If one is “of the web” rather than just “on it”, taking a photograph of almost anything that catches your interest at any given moment feels as natural as breathing.
A sunset, a chance meeting of friends, an incident in the street, all get recorded and often uploaded to social media. There is a hunger for images not just as a personal record but to share with family, friends and often strangers. My colleagues in rights and syndication tell me that in the past few weeks the Guardian has published about 1,000 images a day, overwhelmingly online.
In the past few weeks the Guardian has published about 1,000 images a day, overwhelmingly online
However, there are also more complaints than ever before about the use of images, and requests for their deletion from the Guardian’s website. Between 25 May and 2 June we received eight such requests involving allegations of copyright infringement and intrusion into privacy.
For instance, on 25 May a reader complained that in a gallery of 20 photographs of the week one showed Chinese girl gymnasts with rucked T-shirts and visible underwear but it was decided that there was no breach of Guardian guidelines because they were dressed appropriately for the activity.
However, on 1 June the Guardian deleted a photograph accompanying an article about the effects of the benefits cap drop that showed the faces of children who were identifiable. A Guardian photographer had sought permission to take the photograph and received it but the parents did not realise that it would be used with an article that dealt with issues of poverty.
As soon as the photographer was made aware of the parents’ objection we removed the picture and apologised. It is a seeming paradox that while the proliferation of images on social media suggests we care less about privacy, at the same time many people are more aware of where they think the line should be drawn. All journalists need to be more aware of their responsibilities in this regard.
Gill Phillips, the Guardian’s head of legal services, and Roger Tooth, head of photography, agree that the public is more aware of privacy rights, especially when it comes to children.
Phillips said: “Using non-‘modelled’ photos that are on the database outside the context in which they were originally taken is increasingly problematic.” Tooth thinks we should consider putting a warning mark on all pictures in the Guardian’s archive of people taken in a natural context, ie not modelled, to prevent their accidental misuse.
However, that presupposes that the photographer – video or still – will talk to everyone in shot to ensure they are both aware that it is being taken and what it may be used for in the future. Tooth said: “There are two problems here: a) it’s really difficult to work as a documentary photographer if you’re having to ask or talk to every subject and b) I really like the warning note idea, but photographers and desk staff would have to spend much more time writing more meaningful and nuanced captions. Also, very often context of the way the photograph is used and the headline and caption is everything.”
Another problem is that whatever permission the subjects may have given at the time, circumstances change. Three years ago a man was pictured with his child on his shoulders walking happily with his wife along a London street. The picture was used again earlier this year in an innocent enough context but by then the marriage had broken up and the man objected to the photograph.
Consent isn’t the key here, as the law is that those who go out in public may be photographed without their consent, unless they are in a private place. Under the editors’ code “private places are public or private property where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy”. If a picture is truly worth a thousand words you can add few more when it comes to the intrusive effect it may have, as the Daily Mirror found out when it snapped Naomi Campbell coming out of a treatment session for narcotic addiction. The House of Lords ruled by a narrow margin that while it would have been in the public interest to publish the information that she was a drug addict who was receiving treatment, Mirror Group Newspapers was nonetheless liable for invasion of privacy publication of the details of her treatment and for using the pictures.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) is considering whether to launch an arbitration scheme to settle legal complaints involving defamation or privacy, among other issues.
On Monday, the press regulator is expected to launch a three-month consultation into whether, and how, such a scheme should be run amid increasing criticism of the costs and complexities of seeking redress.
Although waiting to hear from all interested parties, including members of the public, Ipso indicated that the aim of its arbitration scheme would be to make the resolution of complaints “quicker and cheaper”.
Ipso chairman Sir Alan Moses said: “At the core of Ipso’s work is that we will support complainants who feel wronged by the press, and this consultation asks for views on how an arbitration scheme could be part of that provision. I look forward to receiving responses from the public as well as the industry and commentators.”
However, the scheme was instantly condemned by press campaigners as Ipso is not recognised by the Press Recognition Panel (PRP), which was set up in the wake of the Leveson inquiry into press behaviour. Ipso, which is backed by most of the main British newspaper publishers with the exception of the Guardian, the Financial Times and the Independent, is not seeking recognition from the PRP.
Evan Harris, director of Hacked Off, a group formed after the phone hacking scandal, which believes Ipso is not effectively independent, said: “No complainant with any sense, or a competent lawyer, would have any reason to accept an unrecognised arbitration scheme, especially one set up by a non-independent sham regulator.”
Under the Criminal and Courts Act enacted following the Leveson report, an arbitration scheme backed by a regulator that is sanctioned by the newly formed Press Recognition Panel would be seen as a genuine attempt at settlement and therefore a way of avoiding costly legal battles.
Among the issues covered by the consultation are whether the scheme should be mandatory, which would avoid publishers being able to choose which cases went to arbitration. Respondents are also to be asked how long such arbitrated claims should take and whether a cap should be set on the level of award by the arbitrator.
“Arbitration is not just about reducing costs and delays associated with litigation,” said Moses, “it is about widening access to justice for members of the public and is something I feel very strongly about.”
Ipso indicated it would run a pilot scheme if an arbitration scheme found backing. The system would not replace its regulatory complaints-handling process and “would therefore keep regulatory duties separate from legal claims against the press”.
I know it isn’t fashionable to champion former staff members of the News of the World. It was the newspaper where phone hacking took place and the resulting scandal was the reason that Rupert Murdoch closed it down.
But not everyone on the paper was guilty of hacking. And, despite my loathing for many of the stories it published and its journalstic agenda, I have always been careful not to tar every NoW journalist with the same brush.
So spare a thought for one of their number, the former crime editor Lucy Panton, who was arrested under the operation [Elveden] launched by the Metropolitan police into payments to public officials.
She was arrested in December 2011 - some six months after the NoW’s closure - and spent 19 months on police bail before being charged and subsequently undergoing an Old Bailey trial in which she was found guilty of conspiracy to commit misconduct by paying a prison officer. She appealed, and the appeal court quashed her conviction in March 2015.
Before 17 April this year, when the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the idea of subjecting her to a second trial, she spent three months wearing an electronic tag and being subject to a curfew.
And then? And then, as she has revealed in a lengthy intervew with the Press Gazette editor, Dominic Ponsford, she received a letter on 28 May from the Legal Aid Agency demanding nearly £35,000 and warning of enforcement action and fines if she did not pay.
In fact, Panton was owed more than £20,000 by the agency, which she had paid in legal aid contributions. That has since been repaid, but Panton is keen to repay some £11,000 raised to cover her defence costs, which was collected by the Crime Reporters Association and other Fleet Street colleagues.
Where in all this is Murdoch’s organisation? Given that Panton’s arrest stemmed from information his former British outfit, News International, passed to the police after her first arrest, did the company not feel responsible for her plight?
Ponsford reports that she made numerous pleas for help with her defence costs which were ignored by News International (now News UK) because she was no longer an employee.
When Press Gazette asked News UK why it refused to pay Panton’s legal fees, the magazine received a statement saying:
“We are pleased that court proceedings are now over for Lucy but due to other ongoing legal issues it would not be appropriate to comment further at this time”.
Really Rupert? Is that oh-so-carefully worded corporate/legalistic response the best you can offer to a woman who served you well? Do you not feel even a smidgeon of embarrassment that your company was responsible for her being charged?
Man up Rupert, cover her legal costs. You know you should.
The Guardian is to set up a team to focus on developing innovative approaches to deliver mobile news, after receiving a grant of almost $3m from a US foundation dedicated to promoting journalism.
Guardian US will create a new editorial and production team tasked with exploring new ways for readers to consume news on mobile devices, after being awarded $2.6m (£1.7m) from the Knight Foundation.
The Knight Foundation, which gave $130m in grants last year, has previously supported initiatives including a joint project by Mozilla, the New York Times and the Washington Post to build a user-generated content and comment platform.
The new team will form an innovation lab that will operate autonomously from the main US operation, but will also have access to stories and resources from the larger Guardian newsroom.
“The innovation lab will sit at the heart of our US newsroom and will draw on the collective expertise of our team in order to do things differently in the mobile space,” said Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media. “We’re also really excited to be sharing our results in an open environment, so others can learn from our experiments and get involved in the conversation about mobile journalism.”
Any new tools, story forms or ways to source stories that come out of the lab’s work will be shared with other organisations.
Jennifer Preston, vice-president of journalism at the Knight Foundation, said that the grant was born from the need for media organisations to keep up the shift to mobile news consumption.
“With 50% of news now accessed on smartphones, news organisations need to quickly figure out how to present news on a smaller screen,” said Preston. “We hope to develop a deeper understanding of how people use and consume mobile news, while also learning how best to engage audiences as participants in spreading and creating content.”
That news story you just read on your iPhone: did Apple pay the editor responsible? Actually, from this autumn, it’s possible that the company did.
