Accuracy (archive)
- Amanda Farnsworth
- 26 Sep 06, 03:15 PM
We've had a few comments about our coverage of , after she was mauled by two Rottweiler dogs.
Did we vilify Rottweilers? Did we create panic amongst dog owners? I think the answer to the latter point is no, judging by the responses from the audience I've seen, but it's a fair point, and a good thing for us to take a look at our coverage and see what we said.
Looking back I really don't think we demonised the dogs. They did kill a child, and it's news exactly because it is very unusual. Every broadcast outlet and national newspaper covered this story for this reason. But we didn't refer to them as "devil dogs".
I think it would have been irresponsible for us to speculate on the exact circumstances that led to the dogs attacking the child, because we simply didn't know them and we couldn't blame parents, friends or family - we had no information.
We did however put some context about controlling dogs in the coverage from the local councillor (watch the report here).
Personally, I am a big animal lover, and know two Rottweilers. I wouldn't want our coverage to imply any blanket assertion about any breed. I hope in this case we didn't.
Amanda Farnsworth is editor, Daytime News
- Peter Barron
- 22 Sep 06, 04:02 PM
Every time we run an item about climate change - which let's face it is quite often - we get a number of complaints about media hysteria.
"Oh no! Branson has just pledged 3 billion to fight Global Warming. ANOTHER excuse for Newsnight to champion the cause. It is becoming so tiresome."
"By your own standards tonight's item on global warming was a disgrace... One oversimplified interpretation of global warming is now force-fed to the public."
"Exxon funding groups critical of the increasing hysteria around climate change? Great news!"
Then you get articles like Tom Utley's in the Mail today, railing against the bien pensants of the ±«Óãtv, using to dismiss concerns about melting ice-caps his own ice-in-gin-and-tonic theory. It goes like this. If the doomsayers are right why doesn't your gin and tonic overflow when the ice melts?
I remember debating that one myself - a little incoherently - over iced drinks in my student days about 20 year ago.
So are we at the ±«Óãtv peddling some sinister international climate change myth, or are sceptics like Mr Utley in hock to the CO2 nay-sayers of big business?
Neither I think. For years on Newsnight we've reported concerns about the effects of climate change with caution, due scepticism and balance. But at a certain point I think you've got to assemble all the available evidence and decide whether the threat is real or not. I think we're past that point and that the threat is real.
It doesn't necessarily mean, as Mr Utley mocks, that his beloved Norfolk will be under the sea any time soon, it's much more likely surely that Britain will feel the strain from the refugees from the effects of climate change who will make their way to our shores.
So what explains the staying power of the sceptics' argument?
One possibility is that they're right. But I think the real reason is that subconsciously many of us hope they're right. If Mr Blair really believed climate change was a bigger threat than terrorism, for example, wouldn't he devote more of his energies more urgently to it?
And Ethical Man aside, wouldn't you and I change our lifestyles more than the bits around the edges we've done so far?
I think most of us have an inner George Bush, or a part which is in denial and believes it can 't be as bad as all that, that surely something will turn up.
I hope we're right.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Kevin Marsh
- 11 Sep 06, 12:07 PM
When we asked ±«Óãtv journalists - a lot of them - what they most wanted to do for them, one answer dominated the list: "Make me more confident about the Law".
All conscientious journalists care about contempt and defamation - the journalist who puts a foot wrong in either area can find him or herself personally liable for damages, a fine or even a spell in prison. And self-interest aside, it can never be the aim of any journalist to spread an untruth or interfere with the processes of the courts.
Hence the College's recently launched legal online course for staff covering defamation and contempt - modules on copyright and contract follow next year - supplemented by face-to-face courses for all and sessions aimed at senior journalists.
But however excellent, detailed and interactive a course is, it's only the beginning. Journalists also have to become confident in applying the principles they learn, absorb and practice on the online and face-to-face courses - and as any media lawyer will tell you, all cases are different. Perhaps the most important thing for a journalist to take away from any law course is an ear more finely tuned to the alarm bell that alerts them to the need to seek expert legal advice on the specifics of their piece - to avoid being too cautious as much as too reckless.
Take an example. Last week, Raphael Rowe presented raising important questions about the scientific evidence used in the trial of Barry George, the man convicted for the murder of Jill Dando. Raphael also interviewed two of the jurors in George's trial - revealing uneasiness about the scientific evidence and suggesting that some members of the jury had ignored the trial judge's instructions not to discuss the case outside the jury room.
Those interviews will have sent many journalists scurrying to find their copy of the legal bible "McNae's Essential Law for Journalists" to confirm their - possibly vague - memory that there is a blanket ban on interviewing members of a jury; that it is a clear contempt of court.
As it happens, that's not quite the case... though as a rule of thumb, it's not a bad one; the 1981 Contempt of Court act makes it an offence to "seek or disclose information about statements made, opinions expressed, arguments advanced, or votes cast by members of a jury in the course of its deliberations". And a 1994 House of Lords ruling made it clear that the intention of the act was to keep "the secrets of the jury room inviolate". Plus, some lawyers believe that the identification of any juror is itself a contempt.
So what to do when a careful, lengthy investigation uncovers evidence that the conduct of the jury in a case might have rendered a conviction unsafe? And that evidence is voiced by the jurors themselves?
I wasn't privy to the discussions between Raphael, Panorama and the lawyers; but it's clear that the decision to broadcast the juror interviews was made in the specific context of the programme and on very precise grounds. As a humble viewer, I was able to detect no questions were put or offered concerning the deliberations in the jury room - and any conversations outside the jury room were contrary to the judge's express instructions; Raphael pointed up more than once in his script that he was aware of the legal restrictions; and, of course, the matter was one of great public interest.
The challenge for the College is to make sure that our journalists are aware of the way in which the law is applied in cases like this - and don't draw the wrong conclusions. It would be wrong, for example, to conclude from this Panorama special that interviewing jurors was now fine in all cases.
The Panorama decision also illustrates another truth about the application of the law - and another challenge for the College. In very few cases where there's a legal risk is the decision to cut or broadcast a clear one. Almost always, the editorial team has to make its decision based on the balance of risk - and since most defamation cases, for example, are settled out of court, there are often too few similar precedents to be a clear and unequivocal guide. In the end, though, it is always should be an editorial decision informed by precise legal advice.
The College can do two things; provide the knowledge that no journalist should lack through online and face-to-face courses; and second, to provide awareness of important cases and decisions. In the end, though, the most important lesson is that all cases are different and there is no substitute for detailed, specialist advice.
Kevin Marsh is editor of the ±«Óãtv College of Journalism
- Ben Rich
- 8 Sep 06, 05:40 PM
There are two problems with having your programme .
