Law Lecture 7 - Codes of Practice

As with any job, journalism is subject to set Codes of Practice.These act as a way of creating consistency between journalists. They also help to create and build trust between journalists and their audiences. Journalism has three main codes:

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which is for papers and magazines

The Office of Communications (OFCOM), for broadcasters

BBC Trust, for regulating output on the BBC.

The reason why these codes matter so much is because they help guide journalists through any ethical issues that they may face and how far it is that you can go.

The PCC is often seen as a toothless tiger. It's self-regulated and has little in the way of impartiality. Whilst it acts as a place to send complaints, in many cases these aren't acted upon (such as the Jan Moir article on Stephen Gateley after his death). It acts as little more than a deterrent as it can force retractions and apologies from editors in their newspapers.

In contrast, OFCOM is far more authoritative. OFCOM has the ability to hand out heavy fines to broadcasters it feels have broken its regulations. For example, it fined ITV £5.6million for the vote rigging scandal several years ago. Beyond fines, it can prevent broadcasters from airing repeats, forced airings of apologies and in worst case scenarios removing their broadcasting license.

For the BBC, the BBC Trust is responsible for upholding the BBC's guidelines. They deal with complaints made directly to the BBC and investigating whether there was any wrongdoing. These guidelines are available to the entire public and serve as a referral to all BBC workers and other journalists. This ensures it has a very user friendly site.

Law Lecture 2 - Prejudice

Prejudice leads to contempt, contempt leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering! Ahem...sorry.

So yeah, we learnt some more about prejudice and what you can report and when. A key aspect of this was learning when a court case becomes active. For the record, this is:

When the police make an arrest

Issue a warrant

Magistrates issue a summons

When a person is charged

As a journalist, this greatly restricts what we can and cannot report. Before a person is arrested, there isn't much in the way of restriction for a Journo. That's because there isn't a person that can be prejudged and no courts to be held in contempt of. Once a person is arrested however, there are a whole bunch of restrictions that slam into place. This is to ensure that a person gets a fair trial (and to prevent you from getting chucked into jail for contempt!) Once a trial has commenced, the only things a Journo can report on are:

The names of the defendant, their age, address and occupation

What they're charged with or a close summary

Name of the court and the magistrates name

Name of solicitors/barristers present

Date and place court is adjourned to

Bail arrangements

The legal aid that's been granted

It's also important to remember that isn't isn't just the Crown Prosecution Service that can prosecute people. While they may do the bulk, organisations like the RSPCA, Health and Safety Executive etc can also prosecute and there are also some private prosecutions.

Perhaps the most important aspect of court reporting is to remember that it has to be fast, accurate and fair. You can't keep a juicy days court reporting locked up for a slow news day in a weeks time. By that time it's out of date and no good. Plus, it may well land you in some trouble!

Law Lecture 1 - Overview

The first law lecture of the year was more of an overview as to what the course would involve. To me, it was very similar to stuff that we'd already learnt in the first year (which I guess is a good thing).

The key theme of this course is how the law affects journalists, both for the better and for the worse. An understanding of the law makes you a better journalist and also manages to keep you out of prison!

Perhaps the key skill to take from law, even if the exact details are forgotten, is to recognise risk. Say you're working on a murder case, the risk of contempt of court is very high. Not only do you risk the case being thrown out, but you also risk being sent to jail yourself.

To me, law for a journalist is a handy tool to keep in mind and up to date. I guess I'd better go out and buy the latest McNae's...

WINOL Week 8!

I think people were concerned that this wasn't an especially good bulletin. Personally, I think we did okay considering the pressure we were under, what with the BJTC being here.

Luckily it seems they were very impressed with the set-up we have in Winchester. It appeared to me that they were taken aback with what we've done. In particular, they were very keen on our election coverage. I think they also liked that we weren't given an easy ride. The semi-pro method of working was also something I don't think they were expecting.

As for the bulletin itself, I thought it was okay. We've certainly produced better, but also a lot worse. As was pointed out in our de-brief, our links and script are none too great. There was also a breakdown in communication at one stage, as our bulletin ran over time in the rehearsals.

Despite this, we were able to get back on track with a hasty re-edit of some packages just before we went live. I like to this this shows how well we work as a team now as it was done calmly and with minimum fuss.

Now that we've done the hard work and finished our genuine news broadcasts, it's time to kick back, relax and do a best-of package for this coming Wednesday. The end is nigh...

Fear, Loathing and The New Journalism.

In the last HCJ lecture, we learnt all about The New Journalism or 'Gonzo Journalism' as it was sometimes known. This was the style of journalism that came to prominence in the 60's and 70's. Popularised by Tom Wolfe and Hunter S Thompson, it emerged due to the prominence of the counter-culture in the West. Drugs played a large part in its formation, especially in regards to Hunter S Thompson's work. His infamousl novel, 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' was based around his experiences in travelling to a police drug enforcement meeting while high as a kite on LSD, mescaline, marijuana and other assorted drugs.

This popularity with the drug culture was also accompanied by a fondness for radicalism, named 'Radical chic' by Tom Wolfe. For example, Leonard Bernstein's party for the Black Panthers in his upstate New York penthouse. This was met with derision by Wolfe, who saw it as little more that social points scoring rather than actual political and social activism.

Gonzo has set the standard for documentary film making. Rather than having people told what's happening, people now see it. This chance from diegetic to mimetic related to wanting for people to experience honesty and experience as opposed to cold, scientific fact such as you find in regular journalism. A result of this has led to an increase in "performance" journalism. Movies such as Supersize Me and Louis Theroux TV shows have become more about the person involved as opposed to what it's about.

WINOL Week Six!

A much better week this week, at least in my opinion. Far less legal issues that we had last week and I think our stories were a little stronger. Admittedly, they may not have been particularly heavy stories, but they were solid.

I think that sport had a much better week as well. Yes we had to drop the ladies hockey story which was a shame considering we'd finally got some women's sport. However, the match report was far better than the one in last weeks bulletin.

I also got some good advice from Angus on how to improve my packages. Bleeding the sound together is something I mean to do and often forget because of time constraints, but I'll be striving harder to do it from now on. He also recommended doing a University sports team round-up instead of a non-league football round up. That way we can get women's sports in on a regular basis, even if it's not as a package. It also works well as a way to name drop.

So in short, there's still room for improvement, but we're by no means getting worse. All in all, good!

5, 4, 3, 2, 1! We have lift-off!

Yesterday saw the launch of the second and third years collective baby; WINOL. After two dummy runs the previous two weeks, confidence was high in the newsroom of a fantastic first live airing. I'm glad to say we didn't disappoint and all went well! Word on the street (okay, the word of my girlfriend) is that it was a good broadcast so it's not just me being big headed.

Despite being beset with difficulties and unexpected problems (such as our main presenter being ill, network and loan counter problems etc) we soldiered on and put out a news broadcast we can all be proud of.

It's weird viewing the bulletin from the point of view of a feature writer. The news, sport and production desks and the people who work on it are a flurry of activity trying to get packages done and dusted. However, us feature writers aren't quite as pressured. Sure, we have our own stories to get in and editing and the like to do, but it seems we spend a fair whack of time on a Wednesday trying to assist the other desks in any stuff they need doing.

Obviously the more we do this the better we'll become. I just hope that we don't get really settled into our roles just as we have to leave them after Christmas. Not quite sure how we're going to be running it all on our own as well. Oh well, we'll manage, we're journos.