Related: News outlets face losing control to Apple, Facebook and Google
Apple is hiring a team of editors to work on the Apple News app unveiled during the company’s recent WWDC event, before the app’s launch as part of its iOS 9 software later in the year.
“The Apple News team is looking for passionate, knowledgeable editors to help identify and deliver the best in breaking national, global, and local news,” explains a recruitment advertisement on Apple’s website, spotted early by 9 to 5 Mac.
“These editors will help News users find the best and most timely coverage of major news events, while also managing select categories based on their areas of professional expertise.”
Requirements include a bachelors degree in journalism, communication or a related field (“Masters preferred”) and at least five years of newsroom experience, including knowledge of “mobile news delivery”, content analytics and social tools.
“Successful editors will be ambitious, detail-oriented journalists with an obsession for great content and mobile news delivery. They will have great instincts for breaking news, but be equally able to recognise original, compelling stories unlikely to be identified by algorithms.”
By hiring editors, Apple appears to be taking a different path to direct competitors like Flipboard, as well as Facebook – which recently announced plans to start hosting news articles by publisher partners – which focus more on algorithms to decide what stories people see in their feeds.
However, Apple’s emphasis on human curation is likely to spark questions about what will happen when the company – or competing platforms like Android – become the news.
Tax affairs, human rights issues in Chinese factories, iPhone antenna issues, misfiring mapping software, leaked device prototypes, free U2 albums, games censorship controversies, child labour, surveillance issues are all examples of Apple making the headlines in recent years in ways the company would not have enjoyed.
How will editors employed by Apple treat these kinds of stories? And, indeed, how will they treat positive stories about the company’s rivals, from the launch of a new flagship Samsung handset or Android Wear smartwatch to updates on the growth of streaming music services like Spotify and Deezer?
Related: Strictly algorithm: how news finds people in the Facebook and Twitter age
If Apple News was staffed entirely by algorithms rather than human editors, we’d still be raising these kinds of questions – as we would when any big technology company becomes a gatekeeper for news. Facebook and Google News are subject to similar speculation, for example.
The simple answer might be that Apple can include or exclude whatever stories it likes in its own news app, with other apps (and websites) available on its devices to provide different perspectives.
Still, regardless of who or what is choosing the stories in Apple News, if the app becomes a powerful driver of traffic and advertising revenues for publishers, expect more scrutiny of the editorial choices being made – and of whether there is a knock-on “chilling effect” on publishers deciding whether to run a story criticising Apple.
Will that scrutiny make its way into Apple News? That might be an interesting interview question for the editors applying for the new vacancies.
• The Guardian is a partner for Apple News and for Facebook’s Instant Articles initiative.
When one of its articles has been criticised in the land of the free for failing to live up to the standards of robust journalism, what should a newspaper do? Well, the first thing obviously is to send the lawyers in.
The Sunday Times has demanded that journalist Glenn Greenwald remove an image of its front page from a highly critical blog on The Intercept. Not because it was libellous or indeed wrong, but because it infringes copyright. As Greenwald’s blog article alleged that the paper lied – it subsequently removed an erroneous reference to his partner David Miranda meeting Edward Snowden in Moscow – and showed the worst kind of behaviour in British journalism, it seemed a weak sort of response.
In contrast, Greenwald’s response was not only to refuse but to link to the letter from News UK’s general counsel.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 15, 2015
No, @TheSundayTimes, we are not going to remove the image of your humiliating headline from our story about it https://t.co/55sCL5irnT
I asked News UK why they had sent the letter amid growing criticism of the article – which alleged that Russia and China had access to files leaked by Snowden. A spokesperson for News UK said: “We are happy for our editorial content to be subject to robust and healthy political debate. However, as a matter of general principle, we need to protect our intellectual property and make no apologies for expecting others to pay for the professional journalism we invest in.”
Now, while it is the case that showing the whole of a front page could be said to constitute substantial use and therefore to contravene copyright (which is why newspapers show so many ragouts of pages) it is at the most generous a technical argument.
Even non-lawyers would recognise that showing the front page of a newspaper when writing about one of its stories would surely constitute “fair use and fair dealing”.
But then I suppose nobody said that all’s fair in love and leaking.
It was in 1992 that I first starting writing for Media Guardian. At the time I recall referring to myself as a press columnist. Years later, and I can’t remember how it came about, people like me were given the appellation “media commentator”.
I think it’s an understatement to say that media commentating is not widely appreciated by newspaper owners and editors. They can’t abide being subjected to the same kind of journalism they practise themselves.
Many journalists share a similar prejudice against those who dare to report on and criticise the fourth estate from within the fourth estate, viewing it as a form of treason.
In the latest issue of the British Journalism Review (BJR), I have written about this sad truth by quoting the catchphrase of Lance-Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army: “They don’t like it up ’em”.
However critical I am of editors, however opinionated and one-sided, however belligerent and sarcastic, my articles are nowhere near as rude, unfair and intrusive as those that are published daily in newspapers.
I simply treat newspaper practitioners and their output to the same kind of scrutiny that they deem appropriate for, say, politicians or celebrities. Like them, I hit hard. Unlike them, I don’t respond to personal attacks.
So my BJR article is the first time I’ve pointed out that most owners and editors (and far too many journalists) are thin-skinned hypocrites. Please read it here and, sort of, enjoy!
A young white American murdered a prominent church minister and eight churchgoers while reportedly declaring his hatred for black people. The crime poses two major questions about US society - its racial divide and its lax gun laws.
Both of those questions were raised in a considered and sensitive statement by America’s black president, Barack Obama, in which he spoke of his country’s “dark past”.
Unsurprisingly, the story of the massacre received front page coverage in newspapers across the USA. But how was it covered by Britain’s national newspapers?
First, the bald facts. The shootings featured in stories and pictures on the front pages of the Independent (“America’s shame”), the Guardian (“Cold stare of the racist killer who stunned America”) and Metro (“I have to kill you”). There were also small page 1 blurbs in the Times and Daily Mirror.
The Daily Telegraph confined its coverage to a foreign news page, here. The Times, in similar fashion, ran it on pages 30 and 31. The Daily Mail gave it a page and a half. The Sun’s spread, headlined Fiend from the swamp, was complemented by an editorial.
i’s story was on page 6: “Suspected killer of nine black churchgoers was given gun by his parents for 21st birthday”. The Mirror’s spread used a quote headline from the suspect, Dylann Roof, “I have to do it.. you rape our women & are taking over our country”. It also carried an editorial.
In the Daily Express it was on page 9 and in the Daily Star it was a spread on pages 18 and 19 (although it also used a quote from the killer on page 2).
Second, what three editorials said. The Independent (“Divided nation”) began:
“Even in America, a country by now inured to mass killings, Wednesday evening’s shooting rampage in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine people died, has come as a particular shock”.
It appeared, said the Indy, to be “a classic example of hate crime” that “will do nothing to improve the deteriorating state of race relations in the US”. It continued:
“In the wake of a series of police killings of unarmed black suspects and the unrest that ensued – from Ferguson, Missouri, last summer, to Baltimore just a few weeks ago – there is no doubt the mood has changed.
A CBS/New York Times poll last month, in the aftermath of the Baltimore riots, found that 61% of Americans believe race relations are generally bad – a view shared by blacks and whites alike...
This deterioration comes after America appeared to have exorcised some of its ancient racial demons by electing its first black president...
Other factors, of course, are at work. The obscene proliferation of guns only magnifies tragedies like that at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, established by free blacks and slaves in Charleston at the start of the 19th century.
There is even talk of arming pastors, a step that would be almost comical, were it not so desperate”.
The Indy also pointed out that, despite advances, “the deck of life chances is still stacked against black Americans. They earn less than whites, their opportunities for advancement are far fewer”.
The Mirror editorial (“Gun control vital for US”) also referred to the “continuing deep cultural divide in the US”, adding:
“The election of the country’s first black president was a milestone but there are still Americans who hate other Americans simply because of the colour of their skin”.
But its major argument was about “the wide availability of guns” that allows weapons to be acquired by “violent bigots”. It concluded with a comment sympathetic to the US president:
“Barack Obama captured the sombre mood, as he so often does, when he revealed he and his wife Michelle knew several members and the pastor of the South Carolina church.
The familiarity of his words – America, the land of grieving after massacres – reflects both the need to heal that racial divide and remove guns from a heavily armed population”.
But the Sun (“Deadly US toll”) condemned Obama for his failure to restrict gun ownership. “Yet again”, it said, Obama expressed grief, but “what will he do this time? Nothing”. It contended:
“Obama should concentrate more on why the US has far more massacres than any other western nation where guns are legal.
And whether it is caused by a society that fails to help disturbed loners while at the same time celebrating criminal notoriety”.
