The end of objective journalism. The voice of San Diego issues new guidelines for reporters. “There is no such thing as objectivity”, but “There is such thing as fairness”. I quite agree

I’m a day late on this but I thought Amelia Hill article in yesterday’s Guardian (BBC unable to investigate hacking, says Patten) was telling about the way the BBC has been devalued in recent years.

Chris Patten: “As a publicly funded broadcaster whose output is so directly intrusive, there are some areas where we ought to be particularly careful in our journalism or even decline to follow where newspapers or online journalism may properly lead.”

Hello. Isn’t the BBC meant to be independent? Whose independence is protected by a Royal Charter? If a story, such a phone hacking, is in the public interest, then a public broadcaster should be free to report on it. End of.

Death of the News of the World

The abandoned News of the World offices and print hall, Wapping: A flickr set by Tim Burke

Peter Oborne of the Spectator on the phone hacking scandal.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s imagine that BP threw an extravagant party, with oysters and expensive champagne. Let’s imagine that Britain’s most senior politicians were there — including the Prime Minister and his chief spin doctor. And now let’s imagine that BP was the subject of two separate police investigations, that key BP executives had already been arrested, that further such arrests were likely, and that the chief executive was heavily implicated.

Let’s take this mental experiment a stage further: BP’s chief executive had refused to appear before a Commons enquiry, while MPs who sought to call the company to account were claiming to have been threatened. Meanwhile, BP was paying what looked like hush money to silence people it had wronged, thereby preventing embarrassing information entering the public domain.

And now let’s stretch probability way beyond breaking point. Imagine that the government was about to make a hugely controversial ruling on BP’s control over the domestic petroleum market. And that BP had a record of non-payment of British tax. The stench would be overwhelming. There would be outrage in the Sun and the Daily Mail — and rightly so — about Downing Street collusion with criminality. The Sunday Times would have conducted a fearless investigation, and the Times penned a pained leader. In parliament David Cameron would have been torn to shreds.

Top 100 journalists in the UK according to online authority

Now this is interesting. Peer Index has rated the top 100 UK journalists in terms of their reach on social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In. Top of the pile, surprisingly, is Hilary Alexander, the New Zealand-born fashion “director” of The Daily Telegraph. But before we get too snooty about a fashion journalist having more clout online than any of her peers, it is also reassuring to learn that Ben Goldacre, the scourge of bad science journalism, is number two on the list; Guardian editor Alan “big brain” Rusbridger is number seven and Tim Hartford, the FT’s undercover economist is at 10. It suggests that the public sphere and quality journalism are doing very nicely online, in the UK at least

As you might expect with such a list, it is the tech journalists that are making the running online: The Guardian’s Jemima Kiss (#3); TechCrunch editor Mike Butcher (#4); The Guardian’s technology editor, Charles “Charlie Charles” Arthur (#5); The Beeb’s Rory Cellan-Jones (#6); online journalism blogger and highest placed hackademic Paul Bradshaw (#8) and great uncle Jack Schofield (#9).

The highest rated sports reporter is Henry Winter (#10) and the top-rated, behind-the-paywall, Murdoch subaltern is Caitlin Moran of The Times. The tabloids don’t get a look in.

Incidentally, my Peer Index ( a modest 29) is here, but enough to place me 132nd on the list (four behind the Observer’s political editor no less) You could always help me IMPROVE it by retweeting, linking to, befriending me or doing any other nice thing to me online.

(via journalism.co.uk)

Sad news about The Guardian pulling its local projects. We had John Baron
@johncbaron over of Guardian Leeds at Leeds Met only last week and he was full of good ideas about how big media could re-engage with a city like Leeds

Amelia Gentleman has won feature writer of the year at the British Press Awards. You can read why here, here and here.

The Guardian published dear old Derek Brown’s obituary. You can read the whole of it here

Derek Brown was (and will always remain in the memory of those who knew him) a brilliant journalist. Brilliant in Northern Ireland at the depth of the Troubles: brilliant in Jerusalem and Delhi: a brilliant observer and writer about politics from Westminster and Brussels: and, back at the Guardian ranch, a brilliantly efficient, companionable figure on the news desk. Maybe, in a way, he was so brilliant at everything, that he kept being shuffled from job to job, rather than admired for what he was where he was. It wasn’t just his courage that made him so wonderful in Belfast: it was his judgment (even for a reporter in his 20s). It wasn’t just his daring in the heat of the Middle East that made him so terrific there: it was the way both sides respected him, because they knew he was his own man, the straightest of arrows.

