough images of what was a shocking event:

Some pointed out that once an image is published on one platform other media will follow:

It was also pointed out that it’s the words that go with the pictures that can make the impact better or worse:

While others said that broadcasting the attacker’s message was wrong:

While others worried about the impact on the relatives involved and on the wider population:

My view is that you can’t understand what happened without hearing and seeing both the attacker, the banal location, and the upset witnesses. That image and that voice is the essence of the horror. Of course, warnings and caveats are needed. Care must be taken with the use of descriptors such as ‘Muslim’ or the word ‘terrorist’ or ‘terror’. I agree with the BBC’s Mark Urban that it is a technical rather than moral term. This was a terror attack, but a white person killing an elderly asian man a few weeks ago was not – it was racist.

On the ‘oxygen of publicity’ question I can’t see how news can continue if we worry too much about inspiring support or imitation of ghastly acts like this. But it is important to show the context. That is why we need to hear reaction from the eye-witnesses and others in the various communities who are affected. Sometimes those reactions can feel pious or cliched, but it is important to say the obvious and even sententious sometimes. In that sense, David Cameron’s response has been exemplary.

You can listen to a debate between Sir Peter Fahey from Greater Manchester Police and myself on BBC Radio 4 World at One here

[There's a good alternative view here from Sunder Katawala who says the media has given the terrorists a 'megaphone' but I think that is a simplistic view of how people react to the messages and their ability to contextualise. Though I agree that it's up to the media, politicians and so-called community leaders to articulate the alternative to the terrorists.

Less surprisingly, media prof and former tabloid editor Roy Greenslade agrees that the images should have been published]

Katz among the BBC pigeons?

In the general scheme of things the move of the deputy editor of a small circulation quality broadsheet to the post of editor of a niche BBC news programme is not seismic. Even in the relatively small pond of London journalism the Guardian’s Ian Katz’s appointment as editor of Newsnight is a small splash. But it does suggest how things are changing.

For the Guardian it is an indication that philosopher king Alan Rusbridger (Aged 60) is not about to bow out. He still has about four years left on his plan to bring the paper back to some kind of financial sustainability. And anyway, Guardian editors are more like monarchs, they chose when they go. This one has the board of the paper (The Scott Trust) firmly on his side, if not in the palm of his hand, so why would he leave a very well paid and most agreeable job? He still has plenty to offer.*

Katz leaving could be taken as a sign of the weakness of the paper sector compared to public service broadcasting, especially so soon after the BBC’s signing of former Times editor James Harding. But then Harding was unemployed at the time, and the Guardian has never been as lucrative a posting as the rest of ‘Fleet Street’ once was. The Guardian is not about to lose its leader but sometimes it’s good to have spaces opened up elsewhere in top management. Who knows, they might even have the imagination to bring in fresh blood. (Cf hiring of Wolfgang Blau). But it is a big blow to lose such a substantial figure at a time of great change.

It does show the new confidence at Tony Hall’s BBC. Once again they have gone for talent, regardless of its provenance (or its gender). Purnell from Labour, Harding ‘from’ News International, Katz from the small circulation left-wing paper that is the most read in the BBC.

Katz has always struck me as very serious, intelligent and full of energy – not a show-off but very effective and astute. Forget his liberal politics for a moment (though I know the Tories and Tory press will not), he will bring fresh ideas, new perspectives and some much-needed confidence to what used to be the BBC’s leading news programme.

Newsnight, as they say, is not what it used to be. This is partly about recent scandals and budget emasculations, but there was a longer trend of listless decline. Newsnight is currently overshadowed by rivals such as Channel 4 News with its recent track record of scoops but also by other BBC shows such as Daily Politics, Marr and even the regular news shows on radio. Martha Kearney, Andrew Neil and Eddie Mair are as effective (more effective?) these days as Jeremy Paxman. One of the challenges for Katz will be re-energising the legend that is Paxo, but also bringing through the abundant talent around such as Paul Mason and ex Guardianista Allegra Stratton. But Katz should know something about succession planning by now.

Just one after thought. The BBC previously hired a very talented, imaginative, youngish journalist from outside to head up Newsnight. He’s now working for Google.

Updates:

At least as significant an appointment today at the BBC is James Angus (Dep Ed Newsnight) to the Today Programme editorship. This really needs a safe pair of hands to carry on the outstanding work of Ceri Thomas who has shaped a programme that continues to set the agenda, but in real style with a very accomplished suite of presenters who are all in form. Newsnight is where the Establishment is supposed to reflect after a hard day, but it’s the Today programme (I know, plus the newspapers) that tells them what to think about at the start of the news cycle.

It’s also interesting that it is Sky that spotted the outstanding female talent in newspapers, snatching former Observer, most recently Times political/social affairs correspondent Anushka Asthana.

And for those of you thinking of moving from print to screen, remember it’s nothing new and not always uncomplicated. As Michael Frayn’s hilarious satire, Towards The End Of Morning about a ‘Guardian’-type hack who falls in love with telly in the 60s makes abundantly clear.

