2010... You've been wonderful!

It's a new year, a fresh start, a clean slate but I was just not ready to say goodbye to 2010 before a quick look back at the highlights...


January

This is New Years eve 2010 with my good friends Lorna and Mike. I don't know the other girl. 2010 was an important year for me from the start. I had closed doors in 2009 and was ready to move on. This night started at Mikes house and several bottles of Vodka and Archers and ended with us trying to 'interview' some Polish girl on her night - which she believed would appear on ITV news the next day. Amazing stuff.


February

This right here is my pre-drinks on my 21st birthday. Notice the disapproving looks from my peers. Their concerns were justified later that night....


March

Lucy's 20th Birthday... and what a fun night we all had! Each of us donning a different colour to transform into our favourite Mr.Men character... although I kept being asked if I was a sick smurf. I don't think I had the Little Miss Naughty look down :(


April

After what felt like the longest. winter. EVER... the sun made a cheeky appearance in April. And BOY were we pleased to see him!


May

Well, the results of the night may have left our country in a dire position but for us at WINOL as budding journalists we were given a golden opportunity by our lecturers to do an overnight 8 hour continuous broadcast covering the election. It was tiring but exhilerating and I'm so proud of everybody involved for pulling it off. We did good. BRIIIIIIIIIIINE! :)



June

June was a particularly good month for me so I have chosen two pictures! The first is of the stage at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow on my trip to see Snow Patrol. I have family in Glasgow and had seen they had a date there so on a complete impulse I bought two tickets and phoned my auntie to let her know I'd be paying a visit. I took my crazy uncle with me and we had a great day making friends from across the country and drinking Gamers cider! The fact that Editors were one of the support acts was the icing on the cake and spending the rest of the week with my little cousins was the cherry :)

The second picture needs a little more background info. This is a picture of me and my friend Gabi on Bournemouth beach one night. After a lunch date where we both spent the afternoon moaning about life and how we needed to do something spontaneous... Don't Stop Believing by Journey came to mind and we both decided we wanted to get the midnight train going anywhere! She had to get back to work but we arranged to meet outside her work at 11pm and jump on the last train - which happened to be heading to Bournemouth! Our friend Marina met us at the station, a few cans of cider, couple of towels and a few hoodies in tow and we left to spend the night on the beach telling life stories and discussing the future and what-not. The next morning we were £30 worse off (we were mugged... don't ask!) and we got caught coming back without tickets so got fines too. Financially the worst spontaneous adventure ever but it was so much fun I don't regret it!


July
According to photographic evidence, July doesn't exist...
I do happen to remember this being an iconic month for me and one of my, at the time, very close friends. July was very fun!



August

In August I quickly went blonde... and then quickly went back again. The decision was made over a bottle of pear vodka with Gabi where she told me she had always wanted to see me blonde. It, of course, went orange on account of the redness before  hand. There was some minor swearing and teary eyes. I stuck it out for a week or two though before going brunette again. August brought with it a very wise lesson for me. Don't make hair style choices when drunk...


September

September brought with it a new face for the Milner Place family. Katey Marshall joined us and the house was instantly a more homely place. Before Katey I lived with the two boys and another girl but she didn't socialise or even acknowledge any of us and so there was generally a bad atmosphere. Katey changed things and we've all become very good friends!

October

Anybody who knows me well will know I'm a bit of a fitness dodger... at secondary school I famously avoided football in P.E. for a whole term with notes written by my 'mum' telling of a 'bad back'. I hated it so much! In October my housemate Dom got all of us in the house to sign up for Hockey try outs. At first I was adament he would never find me on a hockey pitch, but I joined and I love it!! The above picture is me with the hockey girls on the high street during a stop, drop and roll on a social.


November

November... the month of Chesney Hawkes! November saw me ousted from my News Editor role at WINOL and plonked into a new one of Entertainments Editor and within 24 hours I had an interview with the one and only set up for the very next day. Probably my proudest moment of the year, academically.


December

December... my little sisters turned 18. I chose this picture because my sister Sammy's hair is absolutely outrageous where we are giving her birthday bumps. It always makes me laugh :) Unfortunately my other sister Danielled saw what was happening and ran out the room before we could catch her too! The disadvantages of twins... We got her in the end though... we got her good!