One is that he's a distinguished , so the defence of muttering "what would he know about news programmes anyway" is unavailable.
The other is that he is a pre-eminent prose stylist whose polemics are laced with cutting phrases - in this case describing the Six O'clock News as a "parody of something between Down Your Way and Nationwide".
His ire had been raised by our decision to send Natasha Kaplinsky out for a week to places ranging from Dorset to Glasgow to present a series of segments on social change under the banner "The Changing Face of Britain" - you can watch some of the reports by clicking here.
He took up his pen after watching the first, in which we went to Christchurch in Dorset, the town with the most elderly population in Britain, to report on what might be the future for many other parts of the country. The segment contained a report from Richard Bilton, a piece by Natasha looking at what the town was like decades ago and an interview with the 71 year old Mayor of the town about what it was like to live there.
Now I would be the first to admit that this wasn't the strongest of the five stories we covered in Six on Tour - and if I'm honest the interview with the Mayor was a bit too local in content - but there is a more general point that Martin Bell was making. Should we be out in this way - sending a presenter to cover the growing elderly population (or the exodus of young people from Wales, Polish immigrants doing the jobs Asians used to do in the Midlands, town dwellers moving to the country, and Glasgow's record in dealing with asylum seekers as we did on the other days) in this way, when there are people dying in Afghanistan, Iraq and, on Monday, a British tourist shot in Jordan.
Of course we did cover events in the Middle East well ahead of Six on Tour. But his question remains valid - why did we devote eight minutes a night to being on the road like this? There are a number of answers I would give. Principal among them I would say that the issues we covered were important and that they sometimes get lost in among the more urgent daily stories.
But we did have a wider purpose than that - to get our programme out among some of the audiences we serve to report on things that were happening locally, but had some greater national resonance. Our reporters and Natasha also appeared in the local newspapers and on local media, providing more potential viewers with a reminder of the service we offer. And our overnight research showed that our report on the elderly was the programme item people most wanted to know more about.
As a man with a full ±«Óãtv career behind him, who looks set to continue using his talents for many years to come, I might have hoped Martin Bell himself would have agreed with that.
Ben Rich is deputy editor, One and Six O'Clock news
- Peter Barron
- 8 Sep 06, 02:21 PM
There's always been a debate about what is and isn't acceptable on TV news programmes, and now that we have blogs, forums and podcasts it's only getting more complicated. And should Newsnight's on-line persona be exactly the same as that on TV? Here are a few of this week's posers.
• Our Ethical Man Justin Rowlatt caused a degree of outrage when, in a film about cycling proficiency (watch it here), he asked a youngster if he was "pissed off". By today's standards that's hardly obscene and I'm sure the minor in question had heard, and probably said, much worse, but I must admit I spluttered into my cocoa watching at home.
On the other hand, when I used the term "crap prizes" in a response on this blog, I was surprised that some viewers thought that was inappropriate language for the editor of Newsnight, even in an obscure corner of the blogosphere.
• A few of you have been writing on the blog complaining that some of your comments have been censored and asking why. In short, I don't know. On Newsnight, we censor nothing that appears on the site, but we do employ an outside moderating company who check for, among other things, "profane, abusive or threatening language" (full guidelines here).
So, in response to a question about graffiti scrawled on his abandoned car, the foul-mouthed Justin's strictly factual response was barred from publication. I'm not going to repeat it here, but it begins with "w".
• Where does informality end and falling standards begin? Yesterday on the website, we asked you - as a diverting pastime while we waited for Mr Blair - to construct a statement which might get the PM off the hook. About 300 hundred of you obliged, but one bridled: "I find this exercise pretty stupid for the level that ±«Óãtv and Newsnight traditionally were holding and still claim to hold."
• I enjoyed the fact that when Laura Kuenssberg said that Jack Straw had been talking in the past tense some of you pulled her up, pointing out he was actually talking in the present perfect (the operative phrase was "has been"). Then again - as some of you have also raised - the standard of spelling and grammar among viewers' contributions to the blog is sometimes pretty appalling. Not what we would expect from Newsnight viewers.
• Two quick ones which raised eyebrows inside and outside the programme. Tony Blair portrayed as Christ at the Last Supper as an illustration of . Blasphemy or genius? And what about Kirsty's description of Gordon Brown's command and control network as Al-Qaeda-like? One of our own programme editors thought that was appalling.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Fran Unsworth
- 18 Aug 06, 09:01 AM
Some blogs, as well as emails we've received, have said that ±«Óãtv correspondents are failing to report that when covering the war, they are operating under reporting restrictions imposed by Hezbollah. Others complain that we did not refer to Israeli censorship rules on air. I'd like to answer those points.
One of the forms that all journalists sign, to be accredited members of the press on arrival in Israel, is a promise that you will obey the rules of the military censor. In the context of the latest war in South Lebanon, those rules mean - we are not allowed to report any Hezbollah hits on military bases, not allowed to broadcast news of ministerial visits to the frontline until ministers are safely back out of Hezbollah¡¯s range.
And if rockets land whilst we are live on air, we have to be vague as to where they fall (the theory being that Hezbollah may be watching ±«Óãtv World or equivalent, and using our information to help them calibrate their rockets launchers). Also we are not allowed to report on military casualties until the Israeli censor says so.
In practice, Israel finds these rules very hard to enforce. It is a small, talkative country and the media usually finds out about casualties quickly. The rolling news networks based outside the country are not bound by the censorship rules, so if they find out from other sources they will broadcast.
James Reynolds, one of our correspondents reporting from Northern Israel, writes...
¡°Throughout the conflict we have pretty good access to soldiers, generals and ministers - all extremely keen to put Israel¡¯s case to the international media. By and large we¡¯ve been allowed to go wherever we want on the Israeli side of the border. We¡¯ve often driven straight into Israeli bases right next to the frontline - in the middle of battle preparations - and nobody has kicked us out.¡±
So what about Hezbollah? Were they any better able to control what reporters can and cannot see? Jim Muir - our correspondent who has just spent the last month based in Southern Lebanon - says...
¡°There have basically been no restrictions on reporting as such - there¡¯s been no pressure in any direction with regard to anything we actually say, indeed very little interaction of any sort. There was however an issue at the beginning of the conflict over the live broadcast of pictures of rockets going out from locations visible from our live camera position. We were visited by Hezbollah representatives and told that by showing the exact location of firing we were endangering civilian lives, and that our equipment would be confiscated.¡±
Editors in London discussed both how we should handle both this request, and the Israel rules, in terms of what we said on air.
