03
Nov 11   

Media regulation: a new idea (and some older ones)

1 comment

Almost every week in London this autumn there has been panel discussion, a lecture or a seminar on one aspect or another of regulating the media. Regulation fatigue is starting to set in.

Several dozen regulators, analysts and academics tried looking for a new ideas on regulation at City University this week. They heard a few, not least from the Irish and Australian media regulators who came to compare and contrast their own systems of self-regulation.

But the discussion never quite escaped the battles of the past. The issue of how a self-regulatory system guarantees that it covers all the major players was dramatised by the appearance of the editorial director of Northern & Shell, owners of the Daily and Sunday Express, which withdrew from the Press Complaints Commission earlier this year. One disgruntled commentator was led to wonder if the Leveson Inquiry was really worth holding if the informal debate on regulation would soon produce changes sooner.

The audience was offered one entirely new idea in the form of a book outlining a 3-tier system for the regulation of all news media by Lara Fielden, who has been both a broadcast journalist and a regulator. At first sight, Fielden’s scheme looks too complex and hard for consumers of news to grasp or use. But Fielden’s research and reflection has two great strengths: it relies heavily on incentives to voluntary submission to rules to improve journalism’s quality and it tackles the pivotal issue of producing a convergent regulatory scheme for converging media.

ADD YOUR COMMENT
Broadcasting / Law / Media freedom / standards / UK press / Uncategorized — 1 comment

Tags: , , ,

26
Oct 11   

Julian Assange’s odd autobiography

1 comment

Here’s my review in the Times Literary Supplement of Julian Assange’s recent autobiography, an odd but fascinating book. It may be that the passions once stirred by any non-reverential mention of the Wikileaks founder have died down. But I fear that the man who once, enraged by something I had written about his hero, called me a “supercilious weasel” may start up again.

ADD YOUR COMMENT
GB reviews / UK press / US press — 1 comment

Tags: ,

25
Oct 11   

Paywalls and tablets: there is more news and some of it good

1 comment

A quick update on some new stuff which has emerged about both paywalls for news and tablet devices such as the iPad.

Most of these developments are promising. Not in the sense that the problems of a sustainable business model for news has been found, but in the sense that experiments – which are they key to it all – reveal a few successes and thus a few clues to what might work.

  • The New York Times porous paywall or paygate continues to show signs of promise. The NYT’s assistant managing editor Jim Roberts told the World Editors Forum in Vienna that overall visitor numbers to the site had even grown a little and that their aim for a “frictionless” metered system which makes frequent users pay had largely been realised. (So it should have been: Roberts revealed that the NYT had worked for 14 months on the details of the pay system after the decision had been made). Accepting the principle that the paywall is not round all content allows tactical decisions: when a severe storm threatened New York recently, the paper put everything it was doing on the story outside the wall.
  • PaidContent has helpfully graphed the progress of the two Timeses, New York and London (£). The former is porous and hybrid, the latter makes the reader pay for anything and everything. PaidContent kindly says that the NYT’s superior performance so far is probably down to the larger size of its market.
  • Keep an eye on the online income of the Atlantic, which seems to have found a powerful quality journalism formula on a digital platform. Some clues as to how the money is being made from it here.
  • Given the eye-popping sales of the iPad, people are inclined to wonder out loud if tablets will “save” journalism. Wrong question. No platform or technology will “save” anything which depends so completely on the content and how good or bad it is. But tablets point to two things which are important. They are generating vast amounts of data about what people will pay for. And they are making digital platforms steadily more and more user-friendly. There’s no reason why the process should stop: screens will gradually get easier on the eye, tablets will get thinner, be able to bend or be hinged and touch screens will refine. The more attractive the experience and the content, the higher the chance that in time content will generate revenue.
ADD YOUR COMMENT
Experiments / Media economics / UK press / US press — 1 comment

Tags: , , , ,

15
Oct 11   

Leveson and media regulation: the Dacre surprise

Comments Off

In the wake of the phone-hacking scandal in Britain, a judge-led inquiry is now sitting to look at a series of questions about media regulation, some of them related to hacking and some not. To allow the media industry an early opportunity to vent its feelings about the inquiry, Lord Justice Leveson organised three seminars as an overture to the inquiry’s evidence sessions.