[*Declaration of interest: I've been a long-term - unpaid - 'collaborator' with the Guardian on its 'open journalism' strategy - see this article for example]

In this case it was a group that included animal charities, a museum and the scouts which made me think much harder about how the general principles I talk about might work in practice with diverse organisations that have quite different audiences, subjects and aims but are all change-seekers.

First understand that the communications context has changed:

1. Media is environmental

2. Communications are networked – including mainstream media and PR

3. People are networked communicators – generational, gender, gaps

But for ethical communicators the environment has also changed:

1. A lot of caring people who are more informed, educated, cosmopolitan, and better connected than ever before.

2.  Old model for ethical communications was that ‘we’ are right and that if only we could get our message across then people would care and act. Is bust

3. ‘Post-humanitarianism’ ‘Ironic spectator- scepticism – personalisation – loss of certainty

Also there is now Information overload – confusion – distraction – distrust -

Complexity plus uncertainty

Most thoughtful or sophisticated campaigners or charities realise that they have a problem and are responding in very creative and reflective ways. For many, they will say NO problem – we’re fundraising or getting awareness despite the economic crisis so why worry?

Digital is not a solution – it’s an opportunity to begin a sustainable relationship

Kony2012 is an extreme example of this – massively successful yet did not catch Kony and may have had a negative impact on perceptions of Africa and progress in places like Africa.

Lessons for NGOs and other ethical communicators?

1. Our research shows that the public are increasingly sceptical about ethical marketing: by NGOs, charities, politicians etc which they see as the same as commercial marketing – they don’t see the result of agency – you did not Make Poverty History,

2. The key message is that your communications must embody your values and purpose and must be tailored to suit your organisation – but here are some principles:

3. Keep it simple – focus on taking people on an emotional plus rational journey for themselves

4. Keep it consistent – don’t give contradictory communications in an attempt to target niches etc

5. Include ‘ beneficiaries’ – not just in messaging to donors but also give capacity to partners to have their own voice and own deliberation space

Conclusion:

Integrity – this is partly about your whole organisation being communicative – but also about values – your communications must be resilient – so when you make a mistake your are open and forgivable and can listen and learn

You can watch me talking about this (from 15’45″) in this video from a session at the Perugia Journalism Festival which had more substantial contributions from Emily Bell (ex Guardian now Columbia University) and Lauren Wolfe, creator of the Women Under Siege project, all chaired by the real expert, the Guardian’s Jane Martinson.

Mine’s a pint of euro-scepticism

In the not so distant past if we were discussing political communications trends we might talk about Facebook and Barack Obama, or Twitter and #IagreewithNick’. Today I want to look at Nigel Farage and the George and Dragon pub. [You can see the slides for this talk here]

There are thousands of media scholars out there analysing Occupy Wall Street and the impact of social media, but instead of always studying the formally avant-garde, marginal and the aberrant, perhaps we should also be looking at how the populist disrupters have stormed the mainstream with quite conventional tactics. The latter have been much more successful politically and are indicative of a wider series of trends around political communications. We are now in a digital environment of networked information flows. Yet despite – or because of this – the analogue and the authentic are more important than ever.

This is the big question:

Is this what happens to political communications when your economy is collapsing and the democratic system is seen as both out of touch and ineffective at delivering material security and political accountability?

My answer is ‘Yes’, but only if the system and circumstances allow it. The interesting outcome is not whether Nigel Farage will become Prime Minister but what impact UKIP might have on UK politics and, from my media centric point of view, what impact he – and others like Boris Johnson – are having on political communications.

[One interesting side-bar question related to this is’ where are the left populists?’ Who is the next Red Ken? Why does being the Official Opposition preclude populism? Blue Labour and Maurice Glasman have not anything like Farage’s impact - yet]

How Does It Happen?

In the case of UKIP we know that the main issues that provoke this kind of populist movement are material: immigration, economic crisis (unemployment, income falls, household inflation, housing etc), crime and the power of the European Union.[1] We also know who they are. They are generally, older, male, working and lower middle class, previously Tory-voting. But they are much more than a niche.

Beyond these issue-related concerns, the potential for this kind of populist political insurgency is enhanced by familiar political structural trends in the UK: the decline of parties, the dilution of tribalism, increased scepticism about authority and the growth of more diverse identity and special interest politics. As we will see, criticism of the incoherence of their support missed the point that this is a coalition of imagined as well as real anxieties.

I can see that the electoral maths still favours a conservative response in the short-term for the three main leaders. All the debate about the reaction to UKIP has been in terms of how the major parties might respond tactically. But more generally this kind of populist surge should be taken seriously for (at least) three reasons: :

1. It is indicative that something is wrong with the system: so many people feel hostility to a political structure and a public sphere that fails to address their concerns, let alone deal with them
2. It has the potential to shift policy outcomes: the other parties will feel obliged to react to the popularity of UKIP and the overall tenor of debate will be re-framed, to the exclusion of some other under-recognised demographics
3. It has the potential to exacerbate potentially damaging structural trends towards democratic malfunctioning: it’s quite possible that the other parties will actually retreat from the policy spheres that UKIP addresses and also fail to learn the lessons of citizen engagement.