We agreed that rather than begin each broadcast with a 'health warning' to audiences, we would only refer to it if it was relevant. If rockets started to go off while were live on air, we would not show the exact location but would tell the audience that we had been asked by Hezbollah not to; on the grounds they claimed it endangered civilian lives.
In the event the situation never arose. Apart from that one incident we have been free to report whatever we wanted.
On the Israeli side, we agreed to refer to the censorship rules when it prevented us from reporting anything. In practice, it never did, so we did not see the need to mention it.
Fran Unsworth is head of Newsgathering
- Peter Barron
- 11 Aug 06, 01:15 PM
On Newsnight we've long hankered after our own website forum. With an opinionated, argumentative, computer-literate audience it's a marriage made in heaven. So, as we launched Talk about Newsnight this week our correspondents queued up to expose themselves to your views.
First up: Justin Rowlatt - already a successful multi-media figure as and the recipient of around a thousand clunky old emails this year. A bright new age beckoned.
"This 'ethical man' crap has got to be one of the worst ideas Newsnight has ever had. An entire year? That's not serious journalism, that's moronic daytime-magazine-programme s***e. Good luck with the blog though." wrote Kate, rather charmingly by the end.
"Welcome to blogging Justin", added our business correspondent Paul Mason, in what I think was solidarity.
We launched the forum properly on Thursday and the timing - coinciding with the huge news of the foiled alleged terror plot - could hardly have been better. As our deputy editor, Daniel "King of the Blogs" Pearl, spends his evenings discovering, the great attribute of the blogger is scepticism. Sceptics duly flocked to his posting (also here), Peter Simmons summing up the mood.
"It now transpires that bottles of pop are suspect, MI6 must have just seen the Tango ads and thought 'whoo, that looks dangerous'. This is sounding more and more like a farce, dressed up by the government to frighten old ladies into not flying. Meanwhile, in Lebanon...".
Don't the trusting or the gullible ever go blogging?
As I write I've just noticed this, from the improbably named Gully Burns of California. Is Gully gullible, or just sensible?
"I live in Los Angeles. People here respond to the news with immediate relief and support for the security services. There is almost no thought of the secondary implications, or having any sort of suspicion that the timing of the event is in any way related to Lebanon, Iraq or any other theatre of conflict. I personally feel that congratulations are in order to the police for this coup. All the complainants on this post would certainly be shocked and horrified if the events described today had come true, and they would then probably be complaining that the police didn't do their jobs."
In truth, one of Newsnight's aims in life is to be heartily sceptical, so we can hardly be surprised at our viewers' demeanour. But personally my favourite piece of the week displayed no edge, no cynicism, no controversy. It was the rediscovered gem of Harold Baim's travel film showing the beautiful place that Lebanon was in the more innocent age of the 1960s (watch it here) - now a tragic and poignant document.
Perhaps you hated it?
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Vicky Taylor
- 10 Aug 06, 11:20 AM
A correspondent to the debate on the doctored photographs asks an interesting question about how the ±«Óãtv is countering images from the public showing 'posed or inaccurate images'.
We now receive around 300 images a week to our . Most of these are interesting snaps taken of people¡¯s families, holidays or lives in general. A fair proportion on a busy week are from news events, ie from Lebanon, or Britain during the heatwave.
Of course, we are aware that some people will use this system to try and hoax us, to send something which is not quite as it seems. It¡¯s something we are on the look out for as we go through the images, and to date we¡¯ve not published anything which has been problematic. But that doesn¡¯t make us complacent. You do get a second sense with these images, and the team which are looking at them are doing so day in day out.
You can obviously follow all the usual journalistic paths; you can email or ring the photographer back and check are they were they say they are, does their number appear to be the code of the area they say, it is their photograph. If you get multiple photographs of the same image you would think that maybe they have been picked up from an agency or sharing site and don¡¯t belong to the person sending them.
If they appear 'photoshopped', or almost too good, you would double check.
Some people take grabs off a television - these you can spot. You can do a quick technical check to see when the image was taken and with what device. You can compare with other photos from the same area, from TV images you may have of the place, you can check other photo agency wires to see if the image crops up elsewhere.
Most genuine emailers will add text, a plausible story, which can be checked out. You take care, and always use your professional judgement. No matter how pressing the need is to get that image up on the web or on the tv screen, the verification process must be gone through.
However I would say that the vast majority of people don¡¯t want to hoax you, they want to get their image published and so share their story with the world, and that for our journalism and reflecting what is really going on in the world, can only be a good thing.
While I¡¯m here... I wanted to add a note about the sheer volume of comments we¡¯ve received on the crisis in Lebanon.
Since it began the Have Your Say debates have received well over 100,000 comments - and had 3.5 million page impressions. It has been consistently the only story people want to talk about or read people¡¯s views on. On one day - 26 July - we received over 6,000 emails.
But that of course means that many people who do send their views may not get them published. There is no agenda here. On massive stories like this we do try to pick a range of views expressed differently - it would be no good if every one said more or less the same thing in the same way. We do try and pick comments from people actually living through or with direct experience of the event - on either side.
We know how frustrating it can be not to get a view which is held very deeply on the pages, but I can assure all those in this position, we are working flat out to get through as many as we can. Thank you all for your contributions.
Vicky Taylor is editor of Interactivity.
- Alistair Burnett
- 9 Aug 06, 05:10 PM
More aid workers were killed in July in the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur than in the entire preceding three years - that was the stark statement from the UN and aid agencies this week.
There has also been the killing of 17 aid workers in Sri Lanka - both of these have received a lot less attention from the world's media than would have been the case if attention wasn't focussed on the Middle East crisis.
My colleague, Craig Oliver of the ten o'clock TV news, blogged recently to explain why the Middle East got more attention than Congo and Iraq in his programme. I could have written the same for The World Tonight.
But there is a danger in this - which came up in a conversation I was having with an MP the other day - which is that while the world's attention is focussed on the Middle East, others may take advantage to get up to no good in the hope no-one will notice much.
Apart from Darfur and Sri Lanka - both of which have seen more violence in the past few weeks, other former hot spots are getting warmer again. In East Timor, the Australian-led peacekeepers have still to restore complete order and 150,000 people (more then 10% of the entire population) remain in camps living in very poor conditions.
And closer to home in Kosovo, there are growing fears that there could be a return to violence because it looks like the international community is going to make the province independent and oblige the Serbs in the north of the province - where they remain a majority - to leave the country they were born in and want to continue living in.
On the World Tonight, we made space for the latter last Thursday (listen to it here) but not yet made space for the former. Why? Because we've been giving so much space to the Middle East.
