General Election 2015: Conservative promise emergency care at every NHS hospital on weekends.

David Cameron has promised voters that if conservative win this years general election, all of England’s hospitals will provide “a truly seven-day NHS” by 2020. Cameron has stated that he believes all hospitals should provide top-level treatment on the weekends, starting with emergency care. Therefore, conservatives are planning to provide full weekend hospital care in England – in exact accordance to the NHS’s own five-year plan.

However, in a government which has had to make huge spending cuts over the last few years, this promise has people wondering how this is economically viable. Although these statements are more concerned with politics, this promise is more of an attempt to neutralise Labour’s election strategy.

Labour said that the Conservatives plans for extreme spending cuts could be a threat to the upkeep of the NHS. Ed Miliband has put the NHS at the forefront of Labours election campaign and has promised to cap the amount of profit private firms can make from the NHS in England. This sudden competition over who will lead the NHS into better times has come about during the spring forum, and so far it seems that Labours most popular idea revolves around their plans for the NHS, which might explain Miliband’s reasoning behind putting the NHS at the heart of their campaign.

Cameron launched an attack on Labour at the forum in Manchester, reminding voters that Labour are the only party who has made cuts to the NHS, saying: “There is only group of politicians in the UK that has cut the NHS and that is the Labour party in Wales and they should be ashamed of what they did.”

In order to back his idea’s for the future of the NHS, Cameron warned that according to official studies, patients were “more likely to die” if they were admitted at weekends.
Cameron added: ”For years it’s been too hard to access the NHS out of hours. But illness doesn’t respect working hours. Heart attacks, major accidents, babies – these things don’t just come from nine to five,”
“With a future Conservative government, we would have a truly seven-day NHS… Already millions more people can see a GP seven days a week but by 2020 I want this for everyone, with hospitals properly staffed especially for urgent and emergency care, so that everyone will have access to the NHS services they need seven days a week by 2020 – the first country in the world to make this happen.”

The Liberal Democrats argued that the plans are pointless as the NHS already had plans to ensure that hospitals and doctors surgeries in England will be open seven days a week. UKIP also had something to say about the plans and said that the Conservatives had “degenerated the NHS beyond all recognition” during their last five years in government.

Despite this, David Cameron is putting up a fight and has made promises of protected real-terms increases in funding and an extra £2 billion a year. Labour has said it will spend £2.5 billion more than its opponents.

Out of all of this, it is clear the battle has already begun for those all important votes. Politicians know that the NHS is of huge concern for the British public, and might well be playing to our weaknesses. We will have to wait until the results are in on May 8th before we can judge how likely it really is that any of these promises will be kept.

**This is not one of my final pieces of work to be marked- I have written half a dozen news reports on topics and have chosen three reports which I will be submitting for my FYP. This is not one of them.**

Basingstoke council to spend £1 million on solar panels for six council buildings.

Councillors in Basingstoke approved plans to spend £1 million on the installation of solar panels on six local council-owned buildings. These are the Deanes and Parklands buildings at the Civic Offices, the Eastrop Depot, John Arlott Pavilion at Basingstoke War Memorial Park, Brighton Hill Pavilion, the Wade Road Depot and Boat House. The council has already invested in schemes at the Beresford Centre and Whiteditch Depot.

The scheme will apparently generate a return of between five and eight per cent to the council which is planned to be reinvested in order to provide council services. Although approved last Tuesday, the plans are already coming under fire from local people and businesses.

This week business owners like Martin Heath, director of Basingstoke Energy Services Co-operative, supported the proposal however questioned the council on why they aren’t sourcing the panels from local businesses who might be able to fit them for a lower cost.

Cllr Izett defended the plans at the meeting saying: “I would hope it is regarded generally as positive news.” Cllr Izett also stated how he felt it showed great leadership on the councils part for taking responsibility in reducing the boroughs carbon emissions in a preventative manner. He also said in an interview that he thinks it is “an important step for the council and it is a commitment to invest a considerable sum of money. The council as a public body has a responsibility to reduce its impact on the land.”

**This is not one of my final pieces of work to be marked- I have written half a dozen news reports on topics and have chosen three reports which I will be submitting for my FYP. This is not one of them.**

Media Law (Lecture 3): Libel and defamation

Libel and defamation are hugely important in journalism because they can cripple any news company or journalist and often without the writer/broadcaster even realising that a statement is defamatory.

Newsrooms all over the world are loaded with the pressure of delivering breaking news on criminal and legal proceedings. In any decent newsroom, journalists will debate over what is legally safe to broadcast. The most important thing is ensuring they are abiding by the law and avoiding the danger of defamation and libel by discussing what is legally sound to publish/broadcast.

