Court Reporting - America V's England???

Should our jury system change towards an American system? This is where the media are free to report on "active" trials.

In my opinion it seriously hinders what we refer to as "a fair trial" in this country. There are already far too many instances of innocent people being convicted of crimes they didn't do and of many criminals walking free. Anything that increases the risk of either of those eventualities should be steered well clear of.

The only benefit would be to the media owners who could enjoy the heightened media frenzies and subsequent increased profits. The OJ Simpson trial is the most prominent example of this, followed by the 19 year old English nanny who was accused of killing the baby she was looking after.

In the case of the nanny, part of the reason she was convicted was that she hadn't shown enough emotion, which divided public opinion. It is crossing the boundaries between justice being served and entertainment. Nor would the American system stand up to a "public interest" argument.

Someone mentioned that a system whereby the pubic voted would be good. I think that is also highly risky, as it would leave those on trial potentially open to prejudice or bias dependent on potential factors such as their race, religion, gender and appearance (far more if Joe public was sat in the judgment seat!)

The challenge for the contempt laws in this country as we know it is that as a result of the internet anything is available. This questions the fair jury concept. Again though, there is a difference between pro-active information seeking and passive information receiving through mass media channels, which can be almost impossible to avoid.

The American system may be great for media revenue but it would be at the cost to justice, which is priceless!

Contempt of Court Act & Power of the Media?

As part of our NCTJ qualification we are looking at areas of media law and restrictions on reporting. We’ve been looking at the Contempt of Court Act which states that a journalist must not report on anything that poses a serious risk of prejudice (bad character references, language of guilt, witness statements…..anything that may influence a jury).

The media however, do not always fully abide by the Contempt of Court Act, since they know that at particularly points in the case they can get away with a more casual approach to the rules, often relying on the argument of the “fade factor”. This was well documented in the case involving the Kray Twins. Their lawyer argued they wouldn’t be able to get a fair trial due to adverse media coverage – this was over-ruled by a judge who said: “I have enough confidence in my fellow countrymen to think that they have got the newspapers sized up. The public’s recollection is short, and secondly, that the drama of a trial almost always has the effect of excluding from recollection that which went before.”

More recently in an article written in the Times in December 2006, a journalist called Magnus Linklater, quite rightly pointed out the coverage of the Sussex strangler suspects had been breaking all the rules of the Contempt of Court Act. What was interesting is that he speculated that the reason that no one had come down on the press was due to the Government not wanting to damage relations with the media at a time when it needed their co-operation so badly.

He wrote: “A more likely reason for Lord Goldsmith’s silence is that he is unwilling to challenge the power of the media at a delicate time. They are allies in a larger war- against international terrorism – and the last thing he wants is to clamp down on them just at the point where their voice is needed to keep the public on the alert.”

This raised a question in class that we didn’t really have time to elaborate on: “Is the media more powerful than the government?” This is an age old question and definitely has a lot of grey areas. Although much of the news is controlled, much of this is down to the way the government manages it’s relationship with the media, as opposed to an act of dominant power. For much of the time the media is seen to co-operate and in some ways controlled by the government.   

In the same instance however, it could be argued that the media are just lulling the government into a false sense of security, playing the game until they have whatever ammunition needed to launch an attack. Classic examples include the Watergate scandal, Murdoch’s on and off allegiance with the conservative party and the leaked documents about the war in Afghanistan that have just surfaced due to Wikileaks.

In truth the relationship is certainly not black and white, more of a slippery marriage of love and hate and make up and break up, both wearing the trousers from time to time. Ultimately only one side can be the main bread winner and my vote is the media. We also can’t overlook the rise in citizen journalism and the use of the internet, that further add weight to this argument.

Flat Earth News - Falsehood, Distortion & Propaganda in global media

I’ve read the first half or so of Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. For anyone interested in learning more about the current news practices, and the amount of inaccurate information we are fed on a daily basis in the media - this publication is for you! The book appears to be incredibly well researched and paints a depressing picture of the news landscape in the UK , US and presumably the rest of the world. Below I have lifted some text and added some of my own thoughts. If you don't have time to read it yourself you will get the general idea, but I would recommend the book, regardless of whether you work in the media industry. This is affecting everyone.

I particularly liked this line by the author: “….daily generating the mass production of ignorance”. (P.108).

Some good stats on the international news coverage efforts (or lack of!) on (P.104). This is topped of nicely with some research on the levels of plagiarism for some of the major players, such as The Guardian, BBC, ABC etc – (P.107).

Nick Davies, talks about the way in which the structure of corporate news organizations has changed so much that, “it has converted journalists from active news-gatherers to passive processors of material -only 12% of which could be shown to be free of the mark of wire agencies and PR consultants.” (p.113).

I have to say, as a trainee journalist, that the thought of being a glorified secretary who re-types and regurgitates second hand information day in and day out in the name of “journalism” seriously lacks appeal.

