Law Lecture #7

Press Regulation 

As a journalist, we often have to comply to specific guidelines, depending what news organisation you are working for. 
Examples of these are; Ofcom, PPC, BBC editorial guidelines

A big cause of the recent crisis is the phone hacking scandal. Many issues were brought up which put journalists in a negative light and made many people believe the press needed regulating much more than before. A current debate is who guards the guardians? We are journalists are seen as messengers, a figure who is in between the authorities such as government and police and the public themselves. Ultimately, we are used as a voice and 'who polices the police' can come into this topic.

The main codes

• PCC - Newspapers and Magazines
• Ofcom - Broadcasters
• BBC - for BBC staff and licence payers
• NUJ - Code of conduct

The PPC is the press complaints commission. This is the regulation body for newspaper, magazines and written publications as a whole. It was thought that before the phone hacking scandal, the PPC was a body that could be disregarded by print organisations. 

Newspaper regulation is currently in limbo as often newspaper journalists simply comply to the regulations of their editor and stick to the guidelines which are used by the newspaper. The press want their own regulator.  

A large issue which the PPC are dealing with at the moment is the way the phone hacking scandal has affected them. Ultimately, this was going on whilst the PPC was in operation but the chose not to act. 

Ofcom is the licensing authority that relates to TV and radio broadcasters. Ofcom has a lot of power in comparison to the PPC and broadcasters must get a licence from Ofcom before they can broadcast anything. This ultimately, gives a lot of power to Ofcom and furthermore gives broadcasters less leeway. Ofcom can give direction to not repeat a programme, make the broadcasters issue a correction or statement, revoke a broadcast licence and impose fines up to 5% of revenue. 

BBC editorial guidelines is for BBC staff and licence payers. They are specifically designed to be a tool for journalists and programme makers, helping them all produce their work to the right style for the BBC. 

The BBC college of journalism is also another tool from the BBC is accessible to all and helps train journalists in the laws and ethics of the BBC. 

NUJ is the national union of journalists. This is a guide to the type of good conduct journalists should perform. 

Why do codes matter?

• They guides us through ethical issues such as;
• How far can we go to get a story?
• What practices are legitimate?
• When do circumstances make a difference?

Purposes

• The law is specific and limited
• Codes provide a benchmark for behaviour
• Reassure our audiences - build trust

Key areas

• Ethical behaviour
• Fair treatment - respect for privacy
• Requirement for accuracy and impartiality

Impartiality

• Requirement for broadcasters
• NOT for newspapers - hence Sun or Mail
• Absence of bias or preconception
• Considers ‘axis of debate’

When reporting, it is difficult to decide what are legitimate practices and what are not. When covering events such as funerals. As a journalist you want to cover the event as honestly as possible but it is also essential to respect the family. It is important to make judgement at the time. 

Law Lecture #6

Breach of confidence & Qualified Privilege

This weeks Law lecture was based on breach of confidence. This is where someone leaks certain confidential information. Papers have leaked information in the past and as long as can be proven it is within the public interest, it can be ok. Ultimately, this is still breaking the law but the public interest law allows journalists to sometimes get away with more than normal. An example of leaking information is Edward Snowden. Last year he leaked national security agency documents to journalists. It was a big controversy whether Snowden should be seen as a hero or traitor for releasing this information. 

Qualified Privilege
Qualified privilege is the defense when it is considered important that the facts should be freely known in the public interest. 
Other occasions in other reporting where qualified privilege will arise - annual general meeting.  The term qualified is a reference to qualified to circumstances in place. It’s got to be in the meeting. 

You can get qualified privilege - as long as reports are;
- Fair
- Accurate
- Without malice
- In public interest

Absolute privilege refers to courts and other court things. 