With billions of articles published all over the world, it is the words used in the articles which are potentially fatal as they can carry an innuendo or hidden meaning which people with specialist knowledge may pluck out. In 2012, Newsnight broadcast a report wrongly implicating that Lord McAlphine was involved in sexual abuse of children, and he found himself at the centre of a libel claim. BBC newsnight issued a formal apology. Even though Lord McAlphine was not named in the broadcast, Sally Bercow had tweeted: “Why is Lord McAlpine trending. *innocent face*.” which was ruled as libellous in the High Court. We have to consider jigsaw identification, this is when the anonymity of a person is identifiable because of a combination of details published.

Always seek professional legal advice if a publication is likely to cause threat of libel. It costs and it is not good for your reputation as a journalist. An example of this was when landlord Chris Jefferies won substantial settlements in libel action against eight national newspapers for articles published about him after the death of his tenant Joanna Yeates.

A statement is defamatory if what you write or broadcast about someone or a company lowers their reputation. Material published is defamatory if it tends to lower them in estimation of right-thinking people, causes them to be shunned or avoided, disparages them in their business, trade or profession and/or expose them to hatred, ridicule or contempt.

Always be aware about who you are writing about- the higher the profile and the richer the person, the more likely you will face trouble. Comment is generally fine – but not if it might embarrass the person you are writing about.

Take the most recent example of defamation- the Gary Lineker case. The sun claimed he has a £1.3 million tax bill – he wrote on his twitter that he is now taking them to court for defamation – which will no doubt lead to an apology and settlements.

Publication + Defamation + Identification = Libel

——————-

Defences:

Defamation laws try to strike a balance between the individual right to a reputation and the right to freedom of speech, but media organisations can fight defamation actions providing they have a good defence and proof that the person was not subjected to serious harm (of their reputation). Now this is the best defence -this is the new Defamation Act 2013.

“For the purposes of this section, harm to the reputation of a body that trades for profit is not “serious harm” unless it has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss.”
 Thinking about the new defamation act- it is strange to think how very different court cases in the past would have played out had it been in place then. Take the notorious McLibel case- had the new defamation act 2013 been in place while the case was taking place, McDonalds would not have been able to prove serious harm (as it was only two people handing out leaflets against the company- a drop in the ocean compared the scale of McDonalds) and so the case would of been dropped.

If a company/person haven’t got a reputation to uphold (previous convictions etc) then most of the time a comment cannot be called defamatory. So long as journalists stick to the facts they are safe- someone cannot sue for libel if the statement written about them is the “truth”. A single publication rule prevents repeated claims against a publisher about the same material. There is also a defence for publication via the web. “It is a defence for the operator to show that it was not the operator who posted the statement on the website”.

The Act also includes other safety measures such as the right to publish content if it is a matter of “public interest”, and if it is “honest opinion”, based upon a known fact at the time of writing.

“The statement complained of was, or formed part of, a statement on a matter of public interest; and the defendant reasonably believed that publishing the statement complained of was in the public interest.”

Other defences (classic) include:

Journalists have absolute privilege when they are reporting on court cases, this means what they are reporting on is a fair and accurate report of judicial proceedings held in public. If it was heard in court, and no reporting restrictions apply they can report it, providing it is published contemporaneously on the first available publication. However, this privilege does not apply if the proceedings are held in private.

The basic requirements for the qualified privilege defence, is that it is fair, accurate, without malice and in the public interest. This means the public must benefit from this matter of concern and that it is without spite towards the claimant.

You will have no defence if you have not:

Checked your facts

Called a lawyer ‘reffered up’

Put yourself in the shoes of the person/company you have written about

And especially not if you simply “got carried away”!

Any defences that you hold will be lessened if you are showing malice. This means that you have shown signs of wanting to cause harm. You should be disinterested in the matter you are reporting.

Ask yourself: is what I am writing potentially defamatory? and if so, do I have a defence?

In TV there is always the danger of defamation via pictures. It’s not always just about what you write or say- if you had a headline reading “sex crimes of celebs” against a picture of the local politician- this implies he is involve, this is juxtaposition libel. Video journalists have to make sure that they are not careless with their background shots when writing their voice overs.

Media law (lecture 2): Reporting crime

Sources of law:

• Common law
• Case law
• Acts of parly
• Europe

Common law (custom law) – from legal system which began in the Middle ages. Royal judges were appointed to administer the law. Custom eventually developed into the common law. Common law is administering same justice to whole realm, stealing etc.