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
- Steve Herrmann
- 8 Aug 06, 09:59 AM
As with any conflict, photographers are at the heart of the propaganda war - with both sides attempting to use the power of the camera to their own ends.
that it has withdrawn all the pictures taken by Adnan Hajj (one of its stringers in Lebanon), following his use of Photoshop to manipulate two images, has meant all of us need to understand the processes by which these pictures are obtained and used.
I asked the ±«Óãtv News website's picture editor, Phil Coomes, to explain some of the background to the images we can easily take for granted.
"At the ±«Óãtv News website we rely on a number of international news agencies to provide us with the majority of our still images. Trusted and well established names such as the Associated Press and Agence France Press sit beside new players in the game such as Getty News Images.
"All of these companies have their own staff photographers who work alongside local freelancers around the world - forwarding their pictures to an editor who will then send it on to their subscribers.
"At the ±«Óãtv we receive over 5,000 pictures per day on the picture wire service; ten years ago it would have been less than 500. News websites need vast quantities of pictures and often in real-time - the days of a photographer providing the one defining image for a newspaper front page are long gone.
"All the pictures we use are checked for any obvious editing - the easiest to spot being cloning of parts of the image (which appeared to be what happened in this example).
"Today a photographer working in the field is under more pressure than ever, especially in a combat zone. He or she no longer has to just take the pictures, not to mention ensure they are in the right place to begin with, but they also have to edit, caption and transmit them.
"For this and other reasons photographers often work together, so at any major event you will usually have a number of sources to compare against each other - giving a good indication as to the basic truth of the picture.
"The are interesting, in that there are many ways to interpret the images. The basic truth is undeniable, but with so many photographers all shooting the same event, and filing many alternative pictures to their agencies, the sequence of events is hard to pin down.
"To some extent the presence of a camera will alter the event, but it¡¯s up to those on the ground to work around this and present us with an objective a view as possible.
"Digital photography has altered the landscape of photojournalism like nothing before it, placing the photographers in total control of their output. All the news agencies have photo ethics policies, many of which are rooted in the days of film. The standard line is that photographers are allowed to use photo manipulation to reproduce that which they could do in the darkroom with conventional film.
"This usually means, colour balance, '', cropping, touching up any marks from dust on the sensor and perhaps a little sharpening. If we are honest though, an accomplished darkroom technician could do almost anything and there are many historical examples of people being airbrushed from pictures.
"All this sounds fine until you look at the reality - .
"By definition a photograph is a crop of reality, it¡¯s what the photojournalist feels is important. But it doesn't equate to the whole truth, and perhaps we just need to accept that."
UPDATE (from Steve Herrmann): I should have said at the start - we didn't use the Reuters picture on the ±«Óãtv News website.
But we have had some emails about another picture we used yesterday of a Lebanese woman in front of damaged buildings. We got the picture from AP and it was dated last Saturday but a reader pointed out it bore a resemblance to another picture - which we hadn't run - attributed to Reuters and dating from July.
It wasn't the same image, but conceivably could have been the same place and time. We weren't in a position to get to the bottom of this immediately ourselves so we decided to update the picture with a different, more recent image. But not before it was picked up by at least .
Steve Herrmann is editor of the
- Daniel Pearl
- 7 Aug 06, 02:05 PM
Have you been emailed about ? Or maybe ? If you're like me you've probably been sent both.
There is an enormous online campaign by both sides to persuade the world that the media is biased one way or another in its reporting of the Lebanon/Israel conflict.
Yesterday the story took an unexpected turn. Reuters announced that it has dropped a freelance photographer after, Reuters claim, he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut to show more smoke (details ).
"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," , the head of public relations for Reuters.
But what are the chances of the online community believing that? On Newsnight tonight we'll be discussing the images the public sees, how they are chosen and whether they are manipulated.
Leave a comment and let me know what you want us to include in the programme.
UPDATE, TUESDAY 1015: Click here to watch the item that went out last night (including an interview with Paul Holmes from Reuters).
Daniel Pearl is deputy editor of Newsnight
- Tim Bailey
- 2 Aug 06, 03:48 PM
A correspondent filed a piece on the reopening of the Bath Spa after a series of delays. She opened her dispatch with this sentence - "Many Bath residents will be having a sense of d¨¦j¨¤ vu". She went on to explain that there had been a ceremony to reopen the Baths three years ago. At the last minute the decision had been taken not allow the public in. Until now.
The correspondent used the word d¨¦j¨¤ vu to mean that the people of Bath would be reliving something they had already experienced.
However, according to the dictionary, d¨¦j¨¤ vu does not mean that at all; in fact rather the reverse. It means the experience of thinking you are reliving some event or feeling when you have not; you are experiencing it for the first time.
But this raises the question - when does a word change its meaning? Words are for conveying understanding, never more so than in radio reports when the audience has only one chance to hear what is being said. So if most people use a word to mean one thing, does that become its true meaning?
Tim Bailey is editor of the Radio 4 Six O'Clock News
- Liliane Landor
- 2 Aug 06, 12:13 PM
This war has all been about semantics and the failure to read the small print.
As I write, our reporter in Brussels is filing on the EU foreign ministers meeting that's just ended - the gist of her report is that the ministers agreed not to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. Instead, they're calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
The difference between ceasefire and cessation of hostilities? A cynic would say none. Just a way around various political sensitivities.
But it¡¯s not just the Europeans that have a taste for linguistic fineries. The Israelis and Lebanese can also play at that game. Here's two quick examples.
Example 1 - early Monday morning Israel announces it's agreed to a suspension of air activity for 48 hours to investigate the Qana incident - we duly register. It¡¯s the lead of our news bulletins and breakfast programmes.
A few hours later, Dan Damon on World Update interviews a Lebanese minister who insists aerial bombardment was still going on, and claims the Israeli airforce had just attacked a Lebanese military post near Tyre. Clearly the story's moving fast but we need to confirm and get this right. If the minister's claims are correct, we can¡¯t possibly keep leading on "a cessation of aerial hostilities".
The programme's editor decides to turn to Jim Muir in the South of Lebanon who confirms artillery was hitting, but most likely it's naval he says. Jim adds he could hear planes flying but did not think they were dropping bombs. The editor decides to get it from the horse's mouth - the always-accommodating IDF spokesperson. No joy there. It's finally Richard Miron, in Metulla on the Israeli/Lebanese border who sheds some light over the elusive aerial "pause"...
He explains that Israeli jets had been operating in the area and quoted the Israeli army saying, "it reserves the right to strike Hezbollah targets where it believe its forces and civilians are under imminent threat". Hot of the press, he then confirmed the Air Force was indeed assisting ground operation. Ceasefire meant in this instance that the Israeli airforce was not carrying on with its timetabled operation - simply responding.
