Monday 26 November 2012

Defamation overview.



Defamation is one of the most common causes for action to be taken against a journalist therefore it is important to be aware of it and well informed about it. When something is printed about somebody that may damage their reputation in the mind of right thinking members of society, this is defamation. It must be seen to lower peoples estimations of the person in question, it must be published to a third party and the person must be clearly identified.

Defamation can lead to people being shunned from society or avoided, it can discredit people in their trade or profession and it can expose people to ridicule and even hatred. We must look at these phrases to decide if somebody has been defamed.

Defamation is not necessarily bad . In many circumstances, defamation is in the public interest and needs to be reported. For example if a newspaper was to report that a public figure was sent to prison for murder, it would be damaging his reputation, however if it was true and can be proved, this is called justification. A journalist can still be sued if the story is true, this is why it is important to always have absolute empirical evidence for anything written. Privilege is another defence for journalists, if the news is in the interest of the public. This defence is slightly more risky however as it is often hard to define public interest. Defamation does not tend to be something that a journalist should worry about too much when reporting from court, in court, everybody has 'qualified privilege', the right to report what is said in court. AS LONG AS IT IS FAST, ACCURATE AND FAIR.  This also applies in parliament and in local council meetings.

If a Journalist was to defame somebody without justification, it is possible that they could correct it to appease the victim. They can include a correction in the newspaper stating that what they said was incorrect and often apologising. (This will be small, near the back of the newspaper and will rarely be seen.)

Purposefully saying something in order to damage a reputation or something that you know to be untrue is known as malice. This is illegal and should be avoided at all costs in journalism.


WINOL 2

After the success of 'from bongs to gongs' I was asked to take on the role of Headline writer for the bulletin, as well as my role of web editor. On the web side of things, I had decided, with Jason, my web development editor, that we should move away from 'Joomla' the content management system that we had previously been using for WINOL. We both found it hard to use, and hard to develop the website in the way that we wanted it to look. Wordpress seemed like the best option so Jason went bout redeveloping the site in Wordpress. In the meantime, I made sure that everybody was registered on Joomla and was able to put written stories on the site. In previous years I feel that everybody had seen written stories (and the website as a hole) as an afterthought to the bulletin. I wanted to change that so insisted that every bulletin sotry had a written story to go with it by 5pm on a Wednesday. This worked out well and for the first time in a long time, we had a busy, live looking site, as well as a bulletin.

In terms of headline writing, our top story was regarding the scabies outbreak at the University. I decided upon "scabies gets under the skin of Winchester students". We also had a story about the worlds coldest beer that was being sent to the arctic. I immediately wanted to go for 'polar beer', but it didn't fit the format of the headlines, so I had to "kill my babies" instead opting for " a warm welcome to the coolest beer in the south" thanks to a little help from Chris.

Tuesday 20 November 2012

BJTC Awards + WINOL 1

The BJTC awards now seem like a distant memory, but my blogging has not been up to date this term, so I'll go through a recap of the day, and the role that I played. I took on the role of managing editor, slightly different from the web based role that would become familiar to me.  My role basically consisted of making sure that everybody was in the right place at the right time and knew exactly what they were doing, this included the rest of the production team, and all guests. I assigned members of my team to certain guests, Ben and Alex waited at reception for students and nominees, whilst Jason took care of Alastair Stewart. I arranged details with vice chancellor Joy Carter for her arrival. This all went as planned and general organisation was very good, the only problem being latecomers having to be refused entry once the event started. They were understandably upset, but unfortunately this was unavoidable. The event was a great success and a great way to advertise Winchester Journalism to other journalism students from around the country.

The following week was the first edition of WINOL, and I had the responsibility of taking the BJTC award footage and editing it into a package. Henry had helped me with the ordering of our shots, so I wrote a voice track for the piece. I decided that I needed to make Alastair Stewart the key focus on the news package, although we wanted to make something of the fact that we won awards, the real news story was having a celebrity presenting the awards for us. I wanted pictures of Alastair Stewart in his more familiar setting, presenting the news, so took some from Youtube, I was allowed to do this as it was only around 4 seconds, so counted as fair dealing, we showed the clip to a copyright expert and he said that it was safe, although we were slightly pushing our luck, because it was't being used for purpose of review, but it was, in a way being used to tell the news. I wanted a catchy opening so went with "from bongs to gongs" incorporating the big ben bong sound that is so well associated with ITV's ten o' clock news.

I was fairly happy with this package, it was the leading story in the bulletin and the intro seemed to work really well. I also felt like I'd written to the pictures quite well throughout. the main problem I faced was the sound quality. I had recorded my soundtrack using a gun-mic in an empty classroom, and  it didn't sound as good as it could have.

www.winol.co.uk

Thursday 1 November 2012

Law notes: prejudice and contempt


Prejudice and contempt
Contempt – criminal act of breaking rule
Prejudice- influencing the impartiality of the jury. Publishing info that could lead to unfairness at a later stage.

Understand the risk of prejudice!
Contested facts that will be prejudicial


Case becomes legally active when somebody is arrested/warrant given for arrest.

Detention without charge: police have 24 hours to question, senior officers can extend by 12hrs, magistrates can extend to 36 hrs, cannot exceed 96 hours, terror suspect limit 28 days.

Pre trial hearings: pre trial reports 7 points:
1.     names, age, addresses and occupations of defendants
2.     Summary of charges
3.     Name of court and magistrates names
4.     Names of solicitors/barristers present
5.     Date and place to where case is adjourned
6.     Bail arrangements
7.     Legal aid?

Categories of offence:
·      Indictable offence: 5+years (murder, robbery, rape)
·      Either-way: Can go to crown or magistrates court
·      Summary: Stays with magistrates (drunk and disorderly)

Magistrates power
·      6 months jail, fines up to £5000
·      Suspended sentence
·      Conditional discharge
·      Community orders, binding over
·      ASBO

Key stages of Trial in crown court
·      Jury sworn in
·      Prosecution opening
·      Key prosecution witnesses
·      Defence opening
·      Judge’s summing up
·      Jury sent out deliberation and verdict
·      Sentencing

Court reporting rules
·      FAST
·      ACCURATE
·      FAIR
·      Contemporaneous
·      No recording

Children and young people
·      Legally juvenile until 18
·      Under 18s get anonymity
·      Beware of accidental identification (Jigsaw identification)