Case law–

Precedent is a legal principle which has been established by a court which should be used when considering similar cases.

Statute can replace common law. UK governments have made increasing use of secondary legislation known as statutory instruments, which must be approved by Parliament.

International– Justice in international terms.

European – As part of the European Union, EU treaties and other EU law are part of UK law as the regulations and directives agreed by the EU’s Council and its Parliament are binding on all member states.The EU’s influence on UK courts has greatly increased since it introduced Convention into the UK law when The Human Rights Act 1998 came into force.

Key concepts to understand are Prejudice and Contempt of court.

These are the danger areas. Why is this? They affect the result of law and jurisdiction.

Prejudice – Prejudicial material. Could affect the course of a fair trial. Where the publication of certain information will make it difficult for an accused person to be treated fairly at trial i.e the jury already knows background facts about the defendant.

Contempt – Where information is published in breach of the rules on crime or court reporting. High risk of prejudicing legal proceedings. The legal offence which follows from the publication of prejudicial material.

Chris Jefferies is a great example of contempt. In December 2010, Christopher Jefferies was arrested for the murder of architect Jo Yeates and vilified by the press. The Daily Mirror and The Sun were fined for contempt of court. ‘Substantial damages’ for libel by eight newspapers were accepted by Mr Jefferies. Police apologised for failing to make it clear sooner that Mr Jefferies was no longer a suspect. Was a hypothetical contempt in that he didn’t actually commit the crime but it was still contempt as the case was still active.

Another example was Kasim Davey in 2013. He was acting as juror for a case and posted “Woooow I wasn’t expecting to be in a jury Deciding a paedophile’s fate, I’ve always wanted to Fuck up a paedophile & now I’m within the law!” onto Facebook before the court hearing.The High court ruled that Kasim Davey and Joseph Beard, (who was a juror on a separate fraud trial) “interfered with the administration of justice” and were jailed for contempt of court.

When a case is legally active (when police make an arrest, a person is charged, magistrates issue a summons or an arrest warrant is issued), reporters must be aware of the risks up until the case is closed.

It is crucial to ensure that no prejudicial content is published in the public domain before the accused has been trialled by a jury to prevent any characteristics from affecting the jury’s judgement. The jury will be reminded by the judge to only consider the evidence they hear in court, to reach a verdict beyond reasonable doubt.

(include two examples of prejudicial content/contempt)

If a formal complaint was made, journalists would only have a defence known as the fade factor. If a trial was to take place six months down the line, a mitigating factor would be the fact it would fade from the press over time.

Think about the stages of processing and reporting a crime:

Stage 1 – The crime is reported – police hunting perpetrators – appealing for witnesses. Descriptions issued. No risk of prejudice – all information reportable.

Stage 2 – Police make an arrest, issue a warrant, or say a person is ‘helping with inquiries’ – case becomes legally ‘active’. Risk of prejudice. Take advice before publishing all facts as before – especially any descriptions of suspects.

Stage 3 – Police lay charges. A trial is a definite prospect. Only facts which you can be certain will be uncontested can be reported. Community ‘colour’ angles can be reported eg shock, distress, laying flowers etc.

Stage 4 – Magistrates court hearing. The section 8C reporting restrictions automatically apply for cases at magistrates courts in which the defendant pleads not guilty. They ban publication of any rulings made in pre-trial hearings. While these restrictions apply the media are restricted to reporting only seven categories of information, which are:

• Names of defendants, ages, addresses, occupations

• Charges faced or a close summary

• Name of court and magistrates names

• Names of solicitors or barristers present

• Date and place to where case is adjourned

• Bail (only whether granted or not) and bail arrangements

• Whether legal aid was granted

A proprietor, editor or publisher can be prosecuted for breach of these restrictions. The maximum fine is currently £5,000.

In class, we went through the stages of a fake news story surrounding crime and how each versioned differed as the case was taken to court etc.

Vague news story:

An elderly couple have been robbed of over £4,000 and locked in a cupboard at the post office in Kings Somborne today. The male intruder armed with a handgun entered the store at 10am and ordered the post mistress, Mrs Jones to empty the till and safe. On denial, the intruder shot the couple’s pet dog Millie who was sadly found dead following the event.

Police describe the intruder as a white male, slim build, around 5”9 tall. He was wearing blue jeans and a black T-shirt. The T-shirt had the words ‘Make my day’ printed on the front. His head and face were covered by a batman mask.

They stress that the man should not be approached by members of the public.