Riddle solved. We changed our headline.
Example 2 - from the other side of the border. It is well known there is no love lost between Hezbollah and the Lebanese PM Fuad Siniora. Mr Siniora is anti-Syrian, a good friend of Condoleeza Rice, and certainly not a fan of Syed Hassan Nasrallah.
Yet in an emotional speech after the Israeli strike on Qana, the prime minister praised Hezbollah, calling them resistance fighters, protectors of Lebanon and the Lebanese - you could say he "re-named" Hezbollah.
Mere semantics or a more profound shift in internal Lebanese alignments? Time will tell.
Liliane Landor is editor of World Service news and current affairs
- Fran Unsworth
- 1 Aug 06, 10:30 AM
You would have had to have been in hibernation for the past few years to have missed the ascent of the environment up the news agenda. We have been suffering a heat wave this week that many people have found unpleasant, the south east is crippled with drought and the UK apparently now produces award-winning wine because we can grow vines successfully in this country.
Many are questioning whether climate change is responsible for all this; others argue these events are cyclical.
There is a huge responsibility on us to be a trusted and reliable source of information. But to report the subject properly we have to look not only at the science, but also the impact of environmental issues on economics, business and politics. Like all journalistic organisations we tend to have difficulty doing joined-up reporting.
That's why we have decided to appoint an environment analyst to try to pull together some of these threads. Roger Harrabin has covered the environment for two decades, largely for radio where he has reported the story as it appears through energy, transport, housing and politics.
In his new post he will spread this approach across a wider range of ±«Óãtv outlets offering original stories and new perspectives, and tackling such subjects as...
• What is a safe level of climate change?
• Can technology provide the solution?
• How much would we need to spend to stabilise the world's climate?
• Can we adapt to climate change?
Hopefully through his work (such as this report on last night's Ten O'Clock News), audiences will be armed with more information to help better understand controversial and complex issues surrounding the subject.
Fran Unsworth is head of Newsgathering
- Paul Brannan
- 28 Jul 06, 02:58 PM
The language of conflict has always given birth to euphemisms ¨C collateral damage, kinetic targeting and ethnic cleansing are among the more recent entries to the argot of the times.
George Orwell covered this ground in Politics and the English Language back in 1945. He wrote: "¡°Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.
¡°Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers."
Orwell saw this retreat into euphemism as a consequence of political expediency by those seeking to defend the indefensible. Such phraseology was needed by those who wanted to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
A more recent commentator, Keith Woods of the Poynter Institute, cautioned against adopting the language of the military in reporting on war. ¡°Language has always had a power that tilts towards those who define the terms,¡± he observed.
And my colleague Jon Williams has also written of the sensitivities of language, specifically the words used to describe the recent taking of the two Israeli soldiers.
The weight of history and its years of tit-for-tat reprisals in the region would lead many people to take issue with Orwell¡¯s conclusion about language. Some would insist that Israel¡¯s actions in southern Lebanon were entirely defensible. But when, in a recent report, we mentioned the proposal for a ¡°buffer zone¡± between Israel and Lebanon as part of a wider ceasefire plan it prompted one viewer to write and complain.
"'Buffer zone' is a propaganda term used by the Israeli government. It should not be simply repeated by a news organisation.¡±
Such a description would be mendacious to many Lebanese. For them it¡¯s a straightforward invasion and occupation of their territory.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the conflict, using the Israeli terminology - ¡°buffer zone¡± - without ascribing it to them would make it appear that we accept the view of it as a purely defensive measure designed to protect Israel from aggression. Not using the term could also make us appear partial, or that we believed the argument that it is nothing to do with self-defence.
So, for future instances, I¡¯ve asked the web team simply to make clear that the expression is one Israel has given to it.
Paul Brannan is deputy editor of the
- Jon Williams
- 26 Jul 06, 02:51 PM
I began life working for the supermarket chain Sainsbury's. Chapter 1, paragraph 1 of "How to do retail" is the idea that the customer is always right!
As maxims go, it's not a bad one - never forget the consumer has a choice. It's something that's stuck with me ever since - it's as applicable to broadcasting as it is to selling groceries. But sometimes, that belief is tested.
One of the things that's distinguished the ±«Óãtv's coverage of the fighting in Lebanon has been our ability to travel the region - hearing different perspectives from our correspondents across the Middle East, whether it's from Gaza, Damascus or Tehran. Yesterday Margaret Beckett called on Syria and Iran to stop encouraging "extremism" in Lebanon and end support for Hezbollah. The ±«Óãtv is the only English-language broadcaster to have a bureau in Iran - recently we built a TV studio in Tehran to allow News 24 and ±«Óãtv World to report live from the city.
So it seemed rather uncontroversial for our correspondent in the city, Frances Harrison, to appear on ±«Óãtv News 24 to report how the crisis in Lebanon was being reported in Iran, wearing a rather fetching red headscarf (you can watch the piece by clicking here). Uncontroversial until a viewer rang the ±«Óãtv duty log rang to complain that wearing the scarf called into question "the objectivity of this reporter".
Really?
If you've seen those adverts for HSBC, you'll know that different countries have different customs. A bit like HSBC, the ±«Óãtv operates in more than 20 different countries - and in each our staff respect those traditions. In Iran, women are required to cover their heads. It's not unusual. In Saudi Arabia women are expected to wear a larger abaya, and can be arrested by the religious police if they don't.
But it's not just about the letter of the law - it is about us respecting local sensitivities. We can only operate in other countries with the consent of the people who live there - we don't inhabit an ivory tower. It's important for the integrity of our journalism that we get out and talk to the people of Tehran - as we do in Moscow, Beijing or Washington. That means we need to respect their customs and traditions.
I'm not sure why that makes Frances or any of her colleagues elsewhere in the world any less objective - on the contrary, I suspect it gives them rather greater insight into the people and countries they report on.
And I thought she rather suited that red headscarf.
Jon Williams is world news editor
- Barney Jones
- 26 Jul 06, 12:39 PM
So, I was pilloried by The Thunderer on Monday - that's - for having such enthusiasm for Hezbollah that I must in fact be the leader of this organisation.
Quite a damning attack on a long-standing and relatively anonymous staffer steeped in the ethos of objectivity and fair play. An ethos perhaps not applicable to columnists who earn a living from being provocative; making waves.