So that is the political context but what us the significance for political communications?

First we should recognise that the conventional model of British liberal democracy and political communications is in the process of structural reorientation. The traditional idea was that the news media as fourth estate helped the flow of information from the governed and government – it created a space for deliberation that informed policy-making in a linear, predictable way. Those relationships are now in an unstable, networked relationship.

The internet as catalyst through social media and networked digital communications has created far more flows of information and deliberation that are less subject to control. This does not mean that populist movements are always born out of digital communications. The Five Star movement and Beppe Grillo were certainly facilitated by his blog and their use of social media to message and to mobilise, but the key to his success was physical demonstrations and success at elections. What gave Five Star impact on public consciousness was not its networked nature, but its charismatic leader who personified an alternative to the way politics is done in Italy.

Nigel is an English version of Grillo. Though as we shall see, with significant differences. Not least that he and UKIP are largely non digital.

Secondly, for Farage and Grillo to be successful they have to look and sound different. This is partly about what they talk about, but it is also down to NOT being like the Others. The professionalization of political public relations and its thorough-going domination of processes of policy generation, executive operation and electoral campaigning has created a corporately-staffed and corporate culture. This goes back many decades but has now reached its generational apogee with a PM from public relations. The recent coverage of Cameron’s ‘chumocracy’ reinforces this, because it’s true.

The other factor is the personalisation of political discourse – this is partly about presidential politics – emotional engagement – symbolism – but also by public who stress the perceived values not policies or class allegiances of the people or parties they vote for. Both mass and social media place high value on visual cues, key phrases, personality and appearance. Yet, the politicians are not actually very good at this kind of politics because they don’t accept the logic that the medium is the message. Farage does. What you see is what you get.

Let’s put this in a wider context of how people are now bombarded with the corporatisation of political ideology put into a personalised framework.

Ideology Goes Corporate

 Let’s have a look at a couple of videos.

 [Levi’s Go Forth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT16DcHcjRA]

This is clearly a film that seeks to take various visual tropes of youthful ‘counter-culture’ and appropriate them for clothing marketing. Note the number of views (3 million plus).

This version of the video makes this critique explicit:

[Go Forth Satire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVc8auO1vuA&feature=related]

Note the number of views (a few thousand).

This jeans video in its commercial form is more political than any party political broadcast or NGO advertisement – although of course it seeks to de-politicise the very imagery and language it deploys. It is not surprising, therefore, that our research shows that the public are now universally sceptical of political or ethical marketing because it has become more like the commercial marketing that has, in turn, assimilated the personal and political communications space. The public are now in what my colleague Lilie Chouliaraki calls ‘ironic spectators’ in a ‘post humanitarian’ communications environment.[2]

 The Professionalization of political PR has got to such as thorough-going point that the public is unable to distinguish between commercial and civic communications. This is not just about politicians ‘lying’. Though Nick Clegg has found out that taking a principled position that you don’t believe in is not a thing that builds confidence. And his so-called apology actually only worked because it was satirised – humour made it more human than the original calculated communication.

Out Of Touch?

It is not simply about being ‘out of touch’. As political journalist Steve Richards has pointed out, politicians are in fact ‘neurotically’ obsessed with keeping constantly in touch through focus groups and opinion polls. Instead, the problem might be better understood as about the distance and detachment of politicians from the discourse itself. Mrs Thatcher was a great example of a politician who could be manipulated in presentational terms – the voice lowered, the hair style softened, the phrasing tightened up – but in the end it was her ability to project her personality of ideological self-confidence and her political aggression on policy issues and ideological conflicts that won people over.

One response to this growing sense of ‘discourse distance’ has been the personalisation of political discourse both by politicians and public. The public want politicians who represent their feelings and instincts about ideology – not someone who represents a policy manifesto. Again historic social trends such as education, feminism, and individualism, have fostered this trend towards the personalisation of politics but both modern mass media and the development of social media have accelerated it, too. As we know politicians in the UK have been most successful when they respond to this: Thatcher, Blair  - and less successful when they can’t: Major and Brown.

Yet the paradox of contemporary political communication is that the professionalization of personalisation is counter-productive. In an age of scepticism the one value that the voters want – authenticity – is rendered undeliverable by a professional political class that seek to secure their power with risk-averse, non-interactive communication.

This is a message that even Conservatives think is a problem:

“I am afraid the Ukip leader has a style and a manner of speaking that connects with ordinary mortals much better than professional politicians.

“He is unafraid to be filmed with a pint of beer and a cigarette in his hand when all of our media training tells us to eschew either image.

“He also uses soundbites that appeal to Conservatives. I suspect many are unrehearsed – again something professionals are trained never to do.

“You and George [Osborne], in particular, have been portrayed as public school toffs.

“You have to work out how to be one of us without affectation or silly gimmicks and to speak the language of Joe Public.”

Keith Mitchell MP, Frmr leader Oxon County Council, Daily Telegraph May 8th 2013

But can Osborne and Cameron change? The reality is that they are detached so how can they argue the opposite? That’s why Cameron and Clarke both made irretrievable mistakes by calling UKIP ‘clowns’ and ‘fruitcakes’. Ironically , it was – for once – what they really think about these people.