Update:

A man has been arrested in connection with the robbery of a post office in Kings Somborne which took place at 10am this morning. The robbers managed to get away with over £4,000 cash and left the elderly couple who own the post office locked in a cupboard. When Mrs Jones refused to hand over the stores money, the male intruder shot the couple’s pet dog Millie who was sadly found dead following the event.

Police are still seeking to question a second man in connection with the incident. They stress that the man should not be approached by members of the public and may be armed.

After charge:

Two men have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to rob following the robbery of a post office in Kings Somborne which took place at 10am this morning. The robbers managed to get away with over £4,000 cash and left the elderly couple who own the post office locked in a cupboard. When Mrs Jones refused to hand over the stores money, the male intruder shot the couple’s pet dog Millie who was sadly found dead following the event. A gun has been recovered from a farmhouse near Winchester. Both men are being held in custody and will appear before Winchester magistrates at 10am tomorrow.

The key stages of a trial:

• Prosecution opening
• Key prosecution witnesses
• Defence opening
• Key Defence witnesses
• Judges summing up
• Jury sent out, deliberation and verdict
• Sentencing

Court reports follow strict rules, there is strictly no recording inside the court. When reporting on court cases, ensure you have balance by including prosecution and defence basics.

Court reporting rules

• Fair
• Accurate
• Fast (Contemporaneous) – published ASAP.

Children & young people

• Still a juvenile at 17

There are three categories of offence:

1. Indictable only – sentencing in crown court for serious offences, prison 5yrs+

2. Either way offences – this can be heard in a magistrates or crown court.

3. Summary offences – stays with magistrates court

The main thing to be aware of is the laws surrounding contempt of court, you can never be too safe and should continuously be conscious that everything you report is fact and legally sound. With media law, if unsure ask someone with more experience -an editor or a lawyer. You will at least then have cover.

SUPER W2 FEATURES SHOW AND DEBRIEF

For the super W2 features show we all sat down and decided on the structure of it.

The super WinchXtra will be filmed AS LIVE with all of the best of our features packages this term. We decided after much deliberation to keep the show at 2 hours as 4 would be too long, despite the fact it would be good practice for a running live show, we all felt it wouldn’t be very interesting for the audience to want to sit and watch it for more than two hours.

We decided to split the show into 15 minute sections per features category: Fashion, Lifestyle/cooking, Reviews/Theatre and Music. We also decided we would have intro graphics of 30 secs and me and Vicky (presenters) introducing the show/next section per 15 minute quadrant. Which leaves 14 minutes worth of packages or in-studio chat time.

For each one hour segment, there were two sets of presenters. Vicky and I presented the first hour, while Toby and Beth presented the second hour. I then wrote out both scripts for each hour and the packages slowly got put together into mega-packages which would slot into each quadrant. As a last minute decision, Chris decided to put in ad breaks as he felt it would break the show up better and replicate a real life show. These were 1 minute long between presenting.

The show all went smoothly on the day thanks to having plenty of time to practice and a calm team in studio and in the gallery.

Here is all of the clips of the show (split up into sections for Youtube) on a playlist:

DEBRIEF-

Brilliant baking videos on Sophie’s part. Well filmed and shot, beautiful to watch, need more of Sophie on screen though- Baking is about personality!!

Comic Con piece really well done. Jacqueline Wilson huge name – big deal so could of made more of that. Lovely interview too.

Presenting really great although almost too newsy- would of liked to see more of our personalities rather than less. Was very much link packages link packages structure and this isn’t what we wanted.

In studio and gallery teams were fantastic – calm and collected, in charge.

Overall think one hour would of been fine but brilliant to aim high and try to replicate rolling TV show as practice for the general election.

Also adverts were a little long but necessary probably.

Overall amazing work this term from features/winchxtra in terms of content and quality of the content. Only up from here – well done team!

A WEEK OF CHANGE: THE THIRD WINCHXTRA DEBRIEF

This week, a few simple things led to the late release of WinchXtra. After discussing the weeks idea’s for WinchXtra in the debrief we all went ahead and did the stories we had planned.

Zeena filmed at Bonfire night and Tate filmed an interview with TV director Peter Lydon, I was going to do a live OB style presenting which would sort of count as a package with an interview with the Mayor.

Thinking that everyone would be nearly finished with their packages, I filmed the links on Tuesday (the day before WinchXtra goes out) for WinchXtra outside Winchester Cathedral with the theme of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World war 1, Remembrance Sunday and Armistice day, hoping to interview the Mayor and do it as a Live OB. Unfortunately the Mayor did not turn up and once I put the links together and had finally edited it all, Chris our lecturer told us that the theme was far too serious for WinchXtra, which was fair enough.