Ok, that’s the facts. Now, third, for my comment, albeit tentative, on the disparity of British national paper coverage of this savage racist crime.
I can’t help but note that the left-of-centre, liberal press gave the story much greater prominence and more space than the right-of-centre papers (with the notable and honourable exception of the Sun).
It is, frankly, astonishing that the Times and Telegraph in particular underplayed the story (and even more amazing that the Express didn’t bother with it at all).
I cannot help but wonder if racism was involved in editorial decision-making. Would those papers have treated this story in the same fashion if a black man had murdered nine white churchgoers?
Looking back also to December 2012, when the Sandy Hook school atrocity occurred, I recall that it dominated the front pages of every national, including the Telegraph, Times, Mail, Express and Star. Sure, it involved children, and the deaths of such “innocents” would guarantee splash status.
But surely the nine innocents of Charleston, South Carolina, merited more attention than some British newspaper editors granted them.
This article was amended on June 19 to clarify the position of the stories in the Express and Star.
Trinity Mirror executives in the Midlands have got it in the neck for laying off another 25 reporters and telling their residual staffs in Birmingham and Coventry that “the days are long gone when we could afford to be papers of record”. And the crassness gets worse. Here come “targets” (reader numbers, page clicks) for individual reporters. “Everyone will be expected – and helped – to grow their audiences.” Or else.
So it’s goodbye to comprehensive coverage. And it’s hello to 17 Sexy Things to See in Solihull, 18 Stupid Jokes About Smethwick, and 19 Quick Ways to Kill a Newspaper.
• Twitter is a resource much loved by journalists, who use it for breaking stories and watercooler gossip. But Twitter’s in trouble. It only has 300 million users, puny by Facebook standards – and a good lesson for tweeting journos. Newspaper sites deal in seemingly huge visitor numbers: 56 million a month for the Mail. So mighty in newsstand terms, but also so puny.
Richard Desmond defended his newspapers’ reporting of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance in a BBC interview as “fair”, despite having to pay more than £500,000 to settle defamation claims concerning the coverage.
In an extraordinary interview on BBC Radio 4’s Media Show on Wednesday, in which he also said he had no regrets aligning his media empire with Ukip, Desmond was asked if he regretted the way Gerry and Kate McCann were treated by his publications following the disappearance of their daughter in 2007.
“Do I regret [it]? No, I think we reported it very fairly,” he said. “The McCanns had a PR company that wanted [them] to be on [the] front page. They wanted to be on the front page, to keep the story live.”
Desmond, who also took umbrage at the description of his adult TV channels and former magazines as pornographic in the interview, defended the 100-plus articles that appeared in his Express and Star titles about the missing child.
In March 2008, Desmond’s Northern & Shell paid out £550,000 to settle defamation claims over more than 100 different articles and published a front-page apology in all his newspapers.
Desmond also said in the interview that he has no regrets about personally donating £1.3m to Ukip.
“Thank God I did that; supported Ukip,” he said. “Thank God the Daily Express listened to its readers. The readers are fed up with being controlled by Brussels, we are fed up with uncontrolled immigration. We like immigration, but uncontrolled immigration cannot carry on.
“And I’m delighted that there’ll be an European Union referendum. When we hear how David Cameron negotiates we will make our minds up.”
Desmond also said he has no problem with talking about his past as a proprietor of adult magazines, and being the current owner of adult TV stations Fantasy Channel and Red Hot, he simply did not want them referred to as pornographic.
“I’m very happy to talk about Penthouse,” he said. “I’m very happy to talk about the magazines that we published, which we sold 12 years ago. What I don’t like is the other word. For me that word I think of Paul Raymond, I think of drugs, I think of prostitution, I think of David Sullivan … stuff which is pornography. For me, I’m a media group.”
“Most media groups, including the BBC, do work in some way with adult material,” he said. “Ofcom were delighted we bought Channel 5 as we have a good rapport with them. Our adult channels are carried on Sky, Virgin, carried on Freeview, which I believe is owned by the BBC, carried on YouView.”
A new press freedom controversy has broken out involving Denis O’Brien, Ireland’s most powerful media magnate.
A former editor at one of the newspapers owned by a company in which O’Brien is the largest shareholder, Independent News & Media (INM), has accused some of its executives of stifling coverage of O’Brien.
Anne Harris, who edited the Sunday Independent for almost three years until December 2014, claimed in an article published in the Sunday Times’s Irish edition, “Fear of O’Brien casts long shadow over press”, that she was subject to internal censorship.
She told of an incident in November 2012 following the paper’s publication of a story revealing a complaint to a UN special rapporteur about O’Brien’s legal threats against several journalists.
According to Harris, she was called to a meeting with two senior INM managers in which she was told that O’Brien was “not to be written about in certain ways”.
She received a directive that any story referencing O’Brien in a negative way was to be referred to INM’s managing editor because there needed to be “sensitivity” towards a major shareholder.
Harris, having contended that a managing editor did not outrank an editor, was then informed that a post of editor-in-chief would be created.
In June 2013, Stephen Rae was appointed as editor-in-chief. “From then on”, wrote Harris, “I never again held a meeting with my own staff that was not attended by persons with strange new titles taking notes furiously”.
She also wrote about an incident in July 2014 involving an article written by Harris that referred to O’Brien and his alleged control of INM.
She claimed that, without reference to her, the editor-in-chief “stopped the page and removed a crucial sentence. I rang him to protest. The paper was delayed while we argued... several minor changes were negotiated. But I had no part in the removal of the crucial sentence”.
Harris believed that freedom of speech was the victim of a “war of attrition” but that “the main weapon” was an “insidious fear” of “living under a regime, all-powerful and capricious, not knowing where the next blow will fall”.
She wrote: “It freezes us. It induces inaction. And where there is action, it consists merely of trying to anticipate the capricious desires of those who control our lives”.
O’Brien holds a 29.9% stake in INM, Ireland’s largest newspaper group, which is chaired by Leslie Buckley, O’Brien’s long-time associate. Through a different company, O’Brien also controls two national talk radio stations. He has always denied using his media ownership to influence coverage of himself.
Earlier this month, O’Brien was embroiled in a legal battle with the media over claims made in the Irish parliament about his banking arangements.
A separate Sunday Times news story about Harris’s article contained an INM statement about her allegations over the July 2014 incident.
It said her article at the time “was legally and factually inaccurate” and continued:
“When the editor-in-chief pointed out the legal and factual inaccuracies, Ms Harris corrected the article in later editions of the paper...
Legal correspondence was subsequently received in relation to the article in the first edition, and as a result the Sunday Independent had to publish an apology to Denis O’Brien the following Sunday.
In terms of any meetings, the importance of factual and legal accuracy and journalistic balance and objectivity was the sole emphasis”.
INM further stated that “there has been no editorial interference in any of our titles” by O’Brien.
A correspondent for the independent Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, was beaten and briefly detained in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
Pavel Kanygin, a special correspondent for the Moscow-based paper, said he was held for five hours and interrogated by members of the separatist group who refer to the region as the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR).
After his release, Kanygin said he was held at gunpoint and asked whether he was one of them or a “ukropy” (the derogatory term for Ukrainians used by the separatists). “When I told him I am for peace, he hit me in the eye with his fist”, said Kanygin.
Novaya Gazeta’s deputy editor, Sergey Sokolov, told the CPJ that Kanygin had gone to the DNR press office in Donetsk to apply for reporting accreditation.
He was searched and a Ukrainian journalist’s business card was found in his possession. The separatists called him a criminal and accused him of working for Ukrainian media.
The reporter, who has written widely on the conflict in eastern Ukraine, was then forced to undergo a blood test, which the separatists said was positive for drugs. Novaya Gazeta’s editor-in-chief, Dmitry Muratov, said the drug allegations against Kanygin were fabricated.
Kanygin was later driven to a checkpoint on Ukraine’s border with Russia and released.
CPJ’s Europe and central Asia programme coordinator, Nina Ognianova, condemned the DNR’s action. She said: “Obstructing a journalist, attacking him, and throwing him out of the territory only reinforces the notion that the Donetsk People’s Republic has something to hide”.
Novaya Gazeta is part-owned by Alexander Lebedev, owner of the Independent titles. But in March this year, he said he would stop bankrolling the paper, which is regarded as hostile to the president, Vladimir Putin.
David Cameron’s former head of communications, Andy Coulson, is facing a six-figure legal bill after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) revealed it was seeking to have £750,000 costs awarded against him for last year’s marathon phone-hacking trial.
He was convicted of plotting to intercept voicemails at the now-defunct Sunday tabloid following an eight-month trial at the Old Bailey last year.
The CPS said in a hearing at the Old Bailey on Thursday that it was applying for this contribution from Coulson as his portion of the £1.1m total cost of Scotland Yard’s Operation Weeting prosecution.