Situations where material is privileged - WITHOUT explanation or contradiction:

1. Public proceedings in a legislature anywhere in the world (i.e. Russia)
2. Public proceedings in a court anywhere in the world
3. Public proceedings of a public inquiry anywhere in the world

Part 2 Privilege

• Subject to explanation and contradiction
• Public Meetings
• Local councils and committees
• Tribunals, commissions, inquiries
• General meetings of UK public companies
• Company documents (if theres an error legally, you have protection as it was in the company document so they won’t go after you).
• Associations have different status
• Findings or decisions are covered
• Proceedings are not

Pressers

• Pressers are public meetings (Lords 2000)
• Written handouts also covered
• Consider risks of live broadcasting 

Privilege summed up
Your reports must be;

• Fair
• Accurate
• Without malice
• On matter of public interest
• No privilege outside main proceedings

An inquest is conduced by coroners. It is a legal procedure to establish the cause of death if it appears ‘violent or unnatural’. It does not rule on who may be responsible.

Inquest Juries
In exceptional cases where;

• Deceased was in state detention
• Death result of an action by police
• Result of workplace accident

Types of verdict

• Narrative verdicts: increasingly common
• Short form: ‘natural causes’/‘misadventure’/‘accidental death’/‘dependence on drugs’
• Unlawful killing or open verdict

Media Rules

• Inquest is a court proceeding protected by absolute privilege
• Covered by contempt of court act - so no publishing of prejudicial material
• Coroners can impose reporting restrictions

Ethics and treasure

• Be aware of bereaved families in your coverage - not all detail
• Coroners must decide whether found objects of value are ‘treasure’ and subject to reward

Law Lecture #5

Copyright

Copyright is an ongoing issue for not only journalists but also the public. When producing WINOL, many of us found the issues with copyright, especially in the feature industry. I was editor of our own fashion magazine, Absolutely. Ultimately, high end fashion magazines have the money to either pay for stunning photography to appear in their pages or if not, create their own with models, stylists, artists and sets. Unfortunately, with no budget it became an issue to try and create/find the type of photography we wanted to show on our website. A saviour in many ways was flickr. By searching for an image such as 'catwalk' you could find images from people who allow you to take their images, under creative commons and being free of copyright. If the image is under creative commons, most of the time the owner will state whether you can change the image, or whether you must attribute them when using the image.

In summary, copyright protects other peoples collective content. 
If you are using other peoples material you must attribute them. We can use the material under certain circumstances. 

There are particular rules that journalists must follow in regards to what they can take or 'lift' from other people's articles. This does not mean copying word for word of someones article, but more using quotes as long as we attribute what publication the quote is from. Journalists must respect copyright laws and understand the risks we face when using someone else's work. 

When talking about broadcasting, an exemption is covering a current news event. 

Because it’s a news event, we can use clips that are relevant to the time. i.e. the death of Shirley Temple in previous weeks. Many news broadcasters all use the same clips of the famous person. Although we do not have the copyright for these clips of this persons career, due to it being relevant to her death at this time, it’s our get out of jail free card. 

Copyright protects intellectual property.

What’s protected?
- Books, films, music, photographs - pretty much everything the product of original work
Things that aren’t protected are undeveloped ideas, slogans, catchphrases. 

Practical reasons for caring
Getting it wrong will cost you;

• Money
• Embarrassment and stress

We call it ‘fair dealing’
For the purpose of ‘reporting current events’ we can;
- Lift thrust of stories and quotes from rivals

• Must be attributed
• In the public interest
• Usage must be ‘fair’ 

Fair dealing relates to the idea that the content being used is for the purpose of reporting the current news event. However it must still be in the public interest. 

What fair dealing allows

• Wider reporting of stories in public interest
• Criticism and review of copyright material
• Broadcast news obits of film stars can use famous movie clips for free
• BUT photographs are never subject to fair dealing

Danger areas

• The internet - youtube, facebook etc
• Sports coverage - news access rights. Massive contract deals on who can cover what. For example, a story around a racing driver, your the BBC and that year you don’t have the rights to Formula 1 so you can’t show it. Rugby world cup win, BBC don’t have the rights to that so if they cover it they use stills and commentary rather than actual footage. 
• Photographs and film archive
  
  News access rights agreement  - we can only show the action a certain number of times in 24 hours. This relates to sport. You can’t show the goal being scored too many times in 24 hours. You have to check with sports producers about running sports stories and what times etc.
  