On Tuesday night Zeena and Tate wrote to me saying that they were struggling to finish their packages in time and asked if we could finish it for the following week. I decided to refilm the links at University tomorrow, to try and help Zeena finish her package, to scrap Tate’s package and to use two of the features teams footage they had originally made for the W2 website instead of Tate’s package. I then thought I could add in the hair how to video I had created that week to help our Katherine on fashion, however Chris had a better idea which would make better sense which was to create a “Hair-story” piece for features about hair throughout the ages which I could do another week, and so said to keep the video for then.

So I used Sophie’s baking piece, Ryan’s university performance arts showcase piece, Sarah’s top 5 war films piece and Zeena’s bonfire night piece. I filmed all of the links on Wednesday and had everything ready to go- when Zeena told me at 4pm that her package was not going to be finished in time and she would not be able to finish it until Thursday. After a little argument between the team after a week of frustration and hard work, we decided to put WinchXtra out whenever Zeena’s package was finished and not to worry about it anymore. The show went up on Friday, 2 days later.

Zeena and Tate are unsure if they want to do the show anymore and so from now on I think WinchXtra will take more of a features structure- with video’s from the feature team and a presenter to pull it all together. However for this term I want to keep it up and hope to convince Zeena and Tate to continue for one final Christmas special of WinchXtra which will be more fun and have a longer period of time to complete it.

In future, we will have to learn to run things past Chris before filming it and considering it finished and also I think I need to be more clear about deadlines and as a team we need to plan ahead better and film as soon as we can rather than filming a couple of days before the show goes out and having to panic about having it edited and finished on time- and that is where this weeks downfall lay.

A new term, A new start: WinchXtra

This term, starting my third year as a journalism student, I decided it was time to try something new, to do something I enjoyed. I love presenting and talking to people so I knew I wanted to have a go at presenting. I was also inspired by my work experience at the BBC’s One Show to be a part of an entertainment show. Last year, third years ran a show called Access Winchester including VT’s about events around the county, and random funny stories and reviews.

So over the summer, Zeena and I decided to set up a new entertainment show and pitch it in September. We knew what we wanted it to be like but we weren’t sure where to start. We gathered a small team of interested people to join us and came up with the name WinchXtra.

Chris kindly agreed to let us run the show to see how it goes. And so it all began!

During the first week of being back at university, we decided on the name, we decided on roles, and we came up with a basic model of what we wanted it to be structured like. I then created a logo on Adobe Illustrator for the show’s name alongside my friend Chris who works for a sign company. This took a lot of tweaking and time. We knew we wanted the colours purple,white and silver infused in the logo, intro and throughout the show as we deemed them “young, fresh” colours. Here as shown is the drawing I did of what we were hoping it would look like originally, secondly is a few of the different logos we were choosing between, and lastly is the final logo! We formatted the logo into a .png format so that we could layer it over whatever we wished to use as a background.

 

 

THE FINAL LOGO:

Once the logo was created we got to work on the intro for the show. We decided to keep it simple and used a few effects on Final Cut Pro to create it. We overlayed the logo onto a plain black background and then added the effects. We then searched for an hour for music to use as our intro music. We searched creative commons (to ensure that we could use the music for free), and finally came across a clip of music titled “Pink Garbage” and downloaded the track, adding that to the intro.

I then proceeded to build a basic script structure, which meant I could simply update the script per show. I did this on word creating 3×12 tables.

 

We created a calendar so we could see the upcoming events and plan ahead of time. I then emailed Jacqueline Wilson’s agent, Michael McIntyre’s agent, and Joanna Lumley’s agent. Jacqueline Wilson’s agent replied and I have an interview arranged for the 28th October. I am still awaiting on the response from Michael’s agent and Joanna’s agent. I will be calling them this week however to find out soon.

Next up, we sat down and started planning events straight away. I had a few idea’s for the first show, including a ping pong event for over 65’s, Winchester Comedy Festival, Octoberfest, and the differences between male and females brains (which has been in the media loads lately!)

I contacted those in charge of the ping pong event, the comedy festival, Octoberfest and a few professors of psychology at Southampton and Winchester university. I organised being able to film at the ping pong event, and helped Zeena gain access to interviews with the top comedians performing at the Theatre Royal (including Tom Deacon who has his own BBC Radio 1 comedy show, and Brian Gitton who stars in Ricky Gervais’ show “Derek”), and finally set up interviews with the psychologists.

Our reporter Tate was struggling to find a story and so I gave her the ping pong story to follow up and attend, and also went with her on the day to help film.