So this was my year! I've bid a sad farewell to 2010. It really was a pretty amazing year. Here's to 2011... and my New Year Resolution which I've just decided is to never stop making memories. Thanks for reading. Kisses <3 xx

Privacy/Confidentiality

Privacy

The UK has no written constitutions but the nearest thing to one is the Human Rights Act passed in 1998. Section 8 of the Human Rights act states that everyone has a right to privacy and the right to enjoy a private family life. This means that when a journalist reports on an individual, there are certain hurdles they face.

A person needs to give consent to have their photograph taken unless they are engaging in a public duty. The two types of consent are; explicet consent which is all very official with a signed contract or such and implied consent when the individual is posing in the photo or it is clear they had no objections to being photographed.

Other main areas a journalist should beware of is; revealing state secrets or ‘official’ secrets, revealing commercial secrets or revealing facts about a person they would have expected to remain private.
Confidentiality

McNae's states that traditionally there are three elements that work towards a breach of confidence. Namely;

• Information obtained must have a 'necessary quality of confidence'. Information CAN be freely used if it is within the public domain BUT if it is obtained in a way that breaches confidence of a person or organisation then it cannot be used
• If there is an obligation to keep the information private then you cannot use it freely
• There must be an unauthorised use of the information to the detriment of the part communicating it. The person who the confidence is being breached must not suffer in any form of detriment as a direct result.

For a claimant to successfully prove a breach of confidentiality has been made they must prove every one of these points.

One big case which reflects privacy and confidentiality is the Max Mosely case from 2008. Max Mosely was the head of Formula 1 racing and was caught to have hired five prostitutes for a Nazi based orgy in London by the News Of The World but the High Court ruled that this was not within the public interest and that Mosely had a right of provacy and so damanges had to be awarded.

WINOL happenings

A Ramble -

I haven't been blogging about WINOL of late, for many reasons. Mostly because after I leave TAB9 and go home I can't bring myself to write about the week as I'm usually low in spirits. However, I will be writing a critical reflection very soon so I thought I should write about the last few weeks.

The last time I blogged on WINOL was the really bad news week so to continue from that, the next day I was ushered into a meeting with the editor, Chris and Brian and stripped of my news editor role as 'didn't seem happy' doing it. This translates roughly to; 'You are shit and we're replacing you'. Fair enough. It was a very bad week but I think sometimes people lose sight that WINOL is a University course and everyone is on a learning curve. Never mind... I was given a new role as Entertainments Editor and as upset and embarrassed as I initially was I decided to get stuck in and try my best to come back from it.

Enter Chesney Hawkes...

I noticed that Chesney was due to play at The Railway Inn on Wednesday night, the day of the bulletin so I thought if I could only get hold of him I could ask him to come in before the show to promote it and talk to us about what he's upto at the moment. I emailed The Railway begging for contact details to no avail, and emailed a media officer in connection with him but still nothing. Then as a last resort I tracked him down to his Twitter account and found a personal email address. I sent a quick email asking if he would be interested and 'tweeted' him to check his emails. I didn't expect a reply but thought there was no harm in trying and of course there wasn't... in fact he replied within half an hour agreeing to come down to the studio before his sound-check. After ALOT of running around and organising here is the final outcome...



...needless to say it didn't go exactly smoothly in the live run and I'm sure I will have "Can I start again, oh are we live?" haunting me through-out my career. I definitely let nerves get the better of me but managed to hold it together for the interview.

I haven't managed to bag any other big names since then, as of yet. But as the saying goes - watch this space. My role as Entertainments Editor seems to differ each week depending on what I can get hold of. One week I was presenting 'What's On' which we ran into a package - by my entertainments reporter at the time - about the fireworks procession which worked quite well.


The Training Week -

As I have touched upon, WINOL morale was at an all time low recently and this started to show in the output that was being produced. Chris intervened and called for a training week so everybody could spend the week training up on roles they've been wanting to turn their hand to but haven't had the chance and there wouldn't be too much pressure to perform.