It is also seeking £111,000 from a former News of the World news editor, Ian Edmondson, who was also convicted of plotting to hack the phones of public figures, sports stars and celebrities.
At a costs hearing before Mr Justice Saunders, counsel for Coulson argued that the starting point for any discussion on costs should be £323,800, not the £750,000 mooted by the CPS.
Saunders sought further details on Coulson’s finances and future earning potential and inquired about reports that he may be intending to write a book. “There have been suggestions that Mr Coulson is trying to raise funds by writing a book. I have no idea of the trust of those suggestions, it is something suggested in the press. I would have to be sure that there are no intensions in regard to that.”
Counsel replied: “Mr Coulson does not have a publishing agreement with any publisher, he has not been offered a publishing agreement, he has not written a book.”
She argued that having to pay £750,000 would force Coulson to lose his family home and this would not be “a just and reasonable order”.
Counsel forCoulson, who lives in Preston, Kent, said “an equity release [from the house] would be impossible to meet and bring hardship to himself and others.”
Saunders noted that he was a talented man who would be expected to have future earnings capacity. He quipped that the value of Coulson’s house, which was not stated in court, was “not astronomical but more than my house is worth”.
Counsel told the court that Coulson relies on “close and loyal” friends to help with family bills.
Prosecutor Mark Bryant-Heron said Coulson had not told the CPS how much he earned when he worked for the Conservative party. “We have no intelligence of any assets that haven’t been declared. We are concerned about an absence of information about what he earned when he worked for the Conservative party in government and what has happened to his income,” he said.
Dominic Chandler, representing Edmondson, insisted that he should not have to contribute anything to the prosecution costs.
Edmondson pleaded guilty in October last year – 16 months after he had initially pleaded not guilty before the phone hacking trial. He was one of the original eight defendants at the Old Bailey but, for health reasons, was deemed unfit to continue on the 29th day of proceedings.
Saunders noted that Edmondson’s four-bedroomed house is worth even more than Coulson’s.
Chandler told the judge Edmondson “has a limited ability to find work, he does face regular rejections for work as a result of this case … It is and does prove to be impossible for Mr Edmondson to find work. The court should make no order in relation to costs.” He told the court that the only financial assets Edmondson has are £5,000 savings and his home.
Saunders said he would give a written judgment on costs after further information he sought from parties was submitted.
• This article was amended on 19 June 2015. An earlier version said incorrectly that Andy Coulson has had problems keeping up with his mortgage payments.
My father, Arthur Leonard, who has died aged 89, worked at the inky end of the newspaper industry – as a printer’s assistant on the News of the World and the Radio Times. The Radio Times printing operation was acquired by Robert Maxwell and subsequently Arthur lost his job. He later lost most of his pension as well after Maxwell plunged overboard from his yacht in 1991. When Rupert Murdoch moved the printing of the News of the World from Fleet Street to Wapping in 1986, Arthur was once again out of work.
My daughter, Shel, and I used to join my father on the picket line at Wapping. He always wore a red woolly hat so we could find him. To his fellow picketers, he was known as “Arfur Bitter”. Luckily his union, Sogat, got him some shifts on the Daily Express and my parents decided to downsize and moved from London to the coast.
At Hill Head, in Hampshire, they threw themselves into local activities, taking part in beach clean-ups, latterly with Arthur helping on his mobility scooter, conserving a wood and stream in Fareham, driving people to hospital and visiting people in their homes as part of a voluntary care group.
He was born and grew up in Ten Mile Bank, a village in the Fens on the Cambridgeshire/Norfolk border, where he went to the local school, leaving early to work in a shop. His parents, Susan and David, had six children and lived in a tiny house built into the river bank. Dad moved to London, managed to avoid national service and secured a printing job.
Cheerful by nature, he remained his jovial self when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I often overheard the carers, who had to come in four times a day for many years, say: “We love coming to see you, Arthur. You always make us laugh.” When he could no longer read or write I would read out the clues from the Guardian quick crossword and he would solve them, spelling the letters out so I could fill in the solutions.
He is survived by his wife, Beryl, whom he married in 1950, his brother, Cliff, me and my brother, Steve, four grandchildren, Shel, Stuart, Ruth and Hazel, and by two great-granddaughters, Jasmine and Keira.
It seems a good moment, with a clear election victor agreed far earlier than anyone had forecast, to predict the winners and losers of the media industry now that the Conservatives have returned to power. For the impact of this election on the sector at a critical juncture could be seismic.
Although David Cameron and George Osborne are likely to be kept far busier with new austerity measures, it is clearly the BBC which has most to worry about from the Conservative mandate. With the royal charter set to expire at the end of 2016, there are just 19 months to agree the future funding and structure of the corporation.
Of all the main parties, the Tories have shown signs of being the most hostile to the cost and expansion of the BBC. They were the only main party offering to freeze the £145.50 annual licence fee as a way of saving voters money, putting the pledge at the top of their manifesto’s media wishlist.
Admittedly, the pledge was hedged with the weaselly admission that they couldn’t do anything until after the new charter was agreed - ie, it simply confirmed the 19-month status quo – but as a sign of intent, it was pretty clear: the BBC’s spending and its ability to provide “value for money” will be at the heart of the charter renewal debate. That the Tories meant business was reflected in the manifesto also containing a pledge to continue “top-slicing” the licence fee to fund superfast broadband across the country, a charge taking £150m per annum out of the BBC’s £3.6bn funding pot.
As well as the manifesto focus, there is the fact that senior Tories continue to accuse the BBC of leftwing bias. Sajid Javid took time out as culture secretary in the run-up to the election to warn the BBC that the future charter renewal negotiations would include an analysis of any bias, after taking umbrage at a Today programme mini-debate. In an interview with the Daily Mail, he said: “There was a debate … they were all anti-Tory. It came across as very, very anti-Tory.”
A potentially more difficult challenge for the corporation will be BBC Scotland. Criticism of the BBC and its London-centric coverage heightened during the referendum debate. How much more difficult this will become given the entirely different nature of political control remains to be seen.
A new report by Loughborough University’s communication research unit to be published today shows how much more coverage Ukip garnered in national TV and newspapers than the SNP despite the latter going on to win 50 times more seats.
Almost double the amount of party leader quotes or story space was devoted to Ukip during the campaign period (until the campaign’s last week when negative stories of the Scottish “menace” proliferated). An SNP denied political power by a majority Tory government is likely to focus on any continued diminution of its status while the Conservatives will be in no mood to be generous during the forthcoming funding wrangles.
As for BBC governance, the BBC Trust has already been called a busted flush by a cross-party group of MPs. In bringing in figures such as Sir Roger Carr, Javid signalled that the party is keen to have pro-business leaders identifying a replacement. The other potential loser under a Tory government is likely to be civil liberties. Indeed, within 24 hours of polls closing on Thursday, home secretary Theresa May confirmed that the draft communications data bill, or so-called snoopers’ charter, was back on the agenda now the Liberal Democrats were no longer around to block it. Prior to the election Cameron said that there should be no communication that the government was unable to read.
On the plus side, newspapers will largely breathe a sigh of relief, both local newspapers promised rates relief and the nationals which feared more legislation to increase press regulation in the wake of Leveson. Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, said that the election result “removes this particular Sword of Damocles” as more legislation was unlikely.
Indeed, at the end of April Javid said his party would not back a Leveson-approved regulator as: “It interferes with the freedom of the press. It goes fundamentally against one of the Leveson principles, which is independent self-regulation.” Besides, press regulation was a job done.
Yet with nearly all major newspapers with the exception of the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times having signed five-year contracts with Ipso, the independent press standards body set up in the wake of the Leveson inquiry, it will be interesting to see whether any organisation considers breaking the contracts.
Media was the 15th most mentioned issue during the campaign, according to Loughborough research, above crime. It is unlikely to leave the political agenda any time soon.
As the Labour party tears itself apart trying to come to terms with its general election performance, it should understand this reality: the right-wing press was overwhelmingly responsible for its defeat.
I agree with my colleague, Jane Martinson, that the fact that the bulk of UK newspapers backed the eventual winner is noteworthy.
It should not be overlooked because I haven’t a shadow of doubt that Ed Miliband lost because of newspaper coverage.
However, this view is not based on a simplistic, and narrow, Sun-wot-won-it analysis. We know that Britain’s best-selling national daily, in company with the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph, consistently ran virulent anti-Labour material during the weeks of the campaign.
We also know that, based on newsprint sales, 57.5% of the dailies backed the Tories while 11.7 % backed Labour and, on the same metric, 66% of the Sunday nationals urged their readers to vote Conservative.
Related: How the Tories won the general election air war
I also agree that Miliband suffered a pounding from those newspapers that was reminiscent of the bitterly personal attacks on Neil Kinnock in 1992 and Michael Foot in 1983.