Points to remember

• Recognise copyright issues early
• Contracting rights holders takes time
• Tell others if you have copyright cleared
• Don’t lift material without reference up

Magazine Lecture #5

Confessional Interviews

It should be something emotional, accidental, medical, coincidental.
It gives the reader a response, with a confessional interview you want them to have a physical reaction. If you can crack confessional interviews, you’ll be ok in freelance journalism. 

It’s a real true life experience, it’s not a confession to a crime. 
It has to be extraordinary. 

Ghosts
Confessionals are usually ghost written rather than first person.
There are two styles of this: 

• You write it in subject/victims voice (use slang, colloquial terms, pauses, etc) this is seen in more down market publications
• House style (publications such as The Guardian) no by-line
  
  *if you are doing it in the house style, you were need to state this with the publication. If you are writing for a publication that doesn’t give you a by-line, keep the commission to prove this. 

The down side of writing confessional interviews is that you get no by-line. If you are starting out sometimes this isn’t brilliant.

Trashier titles will give you a by-line most of the time, stating: ‘as told to ....’ 

A good confessional interview you would need to do 3/4 of an hour to an hour interview. You won’t use all of this but it needs to be this long to get good enough quotes.You want to ask questions such as ‘what did you feel’, ‘what did you say after this’. --> it means the actual interview is fast and pacey. You also need to get precise points, timing is important - ‘how much time went by?’, etc. 

What differentiates this interview with a feature interview? - you are writing an interview in 3rd person but in this interview it will be in 1st person. it’s all ‘i’ ‘i’ ‘i’ ‘i’, subjects. 

Showing copy

• If you are doing a first person interview, it’s only right someone should look at it, not for style but in terms of libel, it’s important for someone to check. People may want to see it for accuracy. 
• It’s not copy approval it’s using correct facts. 
• Your responsibility is to your readers, not the person your interviewing. However you need to keep a good relationship to that person you interviewed (maybe). 

Womens magazines

• Confessional articles are very common in women’s magazines
• Not pegged to news
• When pitching to magazines you need to be sure about what magazine you are pitching too and the style they use. 
• Often in weekly magazines such as Take a break but also in monthlies such as Cosmo
• My battle with ... cancer/drink/drugs/breakups 

Celebrity Confessionals

• Anne Robinson - drink
• Michael Barrymore - everything
• Jordan/Peter Andre

Intellectual Confessional

• ‘Guardian Weekend’ In their weekend magazine they do an intellectual experience confessional interview. Same style each week. Wrote in a modest and measured style. You are have to transform your interviewees speech etc in the style of the Guardian. 

Journalist Confessional (new genre, started about 10 years ago)

• Tim Dowling (Columnist in the Guardian. Talks about how rubbish of a husband he is.)
• William Leith 
• Tanya Gold (Used to be on the guardian, now on the mail. Confessionals on weight and size.)
• Liz Jones (Before Big Brother you wouldn’t of known who she was. She is a Daily Mail fashion editor - her claim to fame was she was the Marie Clare fashion editor. She then started writing a column for the Mail on Sunday about her boyfriend and very mean stuff. Made a fortune out of being a confessional journalist.) 
• Liz Jones’ husband

Critics 
- Hadley Freeman is a Guardian columnist.

Newspapers
- Classic confessional journalism - headline, stand-first, then into chronologically (telling the story) then a good end - dramatic. 

