Disqus - Latest Comments for Martin

Re: links for 2006-11-03

Martin — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 03:18:07 -0000

Done. I should have realised that was a splog! Sorry!

Re: Court reporting rules apply to bloggers, too

Martin — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 05:49:19 -0000

Jackie, WT,WU:

I'm no lawyer, but from what I have read, I believe all the material published before the arrest — that is, before "proceedings were active" — is fair game, which is why the police didn't discourage you from talking about it.

According to McNae's (p182) police appeals for information in the media theoretically risk contempt charges. But there is no known case of a publisher being held in contempt for helping police in this way, and during the debates over the 1981 Contempt Act, the Attorney General said publishers "have nothing to fear" if they publish "in reasonable terms" information that assists in a suspect's apprehension.

As WTWU points out, there's no question of everyone having to go back through their archives to clear out prejudicial statements published before the arrest.

The only issue seems to be new reporting after the arrest.

As Banks points out in the post I linked to, the most straight-forward thing to do is not to write anything that presumes the guilt of the person arrested. Notice that I wrote "a man was arrested in connection", rather than "the man who attacked Jackie". The reason is simple: as far as the law is concerned, we don't actually know that it's really the right guy they arrested.

The other thing to consider is that this guy is under 18, the Children and young Persons Act 1933 forbids identifying him as a defendent, including publication of any photograph.

Personally, I have long thought (like many bloggers) that a lot of the reporting restrictions in the British courts are somewhat anachronistic, silly and contemptuous of jurors' intelligence.

But our opinion of the principles involved doesn't really matter right now: What if smart barristers start realising that pre-trial blog publicity makes getting convictions at trial unlikely and start telling their clients to plead not guilty?

Re: Court reporting rules apply to bloggers, too

Martin — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 10:59:13 -0000

David,

Thank you very much for your comment That's a very important clarification, but I think it raises two questions:

1. Why do you think the readership size issue is a "shaky" defense? It seems that in this case, the likelihood of a juror reading the blog post is relatively small, given that the 79 blogs that have linked to the picture (even if taken together) probably don't have a particularly large readership in the UK.

2. Is all of this only an issue if there is a jury trial? What if a defendant decides to plead guilty?

Re: CNN breaking news mashup on Twitter

Martin — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 17:12:04 -0000

Ah yes. That was the possibilty I considered when I went out after hitting publish. Oops.
Good idea either way.

Re: BBC News via Twitter

Martin — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:22:06 -0000

I've given up on sending Twitter to mobile. The memory isn't a problem, but the battery drainage and annoyance from the constant buzzing of my phone on vibrate was driving me to distraction.

I use the RSS feed only — and it's nowhere near the top of my reading list.

Re: The conservatism of journalism students

Martin — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 17:46:11 -0000

I think Andy is right about the NCTJ being part of the problem (in Britain, at least). It's not necessarily that organisation itself, but the fixation on the holy trinity of shorthand, law and public affairs that it represents. These skills are are necessary (for many journalists) but clearly insufficient (for all journalists).

Another problem is that journalism schools generally don't teach media economics. The conservative student attitude reminds me of those newspaper types who were saying, a few years ago, "but Craigslist doesn't have a Baghdad bureau, so it isn't anything to worry about".

Students need to understand that the structural change in publishing is happening whether they like it or not, and that this is going to have consequences for what kind of jobs are going to be available for them in the future.

Re: links for 2007-01-16

Martin — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 09:39:56 -0000

LOL. True.

Re: News is what matters, not newspapers

Martin — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 07:34:50 -0000

Rick,

I certainly think you are doing meaningful journalism.

In fact, I think journalism students should be studying what you are doing.

Re: Google loses German domain

Martin — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 20:13:39 -0000

Although I'm not familiar with the notion of "unauthorized publication of private data", it's the middle of the night and I can't think of a public interest reason why I should be republishing someone's personal address (if that's what it is). I'm taking it down (for now).

Re: How the FOI (Amendment) Bill slipped through

Martin — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 09:16:23 -0000

I hope you're right, Ed.

Re: Blogging vs journalism, yet again

Martin — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 16:08:04 -0000

(Linda is referring to this criticism of an article she wrote last summer.)

Re: Some print recognition for the journalist-bloggers

Martin — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 12:11:01 -0000

That's a good point. I suspect blogrolls are most valuable for the first few days of a new blog's existence, when they help alert those on the list that a new blog by someone interested in them exists because Technorati eventually spots them. For an established blog, they are probably kind of pointless.

The idea for this came about from an IM conversation I had with Graham about which blogs rise to the top of the NetNewsWire RSS reader when you turn on "Sort by Attention".

"Which blogs account for the most frequently-read feeds in my bloated RSS reader?" didn't have the same ring to it...

Re: Attention journalists: Focus on blog signal, not noise

Martin — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 16:29:34 -0000

Bobbie, Yes, I remember it well.

Justin McKeating did a rather thorough job demolishing her argument.

There was one other part of the Dale/YAB exchange that I cut out of this post:

"There are some bloggers who occasionally hit upon the germ of a story," she said.

"A bit like columnists, then," Dale interjected.

"Well, I don't break stories — I opine," she answered. "This isn't about me. This is about — do you really want to suggest that bores in bars are telling us truths that we in newspapers aren't?"

Later in the programme, Dale returned to this issue:

"I didn't go into blogging to break stories. I went into blogging because I had things to say about political issues of the day, and I wanted to have a platform to say them, and I wanted to have a conversation with people.

Re: links for 2007-02-25

Martin — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 05:15:13 -0000

Shane,

I must remember that irony doesn't come across in blog posts. I'm not shocked at all, actually.

Re: links for 2007-02-25

Martin — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 05:18:40 -0000

... oh, and remember: I'm biased, too.

Re: Skillset of the journalist of the future

Martin — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 08:47:55 -0000

But when you kit people out with these skills - will they still want to be journalists! I think they’ll be attractive to a whole range of employers…

Indeed. I expect media companies' salary offers for relatively junior people with these skills will have to become far more "competitive" — with the sort of professional services firms that would no doubt poach people with these skills.

I'm really glad City is looking at this stuff. I was there as a postgrad in 2004-5, and we learned precisely nothing in this area. Not even Flash. OK, there was some basic HTML in the form of learning Dreamweaver, but not to a high enough standard to take someone from novice to employable as an online producer.

Beyond not being able to do CAR investigations and online databases, what worries me is that all the professions journalists deal with — particularly in big business and government — are becoming far more sophisticated in gathering, manipulating and presenting data.

We are being intellectually outgunned by the people we are supposed to hold to account.

Re: @OPA: The other blog is back

Martin — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 04:59:13 -0000

I expect there will be a few gremlins. Thanks for pointing it out.

Re: An experiment with improvised video journalism

Martin — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 06:21:04 -0000

Good point, Graham. In the long run I wouldn't use YouTube for stuff like this. Is straight-forward enough to convert a movie directly in Flash. Unfortunately, I didn't have it installed on my laptop.

Re: An experiment with improvised video journalism

Martin — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 05:45:23 -0000

Ooooh. Great tip on the Huckleberry, Andy. I want one.