Journalism Profs' blogs

Twitter users should learn lessons from Sally Bercow's libellous tweet

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

Golly gosh fellow tweeters... following the Sally Bercow libel verdict you should beware letting your fingers and thumbs run away with themselves.The high court ruling, though specifically dealing with Bercow's tweet about Lord McAlpine, will surely have wider ramifications. It is not the first exam...

Posted on 24 May 2013 | 12:52 pm

Telegraph Media Group increases profits

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

The Telegraph Media Group (TMG) managed to increase its operating profit last year, making £58.4m on a turnover if £327.5m. In the previous year, it made £55.7m. According to the financial statements filed at Companies House for the full year ended 30 December 2012, TMG's turnover fell to £327.

Posted on 24 May 2013 | 12:01 pm

The BBC journalist who believed he was possessed by Lucifer

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

A couple of years ago I wrote about the medical drama faced by Malcolm Brabant, then the BBC's Athens-based stringer. He had suffered a massive reaction after taking a vaccine that was supposed to protect him from yellow fever. After an initial fever, in which "he was in a limbo between life and dea...

Posted on 24 May 2013 | 10:04 am

Pearson switches Financial Times into new business division

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

The Financial Times is being subsumed into a new division by its parent company, Pearson.As part of the organisation's restructure, the FT Group will disappear and the newspaper will become part of a unit called "professional". Its chief executive will be John Ridding, who is currently CEO of the FT...

Posted on 23 May 2013 | 12:05 pm

Woolwich attack - why editors were right to publish horrific pictures

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

The radio stations were on early this morning - was it right and proper for newspapers to publish front pages pictures of a man they called a terrorist brandishing a meat cleaver?Answer: yes. There are all sorts of arguments in favour. Practical and technological first - pictures and film clips of t...

Posted on 23 May 2013 | 10:12 am

My name is cleared at last' - film shows police brutality at Genoa G8 summit

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

In January 2005, I met a clearly distressed young British journalist who told me of being beaten up by the Italian police during the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001.Four years on, Mark Covell was still suffering from both the physical and psychological effects of that savage attack as he recounted his in...

Posted on 22 May 2013 | 2:16 pm

The press denied readers the facts over Leveson

Posted by Martin Moore

Was ours “a free and open marketplace of information”? Not even close, says Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust. This article was first published on the New Statesman website on 9th May 2013 And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in...

Posted on 22 May 2013 | 9:55 am

How to Detect Original Journalism vs. Churnalism from Press Releases

Posted by Martin Moore

This post was first published on PBS MediaShift Idea Lab on April 26th 2013 When we launched Churnalism.com in the U.K. in 2011 it was not, shall we say, well received by some of those in the PR world. “PR industry hits out at Churnalism.com site” read a headline in the U.K. trade pa...

Posted on 22 May 2013 | 9:47 am

New York Times accused of treating Latin political leaders differently

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

Here's a story that the New York Times has yet to carry. A petition, signed by 23 leading US academics, authors and film-makers, has been launched which urges the paper's "public editor" to examine the Times's inconsistent coverage of two Latin American countries.They argue that there are disparitie...

Posted on 22 May 2013 | 9:40 am

Judges say knowing about philandering Boris is in the public interest

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

The Daily Mail carries a front page picture today of Boris Johnson, London's mayor, with a caption-headline saying: "Boris and the lovechild he now can't keep secret."Inside is a full-page article explaining why the judges agreed that the secret should be revealed. Here's the intro:"The public does...

Posted on 21 May 2013 | 1:48 pm

Tory newspapers turn on Cameron in wake of gay marriage vote

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

Newspapers that generally support the Tory party have never been wildly enthusiastic about David Cameron. Now, on the evidence of today's leading articles and commentaries, they appear wholly hostile.The Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph carry extremely critical editorials, as does The Sun. And the Dai...

Posted on 21 May 2013 | 10:08 am

Ugandan police raid newspapers to discover story's source

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

Police in Uganda have raided two newspapers and two radio stations in a bid to discover the source of a story embarrassing to the government of President Yoweri Museveni.On 7 May, the Daily Monitor published an article about the so-called "Muhoozi project". It claimed that there was a conspiracy to...

Posted on 21 May 2013 | 8:00 am

Why speaking to journalists 'off the record' doesn't guarantee anonymity

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

Why should we believe claims made in The Times and the Daily Telegraph that a senior Tory referred to the party's activists as "mad, swivel-eyed loons"?Because, frankly, it stretches credulity to think that two reporters from competing titles would concoct a fake story based on such a specific quote...

Posted on 20 May 2013 | 1:53 pm

Ukraine rally after journalists are beaten

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

Dozens of Ukrainian journalists have been staging a rally today outside the interior ministry in Kiev after the police initially refused to investigate the beating of two journalists.Olha Snitsarchuk, a journalist with the Channel 5 television channel and her husband Vladislav Sodel, a photographer...

Posted on 20 May 2013 | 12:35 pm

Algerian editor complains of censorship

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

Algerian editor Hicham Aboud has accused the country's government of censorship after it blocked the publication of his two newspapers - My Journal and Djaridati.He said the ban was imposed after he rejected an order from the communication ministry on Saturday night to remove an article that claimed...

Posted on 20 May 2013 | 11:58 am

David Cameron, the 'loons' and gay marriage - what the national papers say

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

These are dark days for David Cameron and his government. Today's newspapers, in company with TV and radio news bulletins, are dominated by disputes within his party over same-sex marriage and the European Union.In addition, the claims about one of the prime minister's aides having referred to party...

Posted on 20 May 2013 | 10:21 am

How the PCC resolved a complaint about a story The Sun couldn't prove

Posted by Media: Greenslade | guardian.co.uk

The Sun published the front page shown above on 13 March. Under one of its trademark headlines, the "exclusive" article stated that Lib-Dem MP Chris Huhne had been ridiculed on his first day in Wandsworth jail.It said a prison officer had called him to breakfast by yelling over the jail's speaker sy...

Posted on 17 May 2013 | 5:17 pm

Margaret Thatcher and TV News.

Posted by ProfPurvis

Here are two pieces I’ve done recently which are pegged to the death of Baroness Thatcher. First an article for the ITN 55 Club magazine which is read by former ITN staff: If you had to sum up the relationship between Margaret Thatcher and ITN in one episode it would be the night in 1987 that...

Posted on 2 May 2013 | 3:19 pm

Events: Cruel Britannia

Posted by Heather Brooke

CRUEL BRITANNIA INVITE (pdf))...

Posted on 3 April 2013 | 3:31 pm

Article: Spinning the Cyber War

Posted by Heather Brooke

I wrote a piece for the Guardian about the recent DDoS attack that was breathlessly described as ‘breaking’ the ‘entire Internet’. I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say the original reporting was “shoddy” (a sub-editor wrote that headline) but cert...

Posted on 3 April 2013 | 3:08 pm