I am sure that the relentless ridicule over the six-week campaign may have played some part in the voting decisions of the floating voters who buy the Sun and the Mail (and yes, there are plenty of them).
But that factor, in itself, did not make the really significant difference to the Tory victory in England and Wales.
Instead, to understand why Labour lost, look at the overall polling figures for Nigel Farage’s Ukip. It secured 4.8m votes across the UK and its effect on Labour has not been sufficiently understood.
Despite Ukip winning only one seat, it delivered the best performance by a new independent party in post-war English politics, as the Telegraph rightly reported.
Many, many traditional Labour voters abandoned the party in order to vote for Ukip. In several seats that Labour regarded as winnable marginals, expecting to tip out Tory incumbents, the party was foiled by Ukip.
Just look at the results for Pudsey, Keighley, Cleethorpes, Warrington South, Rossendale & Darwen, Nuneaton, Cannock Chase, Northampton North and Ipswich (and other marginals). In every case, Labour failed because of the votes for Ukip.
I concede that it’s difficult to be sure whether the majority of Ukip’s support came from the Tories or Labour. But there is a big clue to Labour defections by looking at Ukip’s support at the expense of Labour in very safe Labour seats.
In Dagenham and Rainham, for example, there was a 12.5% swing from Labour to Ukip despite the popularity of Labour’s excellent MP, Jon Cruddas. In Hartlepool, a 13.9% swing from Labour to Ukip helped the latter to finish in second place.
In the three seats in Hull – East, North and West & Hessle – Ukip managed second place finishes. Elsewhere, in Merthy Tydfil for instance, there were swings away from Labour to Ukip. And in many safe Tory seats, Ukip pushed Labour into second place.
Ukip’s twin policy plank - halt immigration and pull out of the European Union - clearly appealed to voters in traditional Labour areas. I am not alone in pointing this out. Here’s Oxford university’s Stephen Fisher:
“The rise of Ukip that was expected to disproportionately hurt the Tories, in fact seems to have undermined the Labour performance more”.
Yes, yes, yes. Before Labour beats itself up about its supposed failure to attract support from the middle class, it needs to grasp the reasons for Ukip’s polling success in its working class heartlands.
Related: Tory victory comes at a critical time for media, especially the BBC
But why did Ukip do so well? Because in the five years leading up to the election, the rightwing press lent it, and its policies, credence.
In an effort to ensure that David Cameron’s Conservative party followed a largely anti-EU agenda, newspapers gave disproportionately favourable coverage to Farage and his party.
They certainly poked fun at some of his supporters and, at various points, questioned Ukip’s credibility. Yet they treated the party’s policies, including its anti-immigrant stance, with undue sympathy. And that includes the Sun, which – under instructions from its owner, Rupert Murdoch – has been careful to avoid overt criticism of immigration.
It’s true that only the Daily Express actually endorsed Farage’s party (“Vote Ukip for a patriotic Britain”) after its owner, Richard Desmond, gave it £1.3m.
Much more significant than that single last-minute endorsement was the overall support for years across all the papers of the right.
It has, of course, worked out well for those publishers who favour Brexit or, at the least, some kind of radical reform of Britain’s EU membership. Cameron might well have avoided holding an in/out referendum without Ukip’s existence and its newspaper support.
What remains troubling in the long term for Labour is the possibility that it can never win back support from those who left it to vote Ukip.
Unless Labour comes to terms with the fact that many of its former voters are concerned about immigration and about the EU’s open borders policy, the party’s discussions about its future direction, and about its choice of leader, will be irrelevant.
The press’s role in the 2015 election requires more investigation. As so often, the coverage over six weeks tells us little more than we could have anticipated before the campaign began. Agenda-setting over a longer period is far more important.
The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating a “small number of complaints” about the Telegraph’s email urging people to vote Conservative.
The email, signed by editor Chris Evans and including links to the newspaper’s election-day leader article, other political coverage and an offer for a free 45-day digital subscription, was sent to the newspaper’s database of emails on the eve of the election.
Some recipients took to Twitter to complain that they either did not know how the Telegraph had got their email address or saying they had only signed up for specific emails such as its technology or finance newsletters.
— Harriet Smart (@harrietlcsmart) May 7, 2015
Eew how have you got my email address @Telegraph - I'm not a 'reader' of yours pic.twitter.com/TsSextE7oJ
The email contained a disclaimer saying that recipients had either “agreed to receive marketing messages by email from Telegraph Media Group” or “signed up for this newsletter”.
The regulator is assessing whether the email breaches either the Data Protection Act or the privacy and electronic communications regulations, which cover electronic marketing including calls, emails and texts.
Some of the Telegraph’s selection of newsletters provide the ability to opt-out of marketing messages, however others, including the technology newsletter, do not.
Sending the email to people who had not indicated they were happy to receive other messages would appear to breach the Telegraph’s privacy policy, which states that if there are no opt-in or opt-out boxes on a signup process “it’s because we will not use your information for any other purpose than that for which you give it (e.g. to administer a subscription).”
A Telegraph spokesperson said: “The Telegraph’s email leader, urging our readers to vote for the Conservatives, was sent to our customer database and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
“If any readers did receive this email in error, we will, of course, take steps to make sure this does not happen again.”
A decision from the ICO is not expected for at least a few weeks.
The UK press ran almost twice as many articles on issues that were negative for Labour as positive during the election, according to research from Loughborough University.
Of 2,495 news items examined by the team from the Communications Research Centre at Loughborough, 682 focused on issues that were broadly negative for Ed Miliband’s party, compared to 358 on positive issues.
In contrast, 614 items covered issues deemed positive for the Conservative, compared to 502 considered negative.
The contrast in fortunes was even more stark when print circulation was taken into account, with the country’s two best-selling newspapers, the Sun and Daily Mail, even more focused on issues that would play well for the Conservatives.
Loughborough used a ratings system giving a score of one for positive issues and -1 for negative, assessing each news item and then working out an average for each party and each week of the campaign. It then weighted the figures based on the circulation of each title.
Key conclusions on coverage from the report include:
Levels of positive Conservative coverage remained stable during the final stages of the campaign.
Levels of negative Labour coverage reduced in the final days, but still remained significantly high.
There was an appreciable increase in the negativity of SNP coverage in the final stages of the campaign.
Lib Democrats started to register some degree of negative evaluative coverage in the last sample period. Previous to that, they received little evaluative coverage of any kind.
Loughborough University directional election coverage graph Illustration: Loughborough University/Loughborough University
The difference between print press and broadcasters, who are required by regulator Ofcom to avoid bias, is clear in how much more frequently Conservative sources appeared in print than on TV compared to their Labour counterparts.
Labour sources appeared slightly more frequently on TV than Conservative ones, whereas in print the Conservatives accounted for 37.5% compared to Labour’s 31.8%.
No ifs, no buts. This, in the small, stifling area of the universe where journalists and politicians mingle, was a bonfire of the certainties, a pyre of punditry. No one – except John Curtice and his exit pollsters – emerges with reputation intact. No prophet of a columnist saw this coming. No editor believed it possible. Everyone settled for the supposed stasis of a parliament hung, drawn and divided into multi-party segments. So the one great lesson for May 2020 and elections beyond is inescapable.
We’re used to the pollsters telling us what’s happening (as opposed to finding out for ourselves). We somehow believed the politicians have an inside track – until we saw their mouths gape incredulously on Friday morning. Data journalism is only as good as the data it deploys. Shoe leather and inquiring minds still count.
But there are other campaign things that matter to take away from the wreckage of hopes and careers, other media lessons to help make coverage of May 2020 better.
For the broadcasters
The two most influential and appreciated TV election outings had one element in common. ITV’s seven-plinthed debate was tightly run and intelligently organised. It didn’t allow talking over or shouting back between combatants. The BBC’s three solo Question Times from Leeds had exactly the same virtue.
Has the performance on the right – and (to be fair) on the left – been sensible this time round? Hell, not entirely
Making it clear? Nothing is clear amid almighty din. And the Leeds questions themselves – posed precisely by ordinary members of the public – tended to leave the commentariat trailing. The Paxman interviews, the Humphrys, Marr, Snow and Davis interviews? All of them arrived meticulously prepared, taking the evidence of the polls and building. But too many of them seemed not so much interviews as arguments. For instance, the John Humphrys argument with Dave/Ed/Nick in which (shades of 1984) the great interrogator offers a loaded hypothesis about future developments and demands a yes or a no that no politician in his right mind would think it remotely sensible to provide. Nick Clegg wouldn’t lay out his favoured partner for coalition – which was just as well as it happened, because the whole scenario was meaningless.