That is why Farage works. His policies are incoherent but he has the personal ability to embody people’s personal anxieties – on immigration, Europe, bankers, Etonians, corruption, etc. This is particularly impressive when you think that he is a private school educated city trader who is married to a German.

He is also (almost) totally analogue. He succeeds by being on TV and radio a lot as well as in newspapers. He is probably more successful because although he is an MEP, his party is firmly outside the mainstream. Of course, his popularity may well change as he and his party come under scrutiny. He does not seem to have a strategy for converting the protest vote into sustainable support. However, protest is becoming a permanent part of the British electoral make-up. UKIP does represent such a sizeable chunk of unrepresented public opinion that he remains a real challenge to the other parties and how they communicate.

How To Re-Connect?

So how to re-connect politics? The wonderful play This House at the National Theatre is about another pre-Thatcherite age when it was taken for granted that politicians spoke on behalf of their tribes of supporters. The disconnect that has followed has still not been factored into the make-up of the politicians, the parties and their communications systems. At the same time, the political class is made up of an ever-narrower group of people in terms of educational, personal and professional background.

As I suggested earlier, perhaps the main parties don’t want to change. The Conservatives are anxious not to get dragged further down a euro-sceptical road while Labour and the Lib Dems are uncomfortable at the anti-immigration agenda. None of them have an economic answer that does not involve more pain and the perception that they are serving the interest of either a rich elite or ‘scroungers’. Electorally it makes more sense in the short-term for the main parties to hope UKIP blows over and its voters return to the mainstream when faced with choosing a government not a council or MEP. This ignores the lessons of political communications that Farages teaches.

Networked Politics

Our research[3] shows that politicians are now exploring new ways that combine the use of mass mainstream media and more personalised social networks. As Labour MP Stella Creasy has shown, these networks are useful catalysts for specific campaigns and overall provide new – albeit unrepresentative – channels for feedback and some limited debate. However, social media is not enough. Mainstream media is still the primary driver of political content on social media as well as the dominant provider of political information and influence to the public. The parties can use social media partly to realign their conversations with the public but in the end they must address their failure to take on board what they are hearing and their reluctance to engage with the debates and discourse. They must change who they are as well as how they communicate.

In this sense, it is a question of responding to wider shifts in the media environment – and the changing public attitudes to ideological communication – ideas such as that people assume interactivity, they expect transparency and they prefer open, sharable, social content. Mainstream legacy media is still the dominant force – it allowed UKIP and Farage to emerge – but it is within a communications and social context that makes political communications more complex and uncertain than ever before. Unless you have your values embodied in your communications – like Farage – and can claim genuine not fake authenticity then you will struggle to convince.

 [This article was a presentation to the British Government@LSE research seminar on May 8th 2013]

[1] http://www.ipsos-mori.com/newsevents/blogs/thepoliticswire/1334/UKIP-voters-who-are-they.aspx

[2] Chouliaraki, L, 2013, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity In The Age of  Post Humanitarianism, (Polity)

[3] Creasy, S (2011) Perpetual Engagement: The Potential And Pitfalls Of Using Social Media For Political Campaigning (Polis, LSE)

Disruption Ahead

It is clear that there is more disruption ahead. Cheaper production, an abundance of material (especially niche) combined with an explosion of distribution possibilities and ‘glocal’ competition means the rules of the game will continue to be re-invented.

You only have to take one factor: ‘mobile’ to realise that we simply don’t know how behaviour will change and how new contexts for content creation and consumption might yet unfold.

Linear and On-Demand

The difference between linear and on-demand broadcasting will fade away as we bid adieu to the idea of the channel. Yes, TV is remarkably resilient in terms of ratings and impact. Yes, radio is booming in the multi-platform era. But how we consume it and what we do around it is changing. We are headed for a world where ‘everything is a playlist’.

What’s Curation?

At the heart of this process is a the fight for curation. Curation was a word that kept popping up in significant places during our deliberations and yet it means a whole range of things – many still to be discovered. In Austria, a curator is a lawyer who acts on behalf of someone who can’t act for themselves. In the UK, we think of glass cases in museums. A curate is the executive assistant to a priest.

But the idea of either automatic or deliberation curation of content to connect, filter, shape, channel, grade, verify or otherwise direct the flow of information and content remained central for those trying to find a role for public service media organisations [PSMs] in this new world.

Yet how will it happen? At the moment – for TV -  the curator is the remote control. But what happens when the remote becomes social, for example when it is an interactive, networked app on a smartphone?

Public Service Media Assets

It’s easy to see all this as a threat to the Old Order and PSMs place in it. PSMs are sometimes conservative, bloated and banal. But PSMs have assets:

• They have channels which may change but will still be forces for navigation.
• They have skills, especially in story-telling, be it drama, news or sports.
• They have a subsidy through taxes, fees etc for creativity which allows them to innovate and take risks
• They have a connection to society through their funding, governance and history which in the best cases is based on trust.