• Pegged to news 
• You get confessionals as a part of a big package of a big news event
• Train crash: survival stories etc

Trade Titles

• They are normally far less dramatic
• They are still needed to balance dull stuff within the title
• First person but not confessional

Freelance Opportunities

• Celebrities are controlled by agents
• News agencies/PR agencies 
• Useful to do up and coming people

How to find a subject
Look for ‘victims’

• Medical
• Social
• Support Groups
• Charity
• Internet
• Phone Book (use yellow pages to look up support groups etc)

Case Studies

• Good turn of phrase
• Great pictures/collects
• Attractive/ugly
• Happy ending
• Open, honest, realistic 

If when you go to talk to someone, if they are not a good talker it won’t turn out well. The subject is so important. If that person is engaging or a good talker, it will benefit. If its a good story but they don’t say it well enough it won’t work. 

Who to avoid

• Too vulnerable
• Hoaxers, mental health problems i.e. anorexia (unless they are recovered), people with Munchaudsen syndrome by proxy (claims things have happened but they haven’t), confessing crimes. 
• Always check out
• People you know - malice/vested interest

Have a descriptive opening!

Joint confessional - story that affects them both. For example - 70% one of them in first person, 30% at the side of the other. 

Magazine Lecture #4

The New Journalism

Gonzo Journalism = Performance, Observational and Literary

Performance Journalism (another way of describing the Gonzo concept) 
(all factual features are performance journalism) 

Most factual entertainment is all presenter led. Examples of these are chat shows are the TV version of confessional interviews i.e Jonathan Ross.

Solopcism in print journalism - using ‘I’. 

Rough lecture notes of the New Journalism (Wolfe and Thompson)
1960’s/70s - popular culture in the USA. Theres a generational change.

Anti-Vietnam war, anti-consumerism, feminism, black power, popular existentialism, rock music, the beatles, post-expressionism etc. Also 1968- Paris Events, LSD, Marajuana and Zen. The beat poets, the new left, alternative society. Prague spring etc.

Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the flak-catchers - Tom Wolfe

Radical Chic - the black panthers at Leonard Bernstein’s penthouse residence on Park Avenue (Jan 1970) - two grand pianos, 13 rooms. New York magazine article ‘radical chic’. 

In Journalism - a literary movement - The New Journalism.

Main Point: Shift in form of narration from Diegetic to Mimetic

Plimton - Chicago Sun Times. Gonzo sport journalism. Wrote about the sport subjectively after spending some time with them. 

Seeing not telling.

Objectivity is junked in favour of subjective experience. 

Ultimate New Journalism piece is FEAR AND LOATHING - ‘Gonzo Journalism’ 

Impact of psychology and theories of subjectivity and truth (‘honestly’ and ‘authentic’ experience rather than boring old objective scientific truth). 

Ultimately ‘Performance Journalism’ e.g. SUPERSIZE ME. This appears to be heading towards ‘Roman Circus Journalism’ where the journalist is tortured and murdered live on TV, or possibly eaten alive by lions or crocodiles to get ratings.

But ‘Gonzo’ is now the default format for almost all TV journalism, and also for feature writing and magazine work.

This is an age which is dominated by visual images amid declining literacy.

Gonzo type documentary - fly on the wall

Tom Wolfe’s Rules
Use the convention of 19th and 20th century realist literature (especially Zola and Dickens, Steinbeck, Orwell. 

The four ‘tools’ for story telling in this way. (The New Journalism)
1. Scene by Scene construction (with jump cuts or punctuation)

1. Phonetic dialogue/actual speech (wild track)
2. Third person restricted point of view (no ‘I’ see, used ‘it is’)
3. Concentration on symbolic ‘status life’ 