You can get overcomplicated, overbearing. And, on 2015 form, you can also be too clever by half. There will be more debates in 2020. They’ve happened now for two elections in a row. No windy Downing Street incumbent will be able to dodge them next time – and next time will need organising early, via the Election Commission, rather than staggering into some bedraggled studio late in the day after another negotiation between broadcasting’s awkward squad and the shrinking violets of No 10. But those individual Question Times deserve a traditional slot as well. Democracy means giving the public an authentic, unmediated voice. It can be done, because Yorkshire just did it. Perhaps, somewhere in there, you could already hear the voice of the people who actually went to the polls. Let’s do it again.
Meanwhile, that boring, hermetically sealed campaign the TV teams spent so much time complaining about? The infantile video Polyfilla of people who aspire to run the country playing ball with infants or lecturing small crowds of extras on industrial estates? They – the politicians – only do it for you, the TV producers: weeks of photo ops without point or human content except a few eyeball minutes on the television news each night. But it isn’t news. It’s the precise opposite. It’s political spam. Why not give it up for a few days next time and see whether anyone applauds? No non-news might be very good news.
So would be a full-throated onslaught on the automatic tedium of fairness and balance as inflicted by law and policed by Ofcom. Of course, at least in theory, we like our public service broadcasting to be fair: which means independent and honest when reporters travel out of their offices to a rally. But independent honesty doesn’t mean the kind of mathematically balanced coverage, measured in seconds and minutes, that academics – this year at Loughborough University – rate as statistically fair.
It entails the ability for the journalist on the spot, speaking to camera, producing his witnesses, to posit that candidate A or B is winning, and say why. He or she could do that if this were an Israeli or Nigerian election. Fairness and balance doesn’t mean no verdict, no enlightenment overseas. But in UK elections, by law, we turn constituency reporting into pretty pictures without a point, vox pop interviews without a bite. Tedium self-inflicted.
For the newspaper editors
Hallelujah! cried the Mail on Friday morning. Hail to the precious commodity we call press freedom? Of course. That freedom inevitably means the right to run lead headlines like the Telegraph’s “Nightmare on Downing Street” or the Sun’s “Save Our Bacon” – from the “pig’s ear Ed made of eating a helpless sarnie”. It includes the “right” of the Mail to be named Britain’s “most influential” newspaper on a poll that also put Labour two points ahead. But the question here isn’t about rights, more common sense.
It’s important on many levels that your readers see something to trust in you, so that your scoops count and your leaders may be read with respect. So there’s always a line to be drawn: not to stop you going over it, merely to indicate what’s advisable and what’s merely hysterical.
Has your performance on the right – and (to be fair) on the left – been sensible this time around? Hell, not entirely. There have been good pieces of analysis to cut out and keep (Kettle, Freedland, Rentoul, Collins, Aaronovitch and more). There have been excellent leader articles (in the FT, Indy, Guardian and Times) putting an eloquent point of view. There were unpredictable endorsements – the Indy and FT – that made an impact because they were unpredictable. But there has also been too much malign abuse and dodgy dealing. I sadly agreed with writer Ed Caesar’s tweeted summation of front-page coverage as the campaign closed – “mostly dire, partisan, shouty rubbish”.
And to what purpose? To bolster the reputation of Ipso, the new regulator and its clause number one: “The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information…” Nightmare on Fleet Street.
The good/bad thing is how little difference all the shouty rubbish seemed to make. The pollsters aren’t using it as an excuse. And the interesting thing was how little account the press took of digital reach (counting, for instance, the Tory press at 5.2m copies against 1.6m on the other side, as though online’s millions didn’t exist). This wasn’t some transformative election on the net. The might of Vice made a stereotypical late effort (“How Five Years of Coalition Have Totally Fucked the Young”). The bravura of BuzzFeed remained undiminished. (“17 Hot Men who Really Want You to Vote in the Election”.)
It isn’t just our electoral system that can’t cope in a complex multi-party world. It’s the media’s way of covering it. Consider the Sturgeon phenomenon, the rise and rise of the SNP. That catches a unique mood. Did Ed Miliband understand that mood when Johann Lamont, walking out as Labour leader north of the border, accused him of trying to run Scotland “like a branch office of London”? Can a devolved press and, particularly, a devolved BBC, treat what happens in Holyrood as British news needing consistent British coverage, or does devolved somehow mean “foreign”?
Crucially, now, how SNP fortunes rise or fall as the fortunes of a new Tory government rise or fall will be vital. The 2016 Holyrood elections will be the springboard for 2020 too. Either the embrace of hated London will trap the SNP in its coils and drain the confidence from Scottish voters – or it will be onwards to a new referendum that could change the nature of Britain once and for all. How many correspondents on the ground in Scotland will that need? How great a break from the current state of things where Glasgow looks after its own broadcasting affairs, the Scottish Sun goes its own sweet way, and most upmarket UK papers manage with two or three reporters north of Watford, let alone Berwick-upon-Tweed? Basic message: Scotland isn’t just up there. It’s down here as well.
For valiant service
■ A Golden Toupee to Andrew Neil, asking incisive questions and pothering stupendous statistics for day after day. Nice to see young talent coming through at the BBC. Andrew won’t even be quite 70 in May 2020.
■ A Golden Horlicks mug for David Dimbleby, who’ll be 81. Thursday night was his last stand, surely: and he stood up straight and sure.
■ A Golden Rinse for Julie Etchingham (45), the cool hand and cool head at ITV’s seven-ring circus.
■ A Golden Welcome Back to Nick Robinson (51), croaking bravely back into action, wit undiminished.
■ And numerous silver medals to the writing press, including first-class travel scholarships for Marina Hyde and John Crace at the Guardian, Ann Treneman (once foreign editor of the Observer) at the Times – and a bronze Poison Pen for Quentin Letts at the Mail to mark his amazing, indefatigable service to bile production at the hustings, in the theatre, or indeed anywhere where bile flows free. Watch it, Dave: Quentin, the hindrance without let, is waiting for you now. Hallelujah!
A case of champagne is among the rewards being offered by tabloids and rightwing pundits in return for the whereabouts of the so-called “Ed Stone”.
The 10 commandments-style tablet, engraved with five promises and unveiled in the final days before the election, was meant to symbolise how Ed Miliband would keep his pledges and restore trust in politics.
But the gimmick was perhaps the greatest gift Miliband gave to his opponents – and the mockery shows no signs of letting up even after his resignation and the quiet disappearance of the stone.
An 8ft 6in-high, two-ton limestone hulk is not the easiest thing to hide. But the stone, which was rumoured to have cost up to £30,000, is proving remarkably elusive and Labour sources are staying tight-lipped.
The Mail has offered a case of champagne to any reader who has information that “leads to the discovery of the Ed Stone”. The Sun has set up a dedicated “Ed Stone hotline” for tips about the stone’s whereabouts.
But without any apparent success in locating the real thing, the Sun also offered its readers a chance to win a full-size replica of “the Labour loser’s laughable slab”.
The Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday tried some investigative journalism to locate the boulder, contacting more than 50 masonry firms across the UK – none of whom admitted to creating the monument.
None could even agree what kind of stone it was, with the Stone Federation of Great Britain telling the Mail it could be hewn from Portland limestone from Dorset, but another stonemason claiming it might be cheaper, Portuguese limestone.
Several spoof listings for the tablet have appeared on eBay, with prices ranging from £5 to £100.
“Yesterday the world-famous Ed Stone fell over in an unpredictable freak accident and smashed into bits and pieces. The stone is beyond recognition even to the trained eye,” one tongue-in-cheek eBayer wrote. “Good news is: the leftovers are now exclusively available on eBay.”
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A spoof eBay listing for the EdStone Photograph: eBay
Labour promised the stone would be erected in the Rose Garden of Downing Street or in the party’s HQ had Miliband won the election. It is believed the tablet was secretly moved to London after its unveiling in a Hastings car park, but no one has spotted it since.
On social media, many suggested its potential whereabouts as well as alternative uses for the stone.
— Stansaid Airport (@StansaidAirport) May 8, 2015
Ed just relaxing at home with his new kitchen table. pic.twitter.com/QzSsyM2FCb
— Kevin Maguire (@Kevin_Maguire) May 8, 2015
For Sale: One Edstone. Hardly used. New £30,000 but will listen to offers. No time wasters. Ring Ed on 0207...
— Jeremy Vine (@theJeremyVine) May 10, 2015
I think I have found #EdStone just by Googling on maps pic.twitter.com/uGlUFqfRJM
This fight to protect press freedom has to be global, where we all stand up to strengthen voices of colleagues who are being silenced, imprisoned, killed, in growing numbers. Journalism has always been a risky business - but now the risks are rising as never before. Lyse Doucet, chief international correspondent, BBC, @bbclysedoucet, London UK
...but there are pockets of hope
It’s almost impossible to be a reporter in Ethiopia because of systematic government repression (see Human Rights Watch’s recent report on media freedom). And the Committee to Protect Journalists recently published its top 10 censors lists, including Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Vietnam and China. But there are vibrant media communities in many places, including of course citizen journalists, and you can find some of their stories here. Emma Daly, communications director, Human Rights Watch, @emmadaly @hrw, New York, US
Related: Live Q&A: How can NGOs support an independent press?