This is a point that I raised with our course director An Nguyen (also a well respected journalist), that not everyone on the course necessarily sees working for the major press in the UK as the ultimate goal. It's very easy to take the stance that to make your mark, you have to be part of a major media corporation. I certainly wouldn't rule out working for the major press in the UK, I just think it's important to remain open minded about all the other opportunities that exist. In a discussion I had with Dr An Nguyen, about Flat Earth News, he quite rightly pointed out that it is up to the next generation of journalist and media professionals to rebuild the reputation for journalism (and the industry). Of course this is easier said than done. In a survey by the Pew Research Centre for the People (ref: Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach & Tom Rosenstiel P.36) when asked what values they consider paramount? 100% of journalist said "getting the facts right". It is the wider forces at play that are hindering the good intentions of truth telling, which most journalist would not comply to if they felt they had any control over it (more on some of these wider forces below).

Investigative reporting has also seen a “dumbing down”, covering trivial subjects such as “inside your washing machine”, a report on how bacteria inside washing machines can get on your clothes as one example. The PR industry also provide TV stations with pre-packaged “just add water” investigative reports. (p.117). The logic behind the “news factory” and the cut in I-reporting is cited to be due to cutting costs, increasing production efficiency and increasing revenue. According to the Third World & Environment Broadcasting Project, the amount of factual international programming on the four largest terrestrial channels in the UK in 2003 was 40% lower than in 1989. (p.118)

Having done a lot of media sales, I can certainly vouch for revenue and profit being way above and beyond the importance of editorial. It wasn’t out of place on some of the free distribution magazines I have worked on, to point out who was paying whose wages in the office, if Editors were seen to not want to co-operate with editorial coverage of certain advertisers, or kicked up a fuss when sales needed more pages for ads at the expensive of editorial. I know first-hand of publishers who have cut circulation on particular issues to make up for low sales revenue, and pages of editorial removed on the day of print to accommodate an advertising page instead. All in the name of profit. Let's not forget that business is about making money, but it certainly raises questions about where to draw the line?

Factors governing the newsroom are stated in Flat Earth News to be:

1. Cutting costs, as mentioned above.

2. Selecting safe facts that can be backed up by official sources (not that they are necessarily true).

3. Avoiding the electric fence. This refers to media laws (official secrets act and libel law) that are set up in order to deter journalists from publishing whatever the government deems secret. In the case of libel, anything that could damage the reputation of the target. The other electric fence Nick Davies refers to is pressure groups. For example a pro-Israeli pressure group that specialize in orchestrating complaints against media, and Honest Reporting who have 140,000 members on whom to call to drench media organizations with letters and emails. (6,000 per day in the campaign against CNN – p.124)

4. Select safe ideas: “the common sense of the era.” This is portrayed in examples of the coverage of immigration in the UK which in the 1980s was typically sympathetic, whereas more recently immigrants have been attacked as dole scroungers and carriers of disease.  Selecting safe ideas also relates to the story of a reporter named Gary Webb who exposed cocaine trafficking within the CIA, and who after being forced to resign was found dead a year later in very suspicious circumstances which were recorded as suicide. (p.130)

5. Always give both sides of the story. The trouble with this approach is that it creates a lot of neutrality which to some extent, compromises the primary purpose of journalism, truth telling. “The honorable convention aimed at unearthing the facts has become a coward’s compromise aimed at dispatching quick copy with which nobody will quarrel.”

6. Give them what they want. This is well summed up in a leaked memo by the news editor of the Sunday Express, Jim Murray in 2003, “we are aiming to have six sex stories a week. In an ideal world, we should have a cabinet minister affair story. Sex and scandal at the highest levels of society always sells well, but these stories are notoriously difficult to get. We need to be constantly stirring things up. We must make readers cross: the appalling state of the railways, the neglect of the Health Service, the problem of teenage pregnancies, the inability of bureaucrats to get enough done properly, etc, etc.”(p.134).

I’ve read The Elements of Journalism by Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel and this approach definitely moves away from some of their ideals!

7. The bias against truth: “The news factory drains the detail out of its stories, clears away the complexity, cuts out the context and reduces them to mere events, often devoid of meaning.”

8. Give them what they want to believe in.

I hope to come back to this when I have finished the book in full. In the meantime, I hope this has offered you some insight into the contents of Flat Earth News, and got you thinking about what you read, watch and listen to on a day to day basis.

My final thought is this: never trust one source for information, and if you have a genuine interest in something, check multiple sources and remain open minded until you are confident you can make your own judgment. After all, that is the ideological purpose of the news, to give you the knowledge and information to make up your own mind!

Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media

Welcome to my Blog!

I intend to use my blog to share subjects, points of conversation and areas of interest that I think would be of relevance to a wider audience. I am currently doing an MA in Multimedia Journalism, and as a result I am exposed to a number of different types of people, places and points of view on a wide range of topics. Please leave your comments and feedback - I'm lookin' forward to hearing your opinions!