But what to do? The news of this full-frontal attack reached me rather late in the day. After working in Television Centre most of the weekend, I headed off for the wilderness of the Brecon Beacons on Sunday evening, with my teenage son. Come Monday lunchtime, arriving at a hilltop that picked up a faint mobile phone signal, I learned of the damaging denunciation.
and I agreed that since the piece was wrong in detail, as well as broad implication, a response was essential. He prepared a brief eloquent letter and I offered a more detailed lumbering explanation. An amalgam was eventually submitted to the Times letters page and .
The programme on Sunday 23rd (which you can currently watch here) was not, as stated by Pollard, "mostly... given over to events in the Middle East". It was centred on a long interview with the deputy prime minister, the first live TV interview since his personal and political life imploded three months ago.
Attacks for being too tough or too soft on Prezza I anticipated. Masterminding Hezbollah was a surprise.
The sole interview with any player with a direct tie-in to the Middle East was with a minister in the Lebanese government. A brief interview with a woman who is not aligned with Hezbollah, whose husband was assassinated in a bombing she believes was associated with Syrian factions, and who was questioned by Marr about the culpability of Hezbollah for the mayhem now engulfing her country.
With Israeli troops massing on the border, the interview seemed entirely appropriate and was followed by a live link with the ±«Óãtv's man in Jerusalem for an overview of the diplomatic manoeuvres and the Israeli government¡¯s stated response to the British minister ¨C just arrived ¨C and the American minister ¨C arriving shortly.
The previous weeks¡¯s programme was rather more Middle East orientated. It featured a substantial interview with the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres (watch it here), followed by a briefer interview with the former Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi (watch that here). And earlier in the month, the acting Israeli ambassador to London was interviewed on his own.
Zionist plots on these occasions? Don¡¯t be absurd!
Pollard also lambasted us for the paper review. It started with the Middle East, as many papers did, but covered a host of other topics including domestic politics. The two reviewers were chosen to reflect different facets of UK politics, as they usually are. A former Tory MP and a current Labour MEP. In the minority of the review that was devoted to the Middle East, both indicated that they thought the Israeli response disproportionate. In an ideal world we would have two reviewers with differing views on this contentious subject. However the fact that these two distinguished figures both happen to share a perspective does not, surely, disbar them from comment.
The Beeb doesn¡¯t always get it right and this blog is one forum for those of us charged with producing programmes to put our hands up and say ¡°sorry¡±. Indeed it¡¯s essential that we all consider carefully what we do, strive to follow the ±«Óãtv guidelines and admit when we¡¯ve got it wrong. I¡¯m convinced, however, that the Pollard attack was unwarranted.
And I think that a visit to the Sunday AM website, which hosts transcripts of all the interviews - and a record of who appeared each week - will reassure most viewers that our record for fair play remains intact.
Barney Jones is the editor of Sunday AM
- Adam Curtis
- 24 Jul 06, 02:00 PM
News developments in the Middle East routinely attract the attention of vigorous lobby groups on both sides. The conflict that has erupted so suddenly in Lebanon is no exception.
We are accused of all sorts of twists and spins, such as: "Why do we say that Lebanese have 'died', but that Israelis have 'been killed'?" Or: "Why do you focus on the suffering of Israelis when the Lebanese are suffering in greater numbers?" Or: "Why do you paint the Lebanese as victims when it's their failure to disarm Hezbollah that lies at the root of the trouble?" Or: "Why don't you state openly that the Israeli bombing/Hezbollah rocket attacks are war crimes?"
Readers with strong views about the rights and wrongs of the conflict sometimes read into our coverage a bias or prejudice that is not there. The accusations come from both sides.
The truth is that, in maintaining 24-hour a day coverage of a complex, fast-moving story such as this - constantly updating and reshaping our reports - it is a huge challenge to ensure that we are maintaining absolute balance and impartiality. Undoubtedly, there are times when we don't get it quite right. But we do pay attention to feedback, and we do make adjustments when it seems right to do so.
One of the most difficult issues surrounds the pictures that we use to illustrate our news stories. We come under pressure from some quarters to publish photographs that reflect the full horror of the casualties being inflicted. Such images certainly exist and are freely available on a number of websites.
Our job, as we see it, is to make a judgement about what our audience is likely to feel is appropriate. On the one hand, we do not believe in sanitising the news. On the other, we believe we have the ability, through our reporting, to convey the horror of events without shocking and possibly outraging our readers by showing gruesome images of mutilated corpses.
On occasions we are aware that we come close to crossing the line as to what is acceptable. In such circumstances, we may, like our colleagues in television, adopt the policy of warning our readers that the images they are about to see are likely to be distressing.
But what if the available images of casualties on one side are more harrowing than those on the other? And should we publish more pictures of Lebanese casualties because there are more of them?
In practice, we look at the agency pictures available at any one time and publish a selection that we feel reflects reality. We have no agenda other than to give our readers as accurate a sense as we can of what is happening on the ground.
In doing so, we take note of the ±«Óãtv guideline on impartiality, which says in part: "It requires us to be fair and open minded when examining the evidence and weighing all the material facts, as well as being objective and even handed in our approach to a subject. It does not require the representation of every argument or facet of every argument on every occasion or an equal division of time for each view."
Adam Curtis is world editor of the
- Kevin Marsh
- 14 Jul 06, 03:01 PM
Pity the pedant and the pedagogue.
There are two things that fuel the ±«Óãtv licence payer¡¯s wrath more than any thing else; language and impartiality.
Look what happened when my colleague Jon Williams tried to set out the ±«Óãtv¡¯s thoughts around one small aspect of usage ¨C the terminology we apply to events in Israel/the Palestinian territories.
His posting attracted more than 150 comments ¨C all of them deeply felt, most claiming to find unconscious bias, inconsistency or injustice in our usages. Right to have that level of debate. Everyone has to pay, everyone has a say. Simple really.
But the comments taken together sum up the problem; with impartiality and with language everyone believes they¡¯re right. With the first, that¡¯s true by definition; with the second, it¡¯s true by virtue of dimly remembered days spent parsing in fusty schoolrooms.
The pedant is condemned to an unhappy life watching infinitives split, singular nouns of multitude pluralised and "militate" confused with "mitigate" by what he/she sees as the language¡¯s slouching hoodies.
The pedagogue ¨C i.e. me/us/ ¨C is no happier. I challenge anyone to take those 150 comments attached to Jon Williams' posting and synthesise a single paragraph that could be given to every ±«Óãtv journalist which, if it were followed, would make everyone happy.
Which is a pity¡ because The College has to attempt to do something very like that.
Only yesterday, I was commissioning two big pieces of work for the College website; a language course and an online, interactive style guide.
Both have to confront the problems of language and impartiality; neither can be pre- or proscriptive. That¡¯s partly because of the nature of both beasts ¨C as discussed ¨C but it¡¯s also because of the nature of the organisation.