Initially I wasn't keen on the idea and thought it was pointless producing lots of bulletins of perfected old packages as I felt this was time we could be spending producing a fresh bulletin but the outcome was good. All the 2nd years got involved with different roles throughout the three days and some 3rd years dedicated the time to making a show-reel for their portfolio.

During training week it was decided that my 'What's On' section and 'Win With Winol' should collaborate with two presenters bringing an element of relaxed studio chat to the table. With Lucy as the 'Win With Winol' presenter we went out about ways to do this. In the end we decided on standing and addressing each other informally. It worked ok but I felt we rehearsed it too much and the end result looked a bit wooden. During this week I had a local band as a guest to interview who gave us a performance. Here is how it went...



Up To Now -


This week the dynamics of Win With Winol and What's On changed once more when I went out to film on location. I went down to the Winchester Christmas market ice rink to film it as I thought it would be relevant to what I was talking about and would look visually more attractive than yet another studio produced piece. I think the extra effort and time paid off and I'm quite happy with the out-come.



I am fast becoming the cheese queen of WINOL but to be honest... I'm quite happy with that title :) Bridget Jones eat your heart out!

Ciao x

Law lecture notes Week 8

Freedom Of Information Act


130,000 bodies covered by the act
100,000 requests a year - cost £34m
Journalists requests only accounts for 12%

Politicians claim the FOI has a "chilling effect" on government as they don't feel safe or free to discuss issues that could become  damaging to them if they found their way into a document.

Tony Blair, who brought in the act - "FOI was not a good idea... makes it hard for government to have confidential conversations."

Basic principle of the FOI act;

"Any person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled to have that information communicated to him."

An FOI request must be in writing, email included and it is free.

If it costs more than £600 (£450 for smaller authorities) or if the information is EXEMPT. But you do not have to accept this decision.

Exemptions:
Absolute (eg security services, court records)
Qualified (eg ministerial communications, commercial confidentiality)
Where the information is covered by a qualified exemption, you should still be given it if the balance of the 'pubic interest' favours disclosure.

Public interest - within the publics interest, not just interesting to the public.

The public authority has to respond to an FOI request within 20 days unless there is a public interest consideration then they can take a further 40 days.

What if they say no?
Internal review
Information Commisioner
Information Tribunal
High Court

Law - Privilege

Privilege allows us as journalists to write or broadcast material which may be defamatory or untrue or even both at the same time. It gives us protection from being sued.

Absolute Privilege -
Anything said in court. Judges, lawyers and MP’s have it

It is from the monarch, so as it is to do with the trial they can't be prosecuted for it.

Qualified Privilege -
As long as reports are fair, accurate, without malice and on a matter of public concern
Journalists have Qualified Privilege in Parliament/Court/public meetings Reporting


Statements that qualify for qualified privilege without explanation are as follows;

• Fair and accurate reports of public proceedings of legislatures, courts, government appointed public inquiries, international organisations/conferences anywhere in the world.
• A fair and accurate copy of or extract from any register or other document required by law to be open to public inspection.
• A notice or advertisement published by or on the authority of a court, or of a judge or officer of a court, anywhere in the world.
• A fair and accurate copy of or extract from matter published by or on the authority of a government or legislature or by an international organisation or an international conference anywhere in the world.

- Lee Clegg case, significant



Privilege Part 1

• Public proceedings in a legislature anywhere in world (ie Russia)
• Public proceedings in a court anywhere in world
• Public proceedings of a public inquiry anywhere in world
• Public proceedings of an international organisation or conference

Privilege part 2

• Subject to explanation and contradiction
• Public meetings
• Local councils and committees
• Associations have different status
• Findings or decisions are covered - official
• Proceedings are not 

Pressers

• Pressers are public meetings
• Written hand outs also covered
• Consider risks of live broadcasting

Privilege summed up

• Report must be;
• Fair
• Accurate
• Without malice
• On a matter of public interest
• No privilege outside main proceedings

Page 340

Defamation and Libel

  After a year of HCJ learning all about exciting philosophers and their work I was more than underwhelmed to say goodbye to the likes of Emile Zola, Fredrich Nietzche and Freud and welcome Law for Journalists back into my life. It would be fair to say that law is definitely a weak point of mine BUT after two lectures I found it all coming back. Here are some notes so far.