I was saddened this afternoon to learn of the death of Derek Brown, the former Guardian correspondent. I worked with Derek when I was a humble uploader at the original Guardian website, Derek had been seconded from the foreign desk, a bit beached I think, but he was clearly the most experienced journalist they had there. He used to beguile us with tales of his time in India of Afghanistan or some other far-flung place, as we processed the following day’s paper onto the internet on the night shift. What was so nice about working with Derek was that he always took you seriously in that generous way of his. We once had a lovely debate in the Coach and Horses about the nature of anarchism. He flattered me by saying I had taught him something.

Hopefully there will be a proper obit published soon to link to. Although Simon Hoggart, who knew him so much more then me, wrote affectionately of Derek in his diary today.

As regulars will know, I’ve been looking at the i newspaper lately. I’ve liked it, but have accused it of being a bit lightweight and of marketing itself disingenuously. I stand by the latter, but now refute the former. I decided to look more closely at the news values, using a modest bit of content analysis using Harcup and O’Neill’s 10 point rule as a methodology. In spite of the paper’s frothy – as seen on TV – marketing campaign, the results surprised me.

Two media stories of note in the old G today

Thought Charlie Brooker was particularly apropos in his piece about the end of privacy:

We’ve entered an era in which private conversation is impossible. Ever since Gordon Brown was caught calling Gillian Duffy a bigot, the tape’s been left running. Paranoia is at an all-time high. MPs can no longer talk to their own constituents without suspecting they may be undercover reporters. Celebrities can’t listen to their voicemails without wondering if they have been transcribed and passed to the newsdesk. Football commentators can no longer yap like oafs in their downtime. Everyone has become a reality show contestant nervously awaiting their own Shilpa Shetty moment.

While elsewhere in the paper Adam Sherwin interviews Paul Staines, the blogger behind Guido Fawkes. I’m not fond of Staines – can’t stand him actually – but the article does place his achievements into context.

Since Guido’s Order-Order blog went live in 2004, it has exposed MPs’ petty expenses fraud, forced Peter Hain to resign from his cabinet post over undeclared campaign donations and, most spectacularly, brought down Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s political enforcer, in the Smeargate affair.

Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University, expresses exactly why the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World Matter so much.

Editors who routinely invoke the public interest when it suits them have in this case systematically abused the public interest. One leading player in the story has been in Downing Street for nine months; another dominates our media landscape; a third is our most powerful police force. If their conduct is not a matter of public interest, what is?

Absolutely. The point being that subterfuge – a deceit in order to reach your goal – is only ever acceptable by a journalist if it is overwhelmingly in the public interest. According to the steady flow of revelations coming from the high court, the hacking of mobile phones by the News of the World, and likely other newspapers, hasn’t ever been in the public interest. Not even once. Prince William’s doctor’s appointment is not in the public interest.

That’s why phone hacking is so morally and professionally wrong.

The net seems to be tightening on Andy Coulson, at least according to political punters on the social betting site Smarkets. Back in October, when the New York Times did its bit to unmask widespread phone hacking at the News of the World, the clever money was that Coulson would stay: 79% of Smarkets users thought (correctly) that he would outlast 2010. Significantly, perhaps, the odds on Smarkets are set by members of the site and not by a professional bookmaker. Today, the same site has spun the tables on Cameron’s head of communications, and is offering a 74% probability that Coulson will “leave his position” in 2011. Surely now more a case of when, not if.

“It’s jolly nearly 50 years, which is a terribly long time. I started off in journalism in 1958. I still wake up wanting to know what happened next. It’s the curiosity that keeps you going. There’s never a morning I don’t get up intrigued by turning on the radio or padding downstairs to pick up the papers.”

Oh man. Anthony Howard is dead. The former editor of the New Statesman died yesterday of a ruptured aneurysm. The papers full of his quotes, but the one above epitomises the attitude I try to foster in my students. It’s all about curiosity.

Guardian, home news

Full list of public figures identified in the News of the World phone hacking scandal. From Guardian data blog

Richard Littlejohn’s Daily Mail column on Student Protester prompts 500 Complaints to PCC #Media #Journalism #News