There are 8,500 journalists in the ±«Óãtv producing thousands of hours of output each month ¨C most of it for English speaking audiences here in the UK, some not. Some output is very formal, most is not. Some is scripted for ±«Óãtv staff or stars to present, most is live and involves outside guests.
The idea that you could have a single stone tablet ¨C like the Economist or FT has, setting out in detail the ¡°house style¡±, words to be used and words not to be used ¨C and that every ±«Óãtv journalist and contributor be forced to follow it is nonsense.
Would anyone really expect every interviewee on every ±«Óãtv programme to ingest the ¡°house style¡± before appearing... or that ±«Óãtv presenters should correct and reprimand them on every departure?
You might get the 85 or so journalists on a small paper to agree on the use of the apostrophe or on the difference between ¡°insurgency¡± and ¡°resistance¡±. It¡¯s impossible to achieve that uniformity in an organisation with a hundred times the staff and more than a hundred times the output.
Apart from anything else, there exist in the ±«Óãtv the very experts ¨C some of them dissenting on a particular point ¨C on whose judgments other organisations base their preferred usages.
All that we pedagogues can do ¨C with both language teaching and style guides ¨C is to describe the consensus, the implications of departing from that consensus and the major variants. We can indicate preferences and usages that, for the time being, are judged to be better than others.
We can draw attention to words and phrases that are contentious and we can suggest usages that avoid the pitfalls of bias, unconscious or otherwise. From time to time, the organisation will take a view that a particular word or phrase, while not perfect, is the best anyone can do... and it¡¯s our job to make sure everyone knows about that judgment and makes every effort to apply it.
And we can describe the changes happening around us. Has the battle to save the first meaning of ¡°anticipate¡± been lost? Does it now confuse more than it clarifies to draw any distinction between it and ¡°expect¡±?
But the idea that we can or should instruct the ±«Óãtv¡¯s 8,500 journalists to use a single version of the English language fixed at some arbitrary point in time and culture, or dictate precise terms that everyone agrees are neutral or impartial ¨C if we could ever find them ¨C is fanciful and, probably, wrong.
Kevin Marsh is editor of the ±«Óãtv College of Journalism
- Richard Porter
- 3 Jul 06, 10:52 AM
A message board called had posting a few days ago (edited slightly for length)...
A few days ago there was a bomb drama in Sweden (no-one died). ±«Óãtv World ran a story about it with TV footage from the Swedish news. As an eyewitness made a statement ±«Óãtv voiced over a translation and I thought it didn't sound right... something to effect of him being terrified, thinking about moving to another part of town and it was scary with terrorists so close to home.
In the Swedish news, the exact same footage was shown without voice over and what he really said was something like it was a little bit unsettling because he visited a friend and they could see the drama from the window - end.
And this set off a huge debate about standards on the ±«Óãtv.
I think I got to the bottom of it. In short, we made a mistake (for which we should apologise), but it's not as bad as it was made out to be. The interview with the eyewitness was sent to us in Swedish, with text of the English translation. It said...
Reporter - Are you worried?
Eyewitness - Yes, I have friends who live just above and I was there and saw the guy. I pity the man, he seems mentally ill, its nothing else.
Reporter - What will you do now?
Eyewitness - I am thinking of moving away, the terrorists have come here too it seems. I don't know, I don't think it's a terrorist, something is wrong with this society.
What we did then was to confuse the two answers - the part of the interview we used was the first answer, but the English translation we added was the second answer. So the eyewitness did talk about terrorists - we just didn't use the right bit.
The lesson for us is to find someone to listen back to these things before we put them on air.
Richard Porter is editor of
- Peter Barron
- 30 Jun 06, 04:10 PM
Last week I was taking issue with the Guardian's Emily Bell on the subject of podcasting in an article entitled "Top of the Pods". This week I find myself taking part in a podcast, in discussion with said Emily and a chap called Rob who's the editor of an independent podcast called "", of which I was previously unaware.
It sounds like some sort of anxiety dream, but the proof that it really did happen can be downloaded at the Guardian's . The striking thing about the Guardian's podcast is that it's a tiny operation - a Mac in a room with a little sound desk and a couple of microphones. But the result is that what was first a newspaper and then a website is now effectively in the radio business. As Rob pointed out, the great thing about podcasting is you don't need funding or a licence or anyone's permission - you just do it. Emily's point is - given all that - should the mighty ±«Óãtv really be doing so much?
(And talking of spooky coincidences, how about ?)
Not that the citadels of the old media are exactly crumbling. I bumped into Today's Jim Naughtie at the chancellor's summer drinks this week. He was telling how within an hour of their item about dogs' names more than 400 listeners had emailed the programme with pictures of their dogs (more here).
So if dogs are your thing - and it seems for a great many people they are - Terry Wogan's corny old maxim that the pictures are better on the radio appears these days to be becoming literally true. Incidentally, when the Chancellor finally arrived he headed straight for the boys from . New media may be powering ahead, but with Rupert Murdoch whether to support David Cameron at the next election, Gordon Brown has no illusions where the old media power still resides.
Elsewhere... we've had plenty of our own user-generated content this week - much of it following in relation to Newsnight's report about secret loans to a Belgian club - and not all of it polite. Frequently asked questions have included: why did Newsnight decide to investigate Arsenal when much more serious things are going on elsewhere in soccer, did we time our item to coincide with David Dein's re-election bid to the FA board, and now that Arsenal have been cleared will Newsnight be apologising?
Here are some answers.
I've no doubt there are all sorts of murky things going on at football clubs up and down the country and across the continent, but the reason we looked at Arsenal was that we were shown a document proving that Arsenal had provided secret loans to prop up Beveren. No, we didn't plan our item to coincide with Mr Dein's election - we learned about that on the day of broadcast.
And no, no plans to apologise. Arsene Wenger himself is on the record as saying "there is no question of financial support" to Beveren because "this is not allowed". Arsenal continued to deny a financial relationship until the day of our broadcast and then admitted they'd lent a million pounds. That isn't, as some viewers have suggested, a non-story. It's a fact, but what the FA and FIFA choose to do about it is a question for them.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Paul Brannan
- 29 Jun 06, 12:01 PM
We've long since ceased to be amazed at the near real-time delivery of news.
And modern life has been conducted in the full gaze of the media for such a long time it's become routine. So it's difficult to imagine what it must have been like before TV and radio took hold of our collective consciousness and shaped our world.
As on the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of the Somme it set me wondering how modern media coverage might have affected the tide of events.