But budgets are down, visibility is down and possibly relevance is down as other platforms, providers and sources crowd upon the public sphere stage.

Tough Questions

So there are some critical and tough questions for PSMs to ask themselves.

• How much to produce?
• How much to curate?
• Go broad or niche?
• How to create shared events in a fragmented world?
• Decentralise or go for big impact?

Of course, not all these choices are either/or. FOr example, is it possible to connect to and work with third-parties but keep your branding?  And sometimes, there might not be a choice. It’s all very well wanting to share but what if property rights are tightened up and there is no reciprocity?

Change, colleagues and Competitors

Over all this hangs the problem of bringing your people and organisation with you even if you agree on priorities and a strategy. Change does not happen in neat steps. It is continuous. How can you get your producers – and your public – to jump to new paradigms?

And bear in mind that your competitors will be doing the same thing. If you think that the PSMs face radical change – go talk to commercial broadcasters who are painfully aware of the new environment.

The new media companies like Google are becoming more like PSMs in  some ways. They are now building channels and charging subscriptions and investing in content – look at Netflix and their investment in the top quality content of ‘House of Cards’. But these companies are more like a Personal Service Media rather than an overtly Public Service Media with all that suggests of a wider social role and ethical and political responsibilities.

Who Wins?

Of course, it’s not as if people are not already working on these issues. And we think that we can already define some clear winners.

• Consumers will win. They are more in control and have more choice.
• Content producers will win. The one things driving profit and profile is the content.

We can also see some trends that have already gained momentum. Live  will not only survive but thrive. Look at music and football.

Know Your Audience

Those trends will depend largely on audience behaviour. PSMs already have a lot of consumer data but don’t use it and don’t work hard enough to dig down and compare with other outlets’. Other media platforms such as Tivo are investing heavily in continuous and detailed audience monitoring and PSMs need to do the same if they are to understand how their services are appreciated, used or ignored.

This isn’t all about Old v New Media. The classical idea of websites is dying faster than the idea of linear TV and being replaced by Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 networks. Yet even in a multi-platform/on-demand world you should still respect your physical temporal opportunities such as scheduling windows for the release – or re-release of material.

It’s also not just about commercial v public. Private media companies are facing the same contextual challenges.

Talking Generations

The fundamental demographic question underpinned a lot of these conversations and there was a debate about how to tailor services to young people especially without ignoring other groups – or the fact that one day young people will become older and will want different things from PSMs.

Crisis And Complexity

As you will see from the graphic realisation of one session looking at issues that need much more thinking through, things are going to get a lot more complex. Yet  there are also some very simple problems such as the reduction in resources that almost all PSMs are facing in the face of the economic crisis. Yet, they do at least have public support and an institutional capacity. If this session was anything to go by, they are past the stage of institutional resistance to change and now well on the way to deciding priorities for decisive action. While all have very distinct media markets the benefits of sharing this debate were clear.

TV is Twitter is Reddit is…

What does the Boston bombing tell us about how news is changing? This post was written while it was happening, so it’s a first draft and  I welcome further thoughts and feedback.

It was an exceptional story but I think it shows us some key trends:

1. Twitter is now central
2. Different platforms have different editorial values – even within the same news organisation
3. ‘Crowd-sourcing’ is incredibly active, but still ill-directed
4. Social media is ‘maturing’
5. The public now has access to more and, arguably, better sources than ever before
6. There’s more ‘noise’

Please read on.

Paul Bradshaw’s original news diamond

Seven years ago when Twitter was just another start up, media academic Paul Bradshaw created a model for the 21st century newsroom which showed how ‘news’ is now produced in a multi-platform, multi-source process. I adapted the idea behind the model as a scenario for my book SuperMedia which described the arrival of networked journalism. We’ve all tried to update those models in response to developing news practice, and the Boston Marathon bombing story shows how far we’ve had to move.

 This morning I woke up to news that Boston police were involved in a shooting  in the district of Watertown just days after the marathon bombing. I won’t give the detailed event or news narrative but tapping into the coverage makes clear how different platforms now have varied concepts of what news is. I think this is a good thing if it means we get choice. Though it must confuse the audience at times and it must also be a constant problem for journalists.

Old instincts die hard. Most news journalists want to be ‘first’ as well as right. I tweeted this morning:

“Intersting [sic] that @BBCr4today is ignoring Boston breaking news. Provides real choice I guess but shows its not really a news programme.”

Different Kinds of News

A couple of loyal BBC journalists retorted variously that Radio 5 was reporting the news in more detail and that Today had mentioned it (before moving on to other stories such as a feature on a very old tree). Other listeners replied to me on Twitter that they would rather Today waited and got it all ‘right’. I would agree. When I said ‘not really a news programme’ I should have said, a ‘different kind of news programme’. 