And so that left me with the psychology story to pursue. It was unfortunately, very difficult to get interesting GV’s or a fabulous background for the interviews as the university labs were all booked up and in use!I however struggled with what we had, and Tate came along to help film everything. Unfortunately the two way interview did not come out as I had planned, as the room was very small and I think I did not quite know how to film a two way interview for features as I hadn’t filmed one before!

I then created posters on word and printed them off and asked the SU if we could place them around campus. They agreed and here is the poster!

So after all that, I sat down to create the green screen backdrop. This took a lot of time and patience and it harder than it seems. We looked at http://www.nicolecollasjournalism.wordpress.com to find the basic sizes needed for the green screen and the bit format needed. I then looked online to find free TV backdrops and luckily found one we liked after an hour searching. However we weren’t happy with the colour as we imagined the backdrop to be purple.
So using the software Fireworks I changed the hue of the background to purple rather than blue. I then changed the size, and bit format. Then, into the TV screen in the picture I found, I added in a creative commons image of an overview of Winchester, and made it small enough to fit. I then used the skew tool to skew it to tilt sideways like the TV in the backdrop.

And so we filmed best we could and began editing our packages. I finished the script. I booked out the new studio (2) after a lot of fuss as none of the team were trained on the new studio, arranged to be trained quickly by Dave (works as part of loan counter/technician team).
So we set the studio up with Dave ready to use so that we couldn’t fail. I had also arranged to have the university porters bring two sofa’s in studio for 2pm just in time for our in studio guest (Head of psychology at university of Winchester) to arrive. Everything looked to be going smoothly.

The production team all arrived and we trained them as best we could on each of their stations. We then set up the lighting and went about adding the green screen backdrop into the vision mixer which took some fiddling. We had to find an old SD card, and format it to the correct size (1950 x …) and the correct bit size (24 bits), and then initialise the card and insert it into the vision mixer and load it.

We filmed everything and it took 5 hours straight in the studio of fussing around trying to fix problems, waiting for guests, practicing, and recording. Unfortunately however, the sound did not record. Despite the image recording perfectly, and everything else going to plan perfectly, unfortunately when we trusted Dave to set up the sound, it didn’t work. We didn’t find out until we loaded the videos off of the hard-drive onto the mac’s ready to edit in post-production, as the sound played loudly from mic to speakers in the gallery and we assumed it was recording.

And so sadly, although we planned two in studio chats, and a chatty lively studio broadcast, it did not work out for our very first show. We will however solve all of these problems for our next show on the 22nd October, and have brand new packages, learning from all of our mistakes. We instead decided to broadcast outside of the studio (although we wanted to film outside, but rain prevented this). So all in all, the first show was a bit of a shambles. But I have learnt so much about the new studio, about features interviews and we have used our mistakes as an output to ensure they never happen again!

So now we have a word document called WinchXtra planner with every detail, task to do, time and place to be set up, with help from our lecturer Chris.

 

So for now, stay tuned for our very first proper WinchXtra (we are going to call this our dummy run show (just as WINOL had a dummy run last week when we were setting up the show)!

The New Journalism – HCJ YEAR 2 SEMESTER 2 LECTURE 5

“God, newspapers have been making up stories forever. This kind of trifling and fooling around is not a function of the New Journalism.” – Tom Wolfe

A brief history of American Journalism:

First Wave of New Journalism-

Created in the UK but imported to America. Awful, elaborate style with drop intro’s. Trying to follow Tom Wolfe and write in feature style- this caught on. When the Penny papers where around in America (gold rush days, tell where shovel is, looks at local merchants & politicians). There to sell stuff or boast/criticize politicians. Didn’t worry about balance.

Reason for balance isn’t due to morality or ethics.

“Ethics is a place to the east on london where people wear white socks.“

Mid 19th Century objectivity became a factor in journalism because of the creation of wire services (true, fair news wires). Economically viable to have papers that are one sided. The Associated Press (AP) needed objectivity to be profitable. So must be bland so papers can interpret the stories as they like and therefore selling the stories to them.

The first New Journalism – The Yellow Press- late 19th Century. The world of William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal VS Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World. Language skills were limited – so shortened words – cops etc. People wanted excitement-So they had huge, emotive headlines with big striking pictures -think the Sun on Sunday, Exclusives, dramatic real life stories, romantic stories, shocking stories, crime stories. This is Sensationalism!

Many called Yellow Journalism the New Journalism without a soul. All of the stories were about sin, sex and violence.