Defamation and Libel 

To break it down in simple terms, defamation is taking away a reputation to which a person is entitled. There are two types of defamation. These are; slander (defamation in the temporary form) and libel (defamation in the permanent form)

Reputation is precious to those who have a public life, money or both. To say something about someone in the public eye that you know to be untrue would be said with malice. If it threatens that persons reputation then you have defamed them and therefore committed a libel.

However, most mere abuse has a certain degree of legal safety. "You smell" for example. Most defamatory is about a persons qualifications. A doctors professional reputation is absolutely vital for them to carry on in their profession. You wouldn't seek out a doctor to help your ailments if they've been accused of raping, poisoning or misdiagnosing patients... would you?

One famous case where this happened was, Rahamin vs. Channel 4/ITN
In July 1998 channel 4 broadcast a major news report on the 7o’clock news that made allegations against locum consultant Joseph Rahamin that he claimed were not only untrue but also defamatory as they damaged his personal AND professional reputations. The accusations made were that:

• Mr. Rahamim was probably responsible for the death or serious injury of many of his patients including two who had died during their operations
• Mr Rahamim was not competent to practice as a consultant thoracic surgeon and was seriously under qualified and inadequately trained.
• That he had fraudulently obtained his post as a Consultant by misrepresenting his qualifications and employment history.
• That he had dishonestly sent out letters to local GP’s in which he had falsely described himself as an FRCS
• That he had dishonestly concealed from his employers the fact that as a result of injuries sustained in a road accident he was unable to operate safely and
• That by reason of these matters the GMC ought to have Mr. Rahamim struck off.

Publication + defamation + identification = Libel

The only libel defences are as follows;

Justification - If it is true and you can prove it in court
Fair comment - An honest held opinion which is based upon facts or privileged material within the public interest.
Absolute Privilege - Court reporting
Qualified Privilege - Anything said by the police or pressers
Bane + Antidote - when the defamation is removed or cancelled out by the rest of the context

Cartoons are totally exempt from libel, this is why you can often find cartoons in the first few pages of The Sun newspaper that poke fun at celebrities or politicians who have been in the public eye during the week.

If a libel is present without any of these defences then steps should be taken to apologise in a later edition of the publication.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3065451/Marlon-King-An-apology.html

Here is a recent example of arguably the biggest tabloid newspaper in Britain apologising for defaming imprisoned footballer, Marlon King.

Reynolds defence

Named after a defence raised in the late 1990s by Times Newspapers after the Sunday Times published an article about the former Irish prime minister, Albert Reynolds. Mr Reynolds sued, arguing the allegations in the article were not true and were defamatory. The newspaper argued that the allegations it published were serious and that it had a duty to publish them. They were, it argued, made in the public interest and after they'd exercised all reasonable care in checking. Even if the allegations were not true, they argued they should have been able to report them and be legally protected by 'qualified privilege'. - Kevin Marsh BBC News


Material must be in the public interest... a product of responsible journalism.

WINOL week two!

Apologies for this late blog entry... I've been dying of chest and throat infections. Phlegm and snot flying everywhere! Not pretty.

Anywho... week two. The news meeting on the monday showed a bit more promise than the first week with our top story affecting international students, a high profile court case and even a story about the Queen. Unfortunately things didn't go quite to plan as the week progressed. Andy fell ill on Tuesday forcing us to postpone the court case story, we had new information emerge changing the context of Jacks international students story and Aimee struggled getting interviews on her trip to Southampton to film the Queens naming of the Queen Elizabeth ship so we had to make it into a NIB (News In Brief).

Further to this. In production the tricaster blew up meaning WINOL went backwards in technical progression and we had to upload the bulletin to Youtube instead. This takes longer so we aimed to film the bulletin at 2pm by bringing all the VT deadlines forward but the Macs in TAB9 have become so slow since we came back after summer that they crash every two minutes so of course these new early deadlines were impossible to be met! We ended up filming just before 3pm and somehow managed to get the bulletin out at 5pm as planned.

Scripting was much better, largely the story links submitted. This was helped by the presence of guest editor Graham Bell.