The threat of terrorism is being used to decrease press freedom
It certainly is in Ethiopia, where dozens of journalists are imprisoned under the country’s anti-terror laws – usually for stories that aren’t remotely connected to terrorism. The same thing happens in Vietnam and other countries. The UK is setting a pretty bad example by using its anti-terror laws to arrest reporters and their sources and publicly taking power tools to destroy hard disks that supposedly have “dangerous” information on them. Peter Noorlander, CEO, Media Legal Defence Initiative, @mediadefence@PeterNoorlander, London, UK
And violence is being used to silence journalists
Trauma exposure in itself can be a form of censorship. On a weekly basis we talk to journalists who fear that the tide of violence they are witnessing may be overwhelming their ability to respond. In places like Mexico and Syria , – but not only in those countries – compassion fatigue, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder can all impair individuals’ abilities to produce nuanced reporting or to just get the news out. Isis and oppressive regimes know this. That is partly why their propaganda feeds contain such a high volume of traumatic imagery. It has a bludgeoning effect. And that also highlights what a remarkably impressive job many local journalists are doing. They are continuing, despite this pressure. Gavin Rees, executive director, Dart Centre Europe, @DartCenter, London, UK
The United Nations is failing to live up to its rhetoric
The biggest obstacle we face as an advocacy organisation working for social justice internationally is the tight grip on information held by the United Nations. The UN should be the gold standard, defending a free and transparent flow of information to and from the public. It calls on governments to establish freedom of information laws and policies, to ensure that the media have access to the information, and to protect the rights of journalists who report that information. Yet the UN itself is governed by no freedom of information regulations or policies.
The UN’s information arms, from the secretary-general’s official spokespersons right throughout the system, regularly withhold information from the media and the public with impunity. The UN asserts its right to selectively inform and withhold, and there are no official channels for “we, the peoples” to demand disclosure of information from the UN. When staff within the UN reveal information, they are often subjected to disciplinary measures, including dismissal. If the UN is to be the global standard-bearer of press freedom, it must model that principle to member states through its own actions rather than obstruct the free flow of information. Paula Donovan, co-director, AIDS-Free World, @AIDS_Free_World, Boston, US
Media companies should train journalists in the developing world
Media companies that work regularly with local journalists as fixers, translators, etc should offer training, insurance, equipment and care to keep them safe, not only from physical but also psychological harm. Some already do that (and have signed on to the new freelancer guidelines). Perhaps that’s impossible if you’re only working with someone for a day, but in my experience the relationships often last over time, yet in some locals are left to fend for themselves. Emma Daly, communications director, Human Rights Watch, @emmadaly @hrw, New York, US
NGOs should look to engage local reporters
Aid agencies need to stop trampling over local media in their rush to get to CNN when there’s an emergency. And they should do all their press releases in appropriate languages, and have linguistically appropriate spokespeople. Anything else and you are actively undermining their ability to do their (crucial in emergencies) job. Imogen Wall, freelance consultant, @imogenwall, London, UK
Related: 11 ways NGOs can work with politicians
Partnering with media companies in the developing world can bring results
BBC Media Action works in 26 countries, has hundreds of media and capacity- building partnerships and reaches more than 200 million people – so the concern that we might impose on media in developing countries is obviously one we worry about. Our experience is, I think, the opposite. Working with BBC Media Action provides our partners with the capacity to be more editorially independent and have greater capacity to resist political pressures than they might if they were on their own. Our programme Open Jirga in Afghanistan, for example, is a popular and highly influential public debate programme that is produced to BBC editorial standards of balance but goes out on the state broadcaster RTA, reaching millions across the country. It wouldn’t be as balanced or respected if we weren’t involved. James Deane, director of policy and learning, BBC Media Action, @JamesMDeane, London, UK
With the state of press freedom in the UK and US, how can western organisations work effectively in the developing world?
On the subject of what we can do inside our own glass houses while we are throwing critical stones at the absences of press freedom elsewhere, it’s very much on point to consider the concluding words in last week’s Comment is Free piece by Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning). She calls for “a clear example to the rest of the world that, in a truly modern democratic republic, the suppression of the press and sources by criminal prosecutions cannot be tolerated. Then the US could no longer be used as an excuse by repressive governments around the world to say: ‘Well, they do it in America, too’.” Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy, @NormanSolomon @accuracy, Washington, DC, US
In the digital age, physical distance matters less to those who want to make a difference
Our ability to connect through the internet, through Skype and other links, means we have an unprecedented ability to reach out to help journalists everywhere. There’s nothing better than being “on the ground”, meeting face-to-face. But we can no longer say we don’t have the means to try to connect, no matter where we are. Lyse Doucet
But new technology doesn’t mean reporters are empowered
The broader platform also means that journalists are increasingly potentially exposed. This means digital reporting training needs to come not just with ethical training, but also digital security training. Jodie Ginsberg, CEO, Index on Censorship, @jodieginsberg @indexcensorship, London, UK
Training on its own won’t transform the media
Training on its own won’t work if journalists can’t put that training into effect. We learned this the hard way and have changed our strategy as a result. There is a very useful analysis of the long-term impact of training (or the lack of it) rooted in the BBC’s experience of training journalists in the 1990s here. However, if you provide training within the context of co-producing genuinely independent, strong public interest content, that really can work. James Deane
Read the full Q&A here.
Is there anything that we’ve left out? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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Jim Markwick was responsible for a remarkable act of altruism when he persuaded the Guardian in 1973 to take on Gemini, a struggling business devoted to producing news features about developing countries in the Commonwealth.
Gemini posted copy to far-flung newspapers in the pre-internet era and was a major contributor to what was then talked about as a new, less westernised, international information order. It was the brainchild of Derek Ingram, formerly a deputy editor of the Daily Mail, who saw the Commonwealth as a new, exciting project and believed that newspapers within it deserved all the support they could get.
Related: Jim Markwick obituary
The business never made money for the Guardian, which disposed of it after nine years. But its offbeat stories and bold graphics broke new ground at the time. Jim had therefore made a real contribution to the developing world.
All newspaper editors are committed to press freedom, are they not? During the Leveson inquiry, some editors devoted considerable space to telling readers that they were fighting for the people’s right to know.
So how did they react to the Guardian’s 10-year struggle, and eventual court victory, that resulted in the publication of letters between Prince Charles and government ministers?
Did they applaud the Guardian for its expenditure of time and resources in order to reveal the pressures applied by the heir to the throne on elected politicians? Did they hell.
The Daily Telegraph’s leading article makes no mention of the Guardian’s efforts. Indeed, it finds it “regrettable” that the supreme court “allowed the letters to be released”. The Prince “should be entitled to have a private exchange of views with ministers”.
The paper also ran a piece by historian Andrew Roberts in which called the Guardian “foolish” for its fight in “forcing these letters into the public domain”.
The Times, even though its leading article was critical of Prince Charles for meddling in politics, managed to overlook the Guardian’s role in exposing the meddling.
The paper argued that “it was right to disclose [the letters]” because “a letter from the prince is not just a letter, but a form of pressure”.
It also contended that it was “disappointing that £375,000 of public money” was “spent on legal battles trying to keep their contents secret”. But it could not bring itself to praise the Guardian for pursuing the matter.
The Sun, the paper that routinely intrudes into people’s privacy, thought the Guardian had secured “a hollow victory”. “The Oxbridge revolutionaries” had “battled for years to uncover the confidential documents” which did no more than “prove is that the prince is well-meaning, reasonable and polite”.
Then there is the Daily Mail, scourge of the Leveson process for its supposed threat to freedom of the press. Well, the paper certainly agrees with the disclosure:
“Unmistakably, the prince sought to use his position to influence public policy. So surely the public had the right to know what he was up to.
May the Mail humbly suggest that if he doesn’t want the public to know about his meddling, he shouldn’t do it?”
So surely the Guardian deserves a pat on the back... I’m afraid not. Paul Dacre just couldn’t bring himself to give credit where it was due.
The Mail also ran an article by Stephen Glover in which he contended that “if the Guardian hoped to discredit [the prince] it has signally failed”.
This fails to take account of the fact that the Guardian fought its freedom of information case on the basis that, whatever the content, the prince’s lobbying was itself of public interest. Its own leader makes that clear:
“The importance of these papers is not whether they reveal the prince’s controversial (or not) views on the European Union directive on herbal medicines. The importance is what they say about his judgment and its constitutional implications”.
The Daily Mirror was delighted that “the public is at last free to read Prince Charles’s black spider memos to politicians” because “in a democracy, people should have a right to know the issues a constitutional king-to-be is raising with government ministers”.