Next Wave-

America of 1960’s and 70’s- similar to time of Hearst and the Yellow Press. Great deal of political and social upheaval – fighting foreign wars, with even more serious military threats building overseas. Different ways of living- huge clash. 60’s was very rebellious and influx.

Before people like Tom Wolfe, Journalists recorded the events of the day – normally in a formulaic way. Five W’s- who, what, where, when, why? News Pyramid- all of these forms brought in to simplify writing news.

But The New Journalism was an attempt to record events mirroring the language and the style of the events. Remove self from real world- getting involved- talking to people- far from old removed version of Journalism. Should let reality bleed into the copy.

Political and Cultural scene

1960’s would of been a fun time to be around but was particularly turbulent – laws to pass- anti-segregation and women’s rights- great hope of JFK, destroyed with assignation in 1963. Disastrous war in Vietnam – controversy of the draft (forced to go to war) – Muhammed Ali refused to be conscripted “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong”.

Demographic reasons and change – after WW2 there was a huge baby boom which created a powerful youth culture – baby boomers hitting their teens in the 1960’s. Huge clash between people who saw the way (defensive) and younger generation who wanted to experience life.

Sexual revolution led to sexual freedom: women liberated thanks to the pill, Reichian free love (let loose- have loads of sex). The student movement would have huge protests: worldwide protests of 1968. Civil rights, Black power- use of LSD (introduced by CIA) to access altered thinking of counterculture.

Prohibition of drugs created subcultures of Hippies, communes, collectives etc and established much of youth culture then.

Music was central for Sartre: Jazz was authentic. The music of 1960’s was a full frontal attack on the norms, drug fueled (Doors) and anti-establishment (Bob Dylan) – with the aim to subvert and be political.

Gil Scott Heron – The Revolution Will Not be Televised. The revolution will be live – the revolution will put you in the driving seat

Point is – Journalism is not changing despite all of this. Stuck to structures. People thought journalism should reflect the times and all this crazy stuff.

Influence of Existentialism

Ideas informed by Existentialism – Heidegger’s Authenticity, Sartre’s Bad Faith (uses example of assuming a role- pretend having a good time when not, pretend want to be a Tesco worker when you don’t- people will be insincere their whole lives due to these assumed roles). Existentialists think you a free and are not determined and have a huge choice, for example Fanon’s view of a path to freedom via accelerated choice -violence is essentially the extreme expression of choice – choice with real, immediate impact. WE ARE MADE UP OF OUR CHOICES – THE NEXT CHOICE YOU MAKE IS A RECREATION OF YOURSELF.

Anti-establishment feeling – “there is a policeman inside your head – he must be destroyed” – began to seep into journalism.

Journalists question whether basing stories on press releases, press conferences and official statements made by the establishment was really objective – and more importantly was it a true reflection of events? [Bad Faith] – But we do this all the time now.

New forms of journalism began to emerge. Started to use a new style.

Journalists began to focus on setting, plot, sounds, feelings, direct quotes and images, while still being as careful as before with facts. Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer are examples of this new breed.

This alternative journalism was personal and expressed an individual point of view. It was also unconventional, disagreeable, disruptive, unfriendly and anti-power structure. The journalist expressed a point of view and included the journalist in it almost.

Shift in form of narration from Diegetic to Mimetic

“Telling” to “Seeing” – In traditional news writing its all about telling the story – defining what the story is about – not giving the reader much choice to see what its all about. Now every needs pictures, sounds, sharp detail and description, then the audience has choice.

In New Journalism Subjectivity (experience) is better than “Objectivity” [authority’s message]

Hot will tell you what to think, Cool gives facts and lays it out and lets you make your mind up. [Marshall McLuhan Hot and Cool media]

Most famous example – Tom Wolfe. Wolfe was a huge fan of Emile Zola – one of the greatest writers of natural realism. “Zola crowned himself as the first scientific novelist, a “naturalist” to use his term, studying the human fauna.” according to Wolfe.

When Wolfe enters into journalism the first thing he notices is the status competition.

Almost like an investigator – you look into what he wears, how he speaks etc as this can show you a persons character.

“What inna namea Christ is this”’ – The Features game was changing

New articles with real, intimate dialogue- Reporter needs to be there to see it, to collect the data first hand. New Journalism- Hunter S Thompson called it Gonzo Journalism. BE INVOLVED. Capture accurate details. Thinks should look at what people are really interested in – different- Asked Obama about football.

Once there, it is only a small step to becoming involved – another character in the scene.

To get this sort of material, you needed to invest a lot of time in the subjects – days, weeks and years. “Use the whole scene, extended dialogue, point of view and interior monologue.”