July 1, 1916, was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army - 54,470 casualties, 19,240 of them deaths. Whole battalions were wiped out in less than half a day. "Pals" units - men from the same town who enlisted together - suffered catastrophic losses.
Had that been fed back immediately to the British public - for all the patriotic fervour of the time - how might public opinion have been affected? Would politicians of the day have been able to sustain the offensive? Would Haig have been relieved of his command?
By the time the Somme slaughter came to an end the Allies had advanced only five miles, the British had suffered 420,000 casualties, the French 195,000 and the Germans around 650,000.
It's fanciful to speculate on whether the war might have been brought to a swift conclusion if the peoples on all sides had known the true horror of what was happening. But it does bring into sharp focus the crucial role of the media in helping to create an informed and functioning democracy.
Paul Brannan is deputy editor of the
- Kevin Marsh
- 27 Jun 06, 11:26 AM
So this is the editors' blog. But what do we mean by "editor"?
The first thing to note is that the person who edits a particular edition of a programme - what we call "the output editor" - is not necessarily "the Editor".
So what's the difference?
As with all the best questions the honest answer is - it depends. On some programmes, there's less difference than on others - often the Editor will be the output editor on any particular day. But in broad terms, the output editor is responsible for one edition of a programme; the Editor for the programme, and the team, over time.
So what does being responsible "over time" mean ?
Every programme has a programme remit - a description of the programme, its key features and in particular the features that make it original and distinctive. Some are written down, though most programme remits are less formally set out and often agreed only verbally with Department Heads. That doesn't make them any less binding on the Editor. Recently, objectives dealing with aspects such as audience size and appreciation have supplemented or even superseded formal programme remits.
In addition to these, all Editors set themselves objectives when they get the job. The selection process demands detailed pitch which can include anything from changes in programme agenda and tone, to changes of presenters or personnel - or even what shouldn't be changed.
The tools the Editor has are limited. Money is one; you have to manage the programme budget - which includes the annual argument for more (you always end up with less) as well as making it all add up at the end of the financial year, having spent a proportion of it on things intended to achieve your objectives. Staff is another; you appoint - or supervise the appointment of - staff, appraise them, decide who does what on the programme, give them feedback and advise them on their performance.
The other tools - the really powerful ones - are less easily defined. Influence... setting the programme weather... stalking the floor... hunting down inaccuracies... generating an atmosphere where originality can flourish... spotting flair and encouraging it... spotting bad habits and discouraging them... knowing whose case you need to be on, who you can cut a bit of slack. And dealing with The Talent - the presenters, the real power-mongers in the ±«Óãtv.
And Editors will have influence over programme decisions, though different Editors have different approaches. Clearly, as Editor you have to make the calls on the big, risky stories. And you have to have the means in place to make sure you know all you need to know before making those big calls; and the nous to know when someone on an even higher grade than yourself should be aware of the risks you're about to take on the ±«Óãtv's behalf.
But you can't - and shouldn't - make every decision. Though you do have to be prepared to take the rap for decisions made in your absence or ignorance, even if you'd have made a different one based on the same facts. There are two phrases no Editor should ever use outside the programme. "It wasn't my fault" is one. "I didn't know" is the other. Both might be true in fact, but never can be in spirit; and anyway, the skill of the Editor lies in making sure they never are in any sense. It is your fault and you did know. Live with it.
And output editors? In the broadest sense, output editors are responsible for everything that happens on their watch. Which may be anything from a day to a couple of hours. They don't work in a vacuum, though - indeed, it's the Editor's job to make sure they don't. If the programme Editor has done the job properly, output editors will know as clearly as possible the direction they should be taking each edition of the programme.
They'll express that direction by a number of means; they'll choose the lead story and the running order... choose the guests... and the way stories are treated. They'll also be responsible for getting the best out of the team that day; running meetings and discussions creatively... chasing progress and keeping the story in sight. They'll stamp on inaccuracies and keep a mental note of fairness and balance; they'll brief reporters and presenters and give feedback after the programme.
They'll also know when to involve the Editor. Some output editors prefer to avoid discussing anything with the Editor until after transmission; others like to feel they've thrashed out their ideas - and their problems - beforehand. In all cases, though, having antennae for the possible consequences of decisions - consequences that may go way beyond a single edition of the programme - is a key requirement of both output editor and Editor. The first has to know when to consult, the second has to learn how to spot the signs that an apparently straightforward decision might turn out to be anything but.
Which leads to the final responsibility of the Editor; accountability. While the output editor will deal with the small rows around a particular programme - and some are inevitable - it is the Editor who has to explain why decisions were made or how - in spite of evidence to the contrary - the programme did uphold the highest standards and values.
Or if it didn't, apologise.
Kevin Marsh is editor of the ±«Óãtv College of Journalism
- Peter Horrocks
- 26 Jun 06, 02:20 PM
Who'd have thought my first proper entry on the new ±«Óãtv News editors' blog would be prompted by the activities of Noddy, Tracey Beaker and the .
Yes, the Party at the Palace may have been a grand day out, but for some people the opening sequence left them with their hearts in their mouths, as Huw Edwards broke the news of a "serious incident at Buckingham Palace".
Of course within a very short space of time it became clear that this was all part of the show. But enough people were misled by the spoof news bulletin for it to have caused concern.
Viewers contacted the ±«Óãtv yesterday to say they felt it was inappropriate to begin the Children's Party at the Palace with a made-up news report.
Here's a sample: "I have a daughter and two grand children there, my heart was in my mouth. It was awful to open like that. There was no fun at that, for goodness sake how irresponsible". And there's more in a similar vein: "I cannot believe the crass insensitivity of this fake newsflash. We had a daughter caught up in the London bombings and a granddaughter at the palace. I was terrified when I saw this."
The tone of Huw and Sophie's news report had of course been considered and we assumed people would respond in the context of the fun and fantasy of the party at the palace. But having watched the opening sequence again, I can quite see the combination of Jonathan Ross's hurriedly broken off introduction, then the newsroom with Huw's sombre expression could have led some to have to concern.
All I can do is apologise for anyone who was momentarily misled. The lesson for us all is simply one of clear labelling... even if Ronnie Corbett as the butler Tibbs and Meera Syal as maid Mary are the main eyewitnesses to the crime.
Peter Horrocks is head of TV News
- Peter Barron
- 2 Jun 06, 12:57 PM
A tense day on Thursday.
After an investigation going back over several months on and off, we're on the point of broadcasting our investigation into Arsenal's relationship with the Belgian club Beveren.
Normally on days like that you'd hope to have the film done, dusted and legalled, but it rarely works out like that...
Click to read the rest of this column.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
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