Magazine Lecture #3

Jackie Thornton's Rules of Pitching to an Editor

• You need to persuade the editor that you can deliver all that you are promising within
• your pitch. For example, explain in detail evidence that a particular interview has taken/ will take place.
• Focuses on accuracy, no mistakes are allowed.
• Ensure that the style of you pitch matches the magazine/ newspaper that you are pitching to. 
• Gather as much information as possible to ensure that all areas and angles of your idea are covered.
• It is mportant to look at formats and decide what section of a publication your feature would go into.
• You need a killer first paragraph to prove that you are capable of writing in a compelling way. Try and summarise your entire work into this first paragraph.
• ‘The nut grab’ or the ‘say what factor’ needs to be described in your second paragraph. 
• Discuss why this story affects people. Why would people want to read this?
• Your third paragraph should include plans that you have for interviews.
• At the end of your pitch, write one sentence about yourself (biographical) and give references. This is a good way of getting back up support from other reporters.
• Always send the pitch in the body of an email; editors don’t want to waste time opening attachments.
• Use 7 words max in the subject field of an email.
• Get someone else to read through you pitch besides yourself as they will have more chance of spotting any errors.
• You should follow up your email the next day for newspapers and 1-2 weeks for magazines.
• There is a fine line between being keen to write for a particular publication and appearing desperate. Show gratitude but don’t appear desperate.

Magazine Lecture #2

Generic feature types

In features people consume the generic type of feature.


Types of features
Confessional Interview
Consumer Review
Pictures/Fashion
Comment/Analysis
Feature Interview
Documentaries
News Features
Profiles
Art Reviews
Investigations
Observational
Response

There is no such things as a feature. You can do a feature interview with current issues in the news such as floods.
Examples of how you would write all the different features on the same story about floods.
Confessional interview with a victim of the floods 
Comment piece - ‘flooding is good ...’
Comment has to be a strong piece about something. - that’s what gets you the readers e.g. fox news. In a comment piece it is good to have both sides - for and against
Documentary about flooding *fly on the wall*. 
News feature - not done in features but done in news. when a story isn’t standing out you make a feature. PEG - when your trying to sell a news feature which is a link to a real news story. the peg would be a comment piece, or a profile with someone. It links the feature to a particular news issue. Arts review on flooding. 
Observational - Gonzo journalism - I try to tackle the floods 
Reader response - valued by magazine editors as it proves to advertisers that people are actually reading and writing in. Competitions etc 
Consumer reviews - helpful information, rights etc
Picture spread
Feature Interview - local official, sit down interview 
Profile - (difference between this and a feature interview) Profile is a living obituary/pen portrait. These are seen in the Sunday broadsheets. Facts instead of thoughts of the person. It tells you all about the person, however there is no interview apart from maybe before it to just check the facts. A feature interview is an actual interview with someone about their thoughts etc. 
‘10 things you never knew’ - often types of profiles. 

Investigations - we initiate the story rather than like in news when we are covering things that are happening in the news. We decide we are going to go look at something. 

News	Features/Documentaries
Telling	Seeing (inc ‘word pictures on radio)
Brief/Summary	Lengthy/detailed
Aimed at the whole audience	Aimed at ‘niche’ sections of the readership
Length varies (importance)	Length fixed by editorial structure/TV/Radio/news agenda
Defined Styles	Many styles/generic types
Pictures useful	Pictures essential/graphics
Published instantly	Published according to schedule
Done by staff reporters	Done by production staff/freelancers
Event-led (‘the news agenda’)	Production-led (fitting schedule/structure of magazine/newspaper)

The feature content of the guardian to the the daily star is radically different. The way they do their interviews etc are very different. The features define the tone of the publication. 

They come for the news but they stay for the features. 

Print journalism is very headline driven. Often they only discuss the front page at meetings. 

Barkers - hooks to make people stay longer on the site. On the front page of big magazines they use barkers constantly also. They value engagement from the audience with the product. Features bulk out the site, make it sticky - stay on the site. 

Features are not time sensitive. Newspapers and Broadcast journalism are extremely time sensitive, a newspaper (most) is released daily and the news is 

It is important to understand the formats of specific publications to be able to work for one. By having knowledge about each type of feature done in a certain publication is allows you to find out where you could fit, what ideas you have to improve a certain aspect or even create a new part.