New Journalism- Tom Wolfe: pg 46 & 47 – Read these as these are two most important pages about features you will ever read.

The journalists embraced social realism. Learned the techniques of realism from Balzac, Zola, Dickens etc.

This power derived from four devices:

1. Scene by Scene construction- telling the story in scenes and not in a sheer “historical narrative”. Journalists needed to be at the event to witness it.
2. “Realistic dialogue involves the reader more completely than any other single device – it also defines character more quickly and effectively than any other single device.”
3. Third person point of view “giving the reader the feeling of being inside the character’s mind”. Need to interview subject about his thoughts and emotions, along with everything else.
4. The fourth device is the recording of everyday gestures, habits, manners, customs, styles of furniture, modes of behaviour towards children, superiors, inferiors and other symbolic detail that might exist within a scene. Symbolic of peoples’ status life.

Ultimate New Journalism piece is FEAR AND LOATHING.

Gonzo- fly on the wall, shaky footage, authentic.

WINOL BULLETIN 12/03/14

This week I was presenter – finally- after weeks of wanting to give it a go. I felt it went well although I stumbled a little bit over the OOV’s as I got confused about timing. Considering i haven’t presented before and had to do an In Studio chat and work with the auto-cue being a bit off in terms of due to technical problems that couldn’t be solved.

Heres is the final bulletin!

DEBRIEF-

Guest editor: Angus Scott and our usual lecturers.

Angus:

Struggle for top story but made a choice to turn one into it. Good that we look for balance.

OOV’s – Make sure words are same length as OOV’s.

Work harder to try and get footage – for example John and his pier story- he could of found archive footage of the pier when it was open & busy.

Much more picture rich – really great. Play around with shots more.

Editorially light, but better use of pictures. Was a struggle but studio/gallery was calm and assured. Slow and lazy week really, be just as good every week.

Chris:

Overall very fluent and beautifully read by me 🙂

Slow week for news but a good bulletin- as we had time to think things through.

If we can make news out of Winchester then that is a sign we are doing well.

Tough week but we handled it well.

WINOL BULLETIN 26/02/14

This week I went after two stories – one about a local primary school which had to move 330 of its pupils to another school due to problems caused by the floods and the other about a school in Poole which has now got an “attendance bus” which will turn up outside skiving student’s houses.

I drove all the way to Poole (1 hour 10 mins) and back to go after the story however they weren’t able to allow me around the college or interview. The primary school was even stricter, and St Bede’s absolutely would not help me get an interview with a staff member or allow me access to the school, even during closed times! So on Wednesday last minute I rushed after another new story about the death of a dog due to the disease which we covered in the past which has killed many dogs in Hampshire now. However unfortunately the Vet we wanted to interview on the story was on paternity leave.

So I wrote up two text stories, emailed the academy in Poole and managed to get a photo of the bus and also went down to St Bede’s to take a picture of the floods. I also edited what Zeena started which was a package on the news that Journalism Students at Winchester won an award at a The Times/Sunday Times Build the News competition. I recorded a voice over and finished and encoded the piece ready to go in the bulletin. I also revamped the WINOL twitter account/page. I designed a new background on Photoshop with the WINOL logo incorporated and I also took a photo of the busy newsroom and uploaded that as a cover photo. I then went on to tweet about every story and attract attention for the page using hashtags and by tagging relevant people. I am really proud of what I have achieved considering.

Here is the final bulletin!

DEBRIEF –

Guest Editor: Rowenna Davis, Labour politician

Ian:

More variety of stories. Sport so much better – Good match report and variety!

Headlines – UPSOT on rats great.

Legally sound on big story – very important.

Great access on crime to show CCTV footage of killer punch. Maybe present a bit more carefully. Need a mix of stories at top rather than solid crime etc.

Always aim to get own pictures.

Rowenna:

MA in Journalism at City Uni London- First ever article at uni was ripped up by lecturer, but didn’t give up.

Spent 6 years as a journalist – worked freelance. Social and economic investigations- this made her want to get into politics.

Very very good overall. Liked the visual dynamics.. very exciting. Interesting footage. Clear camera pictures. Sustained interest. Go out and get own material makes it exciting.

Discovery channel – Too many animals – rats, bee’s, dogs.

In first half, needs to be more clarity between stories.

Sometimes better interviews with REAL people, rather than professionals – i.e go for neighbour rather than policeman.

Really liked RAT story, innovation of beekeeping outfit.

Really good production editor.

“I have never seen a more toxic relationship between politicians and the press. Trust is very low between the two.”