But there was no word about the newspaper that ensured they have, at last, been revealed to the people.
And the Independent? A long leader, Memos put an end to the ludicrous idea that Britain’s monarchy is politically neutral, made out a reasonable case for disclosure. But it did not mention the Guardian’s part in having brought it about.
That’s press solidarity for you. One paper succeeds in a press freedom campaign. All its rivals devote pages to the consequent revelations. And none bother to congratulate it for its efforts. Truly, the Guardian is a paper apart.
The publisher of the Daily Mail has lost its challenge to a high court ruling that author JK Rowling should be allowed to read a unilateral statement in open court as part of the settlement of a libel claim.
Associated Newspapers did not dispute that she is entitled to such a move – where the claimant alone makes a statement – but objected to a number of terms in the proposed draft.
Rowling brought the action over a September 2013 story in the Daily Mail and Mail Online claiming an article she had written about her time as a single mother in Scotland was a misleading “sob story”.
The Mail printed an apology to Rowling last May in which it accepted that Rowling made no false claims in the article and said that it had paid her “substantial damages”, which she was donating to charity.
She was not at the court of appeal in London on Friday to hear the challenge dismissed by Lord Justice Longmore, Lord Justice Ryder and Lady Justice Sharp.
In January, Associated’s counsel, Andrew Caldecott QC, said that Mr Justice Tugendhat’s ruling, in April last year, was a “most unsatisfactory precedent” and one which, if generally followed, would create difficulties for the offer of amends regime.
This procedure provides for a defendant to make an open offer to pay costs and damages with an apology – with the aim of bringing a speedy end to litigation in cases where a defendant has unintentionally made statements which it admits to be untrue.
If the offer is not accepted, the claimant may only recover damages through the courts if it can prove malice on the part of the defendant.
Caldecott said: “Although this appeal raises important issues, it in no way seeks to dilute or qualify the published apologies to Ms Rowling which she was properly and rightly entitled to.”
The apology, which appeared both online and in the hard copy of the newspaper, was part of an unqualified offer of amends, which was accepted by Rowling in January 2014.
Caldecott said that the whole purpose of a statement in open court was to attract wide publicity, which made it the more important that the statement was confined to, and accurately reflected, the pleaded claim.
Justin Rushbrooke QC, for Rowling, said that the appeal did not, as claimed, raise any important issue of principle or practice in defamation law, but was plainly misconceived and an “exercise in nit-picking”.
He said that only rarely should a defendant be permitted to dictate to a claimant what she was permitted to say in a statement in open court.
It was primarily a matter between the court and the party wishing to make a statement, and the proper arbiter of what was acceptable in a unilateral statement was the judge.
Giving the court of appeal’s decision, Mrs Justice Sharp said that Associated’s contention was a narrow one – that the judge was wrong to give his approval to a statement which went outside Rowling’s pleaded case in that it mischaracterised the meaning complained of and included matters relating to aggravation of damages which went beyond those in the particulars of claim.
Rowling had made an open offer not to oppose the appeal in relation to the aggravated damages objection and the meaning objection now concerned one word only in the draft statement – the word “dishonest”, used in relation to an article written by Rowling wrote on the website of Gingerbread, the single parents’ charity of which she is the president.
Caldecott said the word did not appear in the pleadings and its inclusion in the draft was unfair.
Rejecting that argument as “flawed”, the judge said the allegation complained of was that Rowling had given a knowingly false account of her time as a single mother in which she falsely and inexcusably accused her fellow churchgoers of behaving badly towards her.
This pleaded meaning was accurately and unambiguously set out in the draft statement.
It was plain that anyone hearing it could be in no doubt that this was the meaning complained of, and that the newspaper’s position was that it accepted that the pleaded meaning was “completely false and indefensible”.
The judge said that the one word to which Associated objected did not change the position.
“The sentence of which it is a part is no more than the expression in ordinary and less formal language of the correctly identified pleaded meaning.
“It is indubitably true that the word ‘dishonest’ is not actually used in the pleading, but, as Mr Rushbrooke submits, it is impossible to see how the claimant could have given an account which she knew to be false – and which contained false and inexcusable allegations against her fellow churchgoers – without being dishonest.”
She said that those conclusions were sufficient to dispose of the one live point on the appeal.
I’m no Chuka-ite, but what a travesty if he’s been bumped out of the Labour leadership competition because of media intrusion. Rather than scrutinising the ideas and policies of our political leaders – except to demonise and caricature them if they even timidly step outside the political status quo – instead the media focuses on personality and personal life. Allegedly doorstepping his family, including his girlfriend’s 102-year-old grandmother – is this really how “media scrutiny” should work in Britain in 2015?
Handwringing about the lack of “normal” people in British politics is fashionable, but what do we expect? There are lots of principled individuals out there who would relish representing their community. They take it as read that their beliefs would face heavy scrutiny; relevant personal characteristics, such as personal judgment, would also get a going over. But having the media snooping not just into your private life, but the lives of those close to you? Saying “throw what you like at me” is one thing, but it is deeply presumptuous to adopt such a posture on behalf of those close to you.
Allegedly doorstepping his girlfriend’s 102-year-old grandmother – is this how 'media scrutiny' should work in 2015?
Being “normal” often means having a complex life. A huge chunk of the population have taken drugs, cheated on a partner, slept with or gone out with someone they regret, been unfair to someone close to them or a stranger. Maybe we committed some misdemeanour when we were younger. Personally I would prefer more MPs with complex backstories, because that makes them more representative and more human. But with the promise – the threat – of unforgiving media intrusion into every last facet of our personal life, why do we expect normal people, with complex lives, to stand for elected office? And then we complain that our politicians are boring on-message robots.
Chuka should have expected it and learned to take it, some will say. It’s all part of the territory. If you don’t want that level of intense scrutiny, choose a different path in life. You saw what they did to Ed Miliband, did you not? What a bleak approach, that the price of political service should be having your life and the lives of those who love you torn to shreds. A mean, cruel, macho, debased political “debate”, stripped of humanity or understanding.
Labour’s current leadership contest needs scrutiny, sure: all those bland, vacuous platitudes, but no policies or substance. The media has disastrously failed to scrutinise the government’s policies, often serving as a de facto extension of the Tory party’s propaganda unit. Instead it’s personalities and private lives that are hunted. It’s sad. And we all suffer, and our democracy suffers, because of it.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) has ruled that a weekly newspaper published misleading information in breach of the editors’ code of practice.
It decided that the Herne Bay Gazette’s story about an 18-year-old woman, who had found guilty of killing a man by driving while under the influence of drink, was inaccurate.
Joanne Hogbin complained to Ipso about a front page story published in the Gazette’s issue in the final week of December 2014, “Boozy trip just days before teen locked up”.
It stated that her daughter, Bethany Mackie, had “enjoyed a booze-fuelled Christmas trip” to London just days before she was due to start her five-year prison sentence for knocking over and killing a cyclist, Christian Smith.
During her trial she had told the court of her “genuine remorse” and that she was “struggling to deal with” causing Smith’s death.
The Gazette’s article was accompanied by a photograph of Mackie, which had been downloaded from her Facebook page. The caption said: “Bethany Mackie poses with a wine glass days before she was jailed”. But Hogbin said her daughter drank only Coca-Cola on the London trip.
The newspaper explained that the article had not claimed Mackie was drinking alcohol, but only that she had “held a full wine glass aloft”.
After Hogbin’s complaint, the paper offered to publish a clarification on an inside page cross-referenced from the front page, in which Hogbin would be able to state that Mackie was not drinking alcohol.
Ipso’s complaints committee was unimpressed with the paper’s argument about the juxtaposition of the photograph and the “boozy” reference in the headline. It thought it “clearly suggested” that Mackie had drunk alcohol on the trip.
The paper had failed to seek comments from Mackie or her family before publishing the picture, so the committee contended that the paper’s “decision to accompany the front page headline with the photograph demonstrated a failure to take not to publish misleading information”.
It rejected further claims that the paper had breached Mackie’s privacy, intruded into her grief and that the paper used subterfuge to obtain the story.
The committee ordered the Gazette to publish a clarification on page 3, cross referenced to the front page. It should also be published as a stand-alone item, with a headline indicating its subject, linked for no less than 24 hours from the home page of the newspaper’s website. It should then remain online and be searchable.
The clarification should explain that it was being published following an upheld complaint from Mackie’s mother.
• This article was amended on 15 May 2015 to remove an incorrect statement that the article remained on the Herne Bay Gazette website after Ipso’s ruling. The article was in fact hosted by a third party with no connection to KM group.
NB: The Gazette’s original story appears on a site called “Herne Bay Matters” (hence my original mistake, for which I apologise to the KM group). Clearly, it requires Ipso’s attention too.