The BBC is in an unusual position in that it has more platforms than any other journalistic organisation that I know. It also has a deliberate policy of verification rather than just speculation/narration. So despite an excellent newsroom social media operation it is always going to feel slightly ‘behind’ on stories like this. Some people – perhaps a majority – might prefer that:

One of the questions the BBC face is how far they go – for example on a live blog on their website – to try to ‘curate’ the information breaking in other sources such as Twitter or other media organisations. Interestingly, they were nearly an hour behind the Telegraph in setting up a live blog. That’s just a technicality, but perhaps symptomatic of different editorial policies?

Making Decisions

Of course, it’s not just the BBC. All journalists have to make decisions according to their editorial policies and resources. Channel 4 News’ Faisal Islam who is in the US was retweeting various local journalists who were tweeting lines from the scene. He included the odd caveat, but in effect he was being that programme’s reporter + social media outlet.

So we saw this morning how this works.

Twitter runs ahead. Sometimes with false leads or dead ends as well as good ones. Twitter also has different standards. The two suspects in photos released by the police were both named.

But if you followed local journalists like @GarretQuinn @efleischer and @sethmnookin you got immediate updates from the scene that were as reliable as any immediate reporting can be. Plus there were outlets such as the big local paper, the Globe and, of course, twitter updates from the authorities including the Boston Police Commissioner. It’s difficult now to believe that some people actually mocked Greater Manchester Police when they first went on Twitter a few years ago.

This might well be the moment when open forums such as Reddit and 4 Chan claim a journalistic role. Not everyone would approve of them naming suspects (including people who were certainly not involved) but the crowd-sourcing on those sites around the imagery has been fascinating. Though as Charles Arthur points out – incorrect. They recovered some ethical credit when they came out with a full apology.

They also linked to sites that helped people send in evidence to the police. Whether all this amateur investigative journalism helped or hindered the police we don’t know yet. I suspect the FBI had plenty of their own material to work with and enough intelligence analysis in-house.

But I do think that there is now evidence that social media is maturing and that contributers realise that expertise and reliability will get more sustained attention as opposed to mindless speculation. If you look at those sites it’s interesting how self-critically, self-correcting they can be.

Social Media Disintermediated

And even social media has been disintermediated. By that I mean short-circuited or by-passed. In America, at least, the public can log onto websites that scan the radio communications of fire, police and other emergency services so you can hear them talking to each other live about the operation. Of course, what they say is not verified – a police officer may also get things wrong – but it is a direct source.

No-one and no news is perfect

So in the face of some social media triumphalism how did traditional media fare?

Rolling TV (and radio) news scoops up the information from official and social media sources and in its desire to fill the gaps between real incident and information speculates, often inanely. But the one big glaring rolling news mainstream media mistake at CNN appeared to be a traditional editorial balls-up where misinterpreted tips from (unreliable) traditional sources were over-reported, on air.

At least one newspaper, the New York Daily Post screwed up big time by implying an innocent person was a suspect – ironically, by using an image taken from Reddit.

But there has been some outstanding reporting by mainstream media both of the actual events and of the surrounding social media noise.

Other parts of ‘legacy’ traditional media have been revitalised by social media developments. Some stalwarts of the US networks such as Pete Williams at NBC were well-briefed by their contacts and erred on the side of caution while staying very close to the front edge of breaking news. He wasn’t infallible but he was generally sound.

Everyone says that Twitter is the new news agency feed – but old fashioned news agencies like Associated Press are now in the public eye thanks to Twitter itself. Before only journalists had access to AP or Reuters, now those news suppliers communicate direct with  the public and can hit home with stunning revelations like this one this morning when AP seem to have got the critical fact first on identification of the suspects:

The whole point of Breaking News is that it is by its very nature confused, provisional, uncertain, contradictory, and developing. The wonderful New York Times, like the rest of the media, told us that the suspects had robbed a 7-Eleven convenience store. Later, it turned out not to be true:

Real life is messy. It always was. It’s just that in the past, you the public didn’t see it until it became Normal News. Now you can, almost, see for yourselves.

Known Unknowns

This means that journalists (and that includes those people on Reddit) have to develop a new language of what we know and don’t know that makes Donald Rumsfeld’s famous ontological aphorism look positively simplistic. They have to explain to a public who have access (potentially) to everything why their version of events is partial. There’s no shame in being open in a transparent world.

A good example of this was the Sky News presenter saying to her correspondent that many people were asking Sky on their social media what the suspects names were – he explained that they have not been confirmed officially so they won’t repeat them on air.

But the best example of excellent mainstream media news reporting has to go to an unexpected (for me) source – local Boston TV news. ABC affiliate WCVB led by brilliant reporter @SeanKellyTV had the best picture, the detail and the local touch plus they handled all the verification and proportionality issues with care without losing the drama. A great advert for local TV and thanks to the Internet, I can follow them from London.

More Journalism, Not Less, But Better

I think that this all shows that we need more good journalism not less. The folks contributing on Reddit aren’t trying to replace CNN. But both need to pay attention to each other and improve what they do. We have the right to communicate but we also have responsibilities to do it well.

From the journalists’ point of view it means that newsroom systems have to be re-calibrated. This means in a practical way they have to be able to respond to multiple sources and speeds of information. In an ethical sense, they have to set parameters for what they will report – even conditionally. It may be that the same news organisation will do this differently on its different platforms. A live blog will be able to cite more sources than a news bulletin, for example.