Because the seminars were principally about letting off steam, the speakers with the strongest feelings and language naturally made the headlines. But the third seminar witnessed a retreat which has moved the goalposts.

The long-serving editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, railed against the inquiry, which he sees as no more than revenge by MPs for the exposure of the expenses scams. So far so predictable. Then, in his closing words, Dacre effectively conceded that the existing system of self-regulation was not good enough and might have to be strengthened. Quite considerably strengthened, as it turned out. Dacre’s performance was the rhetorical equivalent of an army which fires at great deal of ammunition at its enemy, creating noise and smoke. Only when the smoke clears for a moment does it become clear that the forces making all the noise have actually retreated.

Dacre announced that the Mail would be carrying a corrections column on its second page as of next week. He said that the Press Complaints Commission’s “code committee” (i.e. the rule-writers) should have lay members and not be composed solely of editors. He even suggested that this committee might take part in public consultations. He floated the idea that newspapers might need to appoint an “ombudsman” (perhaps a retired judge advised by a couple of retired editors) to inquire into “potential press scandals”. This figure should have the power to summon witnesses and to name the guilty. It might levy fines and on the “polluter pays” principle, the newspapers should carry the costs of such inquiries. Dacre implied that this newly-empowered ombudsman would exist alongside the PCC, but their exact relationship was left vague. (Complete Leveson inquiry video and transcripts here).

Continue reading –>

ADD YOUR COMMENT
Law / Media freedom / UK press — Comments Off

Tags: , , , ,

11
Oct 11   

Leveson’s witnesses: asking old questions in a new era

Comments Off

I’ve been looking at the first two seminars held by the Leveson inquiry into press conduct and regulation before attending the third of these this week. Given that this inquiry is going to last for at least a year and (probably) set a regulatory framework for years to come, the most puzzling aspect of what the inquiry has been told so far lies in the frame of reference adopted by most speakers.

Most of those who have spoken so far have made only passing reference (if any reference at all) to the fact that “the press” is no longer only in print. The fact that journalism is gradually going digital seems to me to have large implications for the legal or regulatory context in which it happens. This suggests that the frame of reference for thinking about regulation needs shifting.

Journalism’s first era was enabled and defined by machinery: the capital-intensive technology of printing and broadcasting. Journalists were easy to identify because they used these platforms. The era we are now entering does not have that handy definition. Anyone with access to a smartphone can now publish; anyone can now claim to be a journalist. For now, the established powers of mainstream journalism dominate the media landscape and set the agenda; estimates differ, but in Britain somewhere between 7% and 10% of people get their news first and foremost from the internet. But this may well change and likely will.

It’s surely very difficult to determine ways of preventing misconduct in journalism without being clear about what journalism actually is and what it does (if anything) that makes it distinctive. News is no longer a self-defining industrial activity. Journalism is one (very important) activity on a spectrum of social communications transformed by digital technology. Journalism has decoupled from the printing technology which founded the idea in the first place. Any question of whether journalism deserves particular treatment under the law must start with what journalism actually does that makes it particular.

Continue reading –>

ADD YOUR COMMENT
Law / Media freedom / standards / UK press — Comments Off

Tags:

07
Oct 11   

Wadah Khanfar: fascinating, but carefully tactful

Comments Off

Wadah Khanfar can claim to be one of the world’s most significant journalists in 2011. He doesn’t make that claim himself, but he ran the Middle East’s most outspoken satellite broadcaster, Al-Jazeera, as the revolutions erupted in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and as they spluttered in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria.

Last night he came to City University to give the James Cameron Memorial Lecture and most of his audience wondered if he would shed any light on his abrupt departure from Al-Jazeera’s director-generalship a few weeks ago. He shed no new light directly. But a few hints were dropped, and they illuminate both the power and the limits of the Arab Spring.