Noise Or Falsehood?

At the moment a lot of newsrooms are still struggling with this. As this piece indicates, there are sometimes some grey areas where journalists with a more social media background might have different values to the mainstream media organisation they work for. Reuter’s Matthew Keys was accused of simply re-tweeting everything he saw on twitter or TV without checking. His response was that those who follow him realise that his information is less reliable:

I can understand that his attitude might make Reuters nervous as this is not generally their company policy as I understand it.

Yet, this will always be subjective. Let me give you an example from over a decade ago. I was programme editing and putting the final touches to the headlines when my political editor rang up just a few minutes before we went on air. She had a scoop. ‘Have you got that confirmed from another source?” I asked. She responded magisterially: “If I believe that this one source is reliable then that is good enough for you” she said.

Start Making Sense

In a sense this is nothing new. Journalists have always been what Philip Trippenbach – in this post from 2008 – calls ‘sense-makers’. But as I have discussed elsewhere at some length, it is different. News on any platform is now, in effect, continuous and networked. So the journalist is not just a packager, or discoverer, or reporter. They are also a connector or curator. Skills and values as well as process will have to adapt. This goes even for platforms like the Today Programme that might chose not to ‘roll’ with the news, as well as those like this Guardian live blog which makes a virtue of doing just that.

Update 2:

This was all beautifully visualised by ‘chartgirl’:

Tony Hall: in charge at the BBC

The new BBC director general Tony Hall barely had time to arrange the pens on his new desk before two hot potatoes landed on it. I disagreed with his decision on the Wizard of Oz protest song and, you may not be surprised to hear,  disagree with the line taken on the LSE’s complaints about the BBC Panorama North Korea film. But politically, he may well have done the right thing.

By taking such a protective stance towards right-wing sensitivities over the Ding Dong song he has offended a lot of people on the liberal left. However, he has also now accumulated some capital that he can spend when he next has a conflict with the Conservative Party over something more serious than a piece of ironic agit-prop.

Likewise his defence of the controversial actions of John Sweeney and the Panorama team has sent out a very strong signal to his journalistic troops that he is prepared to back them in the face of criticism. I really do think that their actions were reckless but I can also understand why someone of BBC Head of News Programmes Ceri Thomas’ integrity is happy to make a ‘public interest’ defence of the BBC’s journalism with this DG’s backing.

So two apparently contradictory and criticised decisions might actually add up to the fact that Hall is in control and prepared to be decisive, even when it hurts. Of course, it could just be that he’s bouncing from one balls up to the next. One thing is for certain, there will be plenty more of these tests to come.

[You can read my take on the LSE BBC North Korea row here]

‘Professor’ John Sweeney in North Korea

The LSE row with Panorama came just days after some top BBC journalists spoke at a journalism conference run by my LSE think-tank Polis, where we were debating ‘trust’. One of the reasons that we do trust the BBC, despite scandals such as Savile or the Newsnight children’s home film, is that it is prepared to be held to account when it gets things wrong and that it stands up for its own values in the face of criticism. So I don’t think that the North Korea fracas is a sign of the BBC’s ethical decline, but it does sound alarm bells. ‘Ding Dong’, as it were.

Even if you accept the gist of the BBC’s case you are still left with a journalism team that was prepared to put other people’s safety at risk and another institution’s reputation on the line for the sake of a story. You will have to judge the Panorama programme for yourself to decide if this was worthwhile. But considering there are other ways of getting into North Korea I question the management system that thought that an undercover fishing expedition was worth endangering members of the public and putting the work of hundreds of other academic researchers in jeopardy.

In this case I don’t think that the consent process was entirely reasonable. The pre-trip briefing was haphazard with students being ‘informed’  through conversations in noisy pubs. Asking people in Beijing airport whether they want to go on with a trip which is then revealed as a BBC stunt is not a fair or honest way to proceed. Verbal consent isn’t really worth the paper it’s not written on. But even if the students had agreed whole-heartedly, the programme makers had still not taken into account their wider responsibilities beyond clearing some internal compliance process. So in that sense, consent is almost irrelevant.

So what about the BBC’s risk assessment process? Luckily, no one has been directly harmed by the BBC’s Korean gamble, but what if they had and we were now reporting on a group of students being detained in a North Korean prison? Would the BBC still be arguing that it was ‘worth the risk’? I hope someone at New Broadcasting House is asking themselves honestly how disastrous it would have been for the BBC as well as the innocent bystanders. It would also, of course, have put the LSE in the horrible position of having to tell families why they had not been able to exercise their duty of care.

There was also the risk to the LSE’s reputation for academic neutrality if it emerged that it was associated with journalistic subterfuge. The BBC offered to not refer to the LSE in the programme but it had already leaked so was in the public domain. Even though it was not an official LSE trip even the BBC has been mistakenly referring to it as an ‘LSE study tour’. Can you imagine how furious the BBC would be if an academic or a rival hack pretended to work for the corporation?

There is a wider context to this case as well. Broadcasters regularly work with other organisations to get their job done, but it has to be an honest relationship. However, at no point did the BBC tell the LSE what it was doing – even though the reporter was claiming to be a representative of the LSE. It might be fair enough to lie to the North Koreans, but John Sweeney was in effect, lying to the LSE. If the project was so worthy why didn’t the BBC come clean to all concerned before leaving the UK?

I know from my own experience that journalists have to be allowed to take risks and even make mistakes. Deception can be justified if the result is significant revelation. I have some admiration for the way that the BBC has defended its journalism in this case. I don’t want the programme pulled – I instinctively reject that course of action – and anyway it’s too late. The students did get home safely – though some of them now feel angry and abused. The row around this issue may help clarify that the LSE was not involved. It may be that the BBC learns practical lessons, too, about better management of its more ‘creative’ talent.

But if they want to be trusted then they have to admit it when they get it wrong. The LSE has fully confessed that it made a massive mistake over Libya and has taken significant steps to prevent a similar blow to its integrity recurring. It is now a more transparent organisation with new rigorous ethical checks built into its systems. The BBC is already our most accountable media organisation because it has to be. It is founded by law on public service principles and is funded by the citizen. I hope this latest episode encourages greater humility and self-criticism on their part. In this digital age of public scepticism anything else simply won’t be accepted.

[I should point out that these are my views - I do not speak on behalf of the LSE - their view is put here by LSE Director Craig Calhoun
An opposing view is put by ex BBC journalist Robin Lustig here]

Update:

In the wake of the actual programme I think Guardian TV critic Sam Woolaston gets it right. This was a fairly good programme with interviews and archive that had nothing to do with the trip. The footage from the tour was atmospheric but hardly added any  revelations. In a way the programme itself doesn’t matter. When the BBC allowed Sweeney to act in what the LSE thinks was an irresponsible way they had no idea what they would get.

Mistress of the media

Two great quotes from veteran journalists of the Thatcher era:

Max Hastings: ‘I went in to ask awkward questions and came out feeling like I’d been hit by a truck’

Elinor Goodman: ’She used her eyebrows as quotation marks in case you didn’t know what the soundbite was’

Margaret Thatcher was the dominant figure in the period of British politics after Harold Wilson. What she represented continues to shape the parameters of Westminster policy, practice and party strategy up to the present day. But she was also a break-through figure in terms of political communications.

Thanks partly to figures like her advisor Tim Bell and her press officer Bernard Ingham, she took political presentation and media relations into the modern age of spin. And yet she was also remarkably untypical in that she dealt with (un)popularity in a manner that few contemporary politicians would dare.

As Prime Minister she was divisive in an age when most party leaders are desperate to appeal beyond their base and to avoid being seen as ideological. The controversy around George Osborne’s recent attempt to exploit the Philpott case to make a point about Welfare benefits would hardly have bothered the woman who was happy to compare state finance to household budgets and quote the Bible (St Francis, Samaritans) in favour of market forces.

PR Pioneer

In many practical ways she was a political PR pioneer. I remember a serious discussion in the BBC newsroom in the mid 80s about whether we should cover political PR stunts because they weren’t ‘real news events’. It was a pointless debate by then as Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative Party had already turned elections into a procession of calf-cuddling photo opportunities,  poster launches and Saatchi broadcasts.

She was also central to the creation of ‘presidential’ style politics. Leaders like Wilson were media-obsessed and nurtured a cult of personality with props like pipes and raincoats. But it was Mrs Thatcher who understood how to convert that into the domination of cabinet government and to identify her own will with that of the nation.

Her characterisation of the miners as the ‘enemy within’ was a nasty act of verbal hostility to a group who had represented the symbolic heartland of the British working class. It was a risky but highly effective way of dramatising the NUM’s disconnection from the economic and social tides of the 80s.

Unsurpassed Rhetoric

We can debate endlessly how much responsibility she had personally for the shift in the political public sphere over the last 30 years. Much greater forces of globalisation carried her particular set of values along. She ‘got lucky’ with North Sea oil. As Hugo Young’s biography showed some time ago, she was much more pragmatic and less certain of her own convictions than the ‘Iron Lady’ caricatures have suggested. But as a leader trying to use political rhetoric to reshape attitudes as well as actuality, she has been unsurpassed.

In media terms she was helped hugely by a right wing dominated UK press that was far more aggressively partisan in the 80s than it has been in the last 20 years. And where – like the BBC – the media was critical she was not afraid to attack her attackers. Yet she had an incredible gift of being able to embody as well as convey in simple images and idiom what she believed in a way that was always convincing. Some might dislike what she said but she rarely dissembled.

I first voted in 1979 and she dominated the politics of my generation. Her shadow continues to fall across British politics. Those of us who opposed her will have mixed emotions today. I am personally  surprised at how moved I am by her demise. No doubt she will continue to divide opinion in her departing as she did while alive, but no one should doubt her impact. The fact that she continues to provoke debate is a testament to her legacy.

Postscript:

Fantastic clip from 1981 of an Australian journalist interviewing Thatcher and having the tables turned on him.