When people suddenly announce they are going to “move on”, that decision can be assumed to be not entirely voluntary. The deal to depart is sealed with a payment, conditional on neither party saying more than a very limited amount in public about the rupture. Khanfar was not replaced by a journalist or broadcasting executive but by a member of the Qatari royal family from one of the state’s oil and gas outfits. Khanfar is a charming and plausible speaker, but I doubt that many in his audience quite bought his explanation that after eight years at the top of Al-Jazeera, he had decided to quit while he was ahead. The indicators point to Qatar’s ruling family wanting someone a little “safer” in charge.

Al-Jazeera’s foundation in 1996 was a remarkably bold act by the Emir of Qatar. Even if Al-Jazeera did not report quite as vigorously on Qatar itself, it was allowed to report without inhibition on other states in the region. The Emir in effect tore up the convention among Gulf ruling families that news media from their own state try to avoid embarassing rulers of neighbouring states. Or at least that appeared to be the case until the Arab revolutions began this year. And Al-Jazeera’s own journalists rapidly built the station’s own editorial identity and strength, probably becoming more famous, influential and controversial than its cautious founders anticipated (backgrounder here). Qatar, Khanfar said in answer to a question last night, did not start Al-Jazeera “for charitable reasons”. The state had “expectations”, he said; but then, he added, so did Al-Jazeera’s journalists have their own expectations, aims and agenda. The channels, Khanfar said, found their “mission” and created a “solid identity”. This identity, he implied, was not quite what Qatar’s rulers had in mind.

Continue reading –>

ADD YOUR COMMENT
Broadcasting / Media freedom / Middle East — Comments Off

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

06
Oct 11   

Wadah Khanfar in London

Comments Off

Wadah Khanfar, until very recently the director-general of Al-Jazeera, is due in London this evening to deliver the James Cameron Memorial Lecture at City University. This is the first time a journalist from the Middle East has been invited to give the lecture (the year of the Arab Spring seemed an appropriate moment) and the first time that Khanfar has been in London since he suddenly announced that he was stepping down from running Al-Jazeera.

To get an idea of the importance of satellite television in general – and of Al-Jazeera in particular – in this year’s events in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Bahrain take a look at the annual Strategic Survey of the Institute of Strategic Studies (the relevant section starts at p97). I have a fair idea of who wrote the (unsigned) analysis and she is very expert. There have been many analyses of the influence of social networks and satellite television on the Arab revolutions. Because the IISS survey is sober and careful, its carefully weighed evidence about the influence of cross-border broadcasters counts for more. A slightly less sober (but well-rated by insiders) account of Al-Jazeera’s sudden global fame from GQ is here.

We still don’t know exactly why Khanfar left his job: this is his explanation and this is a summary of the rumours. Khanfar is a journalist; he was replaced by a member of the Qatari royal family previously working in a state oil and gas compnay. All of the above (significance, reasons for departure) in this piece from the Columbia Journalism Review. We may learn more this evening; I will report back tomorrow.

ADD YOUR COMMENT
Broadcasting / Media freedom / Middle East — Comments Off

Tags: , , , , ,

04
Oct 11   

Media regulation: heat and light

Comments Off

Debates about the state of journalism “post phone-hacking” occur almost nightly in London. The Leveson inquiry into, among other things, press regulation has begun work. Are any new ideas being generated?

Newspaper editors, when they have been audible at all, have cautioned about any form of tougher regulation than the discredited self-regulation which exists now. But they have been less voluble about what might work better than the Press Complaints Commission which Prime Minister David Cameron appeared to pronounce dead when the phone-hacking storm was at its height in the summer. Editors appear nervous that to discuss possible future regulation systems in any detail increases the risk that any new system or laws will err on the side of strangling free journalistic inquiry. The PCC, apparently considering reports of its death to be premature, is advertising for a new chairman and revamping its procedures.

The risk of over-regulation exists for sure. But an intellectual vacuum also has dangers. If you assume that the PCC self-regulation system won’t survive intact, something has to replace it. Alternatives need to be sketched out and tested. Some of this thinking is happening. The rest of this post is a quick tour of the ideas being lined up.

A recent discussion at the Reuters Institute in Oxford looked at seven regulation options pulled together by Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust.

Continue reading –>

ADD YOUR COMMENT
Law / Media freedom / standards / UK press — Comments Off

Tags: , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →