World Press Freedom Day

Believe it or not, it’s World Press Freedom Day! It might not be one of the most well publicized celebration or awareness raising days, with the absence of it’s own quirky Google logo…but nonetheless it’s a hugely important reminder of the role of freedom and independence in the press for democracy.

Source: http://www.laicidade.org/galeria/main.php?g2_itemId=4240

This year is a particularly notable one for remembering the importance of freedom in the press, only yesterday did The Office for Fair Trading rule that Rupert Murdoch’s price cutting strategies should be stopped. News of the World journalists were condemned for their malpractices, compromising fairness and ethics in the British press.  Changes that have taken place throughout the Arab Spring have also shone light on the immense role in openness and freedom, played by journalism, as regime changes see Middle Eastern reporters approaching newspaper editors with stories that they once would not have dared.

So in light of these events and scandals, it is necessary as an aspiring journalist to consider not only how to become a journalist but how to become a good journalist. In Chris Frost’s book: Journalism Ethics and Regulation, he identifies that a journalist must make a moral decision whether to be loyal to their newspaper by sensationalising stories, making it more marketable, or, loyal to the reader by providing truth and accuracy. Frost argues that a good journalist, attributes technical skill with moral judgement. As morals and ethics are subjective and differ according to each individual, the qualities of a good journalist are personal, yet the recent mistakes made by others certainly highlight how bad decisions with negative outcomes can be made.

Social Media Engagement

I have found the experience of using social media whilst researching subjects around journalism to be particularly useful. As my specific interests have focussed around women’s rights and the Arab Spring, I have found that following Arab women’s liberation movements, Facebook and Twitter pages has given me access to some hugely interesting information and insightful personal accounts.

Source: http://gcawthonstar.freedomblogging.com/

In using these methods of information gathering I have discovered the importance of social media to journalism and how it provides an international platform for communication. The opportunity to communicate directly with people who have been affected and have participated in such news events, online, is a valuable resource for journalism.

The experience of blogging provides both an important opportunity to develop writing skills and to receive feedback, identifying particular strengths and weaknesses to focus on. The blog also enables communication with peers relating to specific topics that have been blogged about; this enables the opportunity to share further information that may be of interest, to debate these topics and to gain different insights and perspectives.

My previous engagement with Twitter was minimal due to me not realising its significance to journalism and sharing information. I now intend to continue to make regular use of it both to share and gather information.

The Press: Friend or Foe?

After watching ‘The Shock Doctrine’ documentary based on  Naomi Klein’s book by the same name, I couldn’t help but be pulled in by the thought provoking questions it raised and so had to do a bit of reading in to conspiracy theory and anti-government based blogs, forums and articles.

I’m a firm believer in the news and journalism being a key element of democracy and its fundamental service is to the people, not the state and so was quite dismayed to see many posts blaming the media for aiding corruption and unethical action by the government.

Images such as the ones below, I feel are a type of propaganda in themselves, rallying supporters for their cause which reduces the public to passive, uncritical consumers of media and creating further fear and distrust. I believe that many creators of such images and blogs take a particularly pessimistic view of society that is unrealistic. No matter what kind of newspaper you buy or television program you watch, I feel that it is far more likely for the public to discuss and debate with friends about the views presented in them.

Source: http://massmediaindoctrination.blogspot.co.uk/

Many themes against the media that come up focus around network television and mass mind control and mass media indoctrination. Whilst it would be naive to deny any sensationalism, party-political leaning or indeed unethical motivations in the media industry, I feel that it is important for us to appreciate and respect the press, in order to use it to build and aid democracy.

Don’t Shoot!: Activism in Journalism

With the bloodiest and most violent events in recent years to have taken place during the Arab Spring, last year saw a record death toll for journalists and their photographers. As societies rebuild and adjust to the overthrowing of dictators such as Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi; significant changes are being seen throughout the media in the Middle East.

Source: http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/05/pakistan-journalism-is-first-casualty/

Reporting from the front line of protests and uprisings, Arab Spring journalists faced teargas, beatings, torture and imprisonment in order to share the vital developments taking place with the rest of the world. Having to take such great risks requires great bravery from journalists, who, despite the violence and attacks they face, do not carry weapons. Journalists must remain unbiased and neutral throughout their time reporting events, even in the face of human rights abuses, the roles of journalist and political activist must remain separate. In order for fairness, truth, responsibility and trust, journalists must respect their role, through not taking part in protests and demonstrations.

The 1947 Geneva conventions protect journalists as citizens in conflicts; however, if a journalist takes action, making themselves a participant in the conflict, they can be directly targeted. In certain countries journalists have been specifically targeted during conflicts, such as CNN reporters entering Iraq in 2002 who received threats.

Training for reporters covering armed conflicts, dealing with hostile environments is offered by British security forces. Whilst this equips journalists with survival skills such as negotiation and weapon identification, having a fundamental understanding of the role of journalists seems to be the most important factor in conflict reporting. Importantly, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement issues safety guidelines to journalists in conflict zones which provide vital safety information, country by country, they also offer a hotline for journalists in areas of conflict to call in times of danger.

Whilst measures are in place to protect the independence of journalists in conflict, it is the opinion of some that resources for journalists are inadequate and more needs to be done to ensure their safety.

Experience Required

As my uni course draws to an end and I finish off these last few assignments, I step out in to the ‘real world’ with thousands of other soon to be graduates in the search of a job.

Source: http://www.salon.com/2011/05/29/intern_nation_interview/

Whilst the daunting prospect of competing in the media industry, aiming for a career in journalism, feels intimidating, here are some tips and advice I’ve come across in my search so far…

It’s no secret that experience is a hugely valuable asset, in any industry, but this does not necessarily mean that those with less than so many years of working in the industry, need not apply. Whilst internships and work placements have with some, gotten a bad reputation, they are more often than not a lot more than making the tea. Speaking to other students I’ve often sensed negative feelings towards internships that has led to them approaching placements with caution and cynicism. Of course it is important to really know the company or organisation that you are applying to work for before you jump in, but at the same time, placements should also be met with optimism. Certain organisations, such as the BBC offer placement students a variety of training courses to develop them professionally as well in the specific skills required of the role.

Whilst interning with the British Red Cross I was able to complete several training courses which provided me with transferable skills which could be applied to any industry such as team work and problem solving. One thing that I do feel regretful about is not making the most of the different media opportunities available at university whilst studying. Through spending a lot of time being indecisive about what I really wanted to do, I decided to focus a lot of my attention on volunteering, even though the opportunities were there to get involved with the university newspaper or magazine. This would have given me valuable experience and also shown my desire to work within the media industry to future employers, had I made the most of them.

I now intend to continue to develop my skills and experience through completing further internships as I apply for jobs.

Women in Journalism Taking the Lead

The protests, demonstrations, revolutions and conflicts taking place throughout the Arab world, particularly in 2010 and 2011, have sparked widespread interest and debate in to the role of new media and political change.

The use of social networking sites and accessibility of smartphone technology has empowered many demonstrates and instigators of political change in the countries involved. Sites such as Twitter and Facebook have allowed citizens on location, experiencing violence first hand, to share what they have seen, heard and felt with the rest of the world.

In the above video Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks about women’s specific role within the demonstrations and the empowering use of blogging and social networking by women. Gender inequality within journalism has been a hot topic of media debate for many years, with the largest sample of data collected to support this idea being the 2010 Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) which studied women in broadcast and print news. The findings of this study were that, whilst improving, the role of women in news was still significantly below men, with significantly fewer female journalists than male. It was also found that men were twice as likely to be used as sources of quotes and would cover ‘hard’ news stories more frequently than women.

It seems that the women of the Arab Spring played an equally as significant role in the sharing of citizen journalism and in informing the world about the events that took place. Whilst they also played a vital role within the demonstrations themselves. The use of new social media has created a much more universally accessible platform for sharing stories and ideas and it would appear that the Arab Spring shows a clear example of women using new media to force themselves in to the news and the roles of journalists.

 

Time’s Up!

Last week we completed the first assessed part of our journalism unit. This compromised of writing a news story for a brief which was provided by our tutor within a set amount of time, which I found to be a daunting and difficult task and had dreaded before stepping in to the classroom. My temptations to edit and re-edit sometimes distort my concept of time when writing, I could spend hours reading over and making changes to things I’ve written, without even really making any kind of development. I think, or at least tell myself, that this slow and sometimes irritating method of working is a result of a lack of confidence in my writing, it comes from a reluctance to commit to ideas and words, wanting to keep them in my head rather than make them permanent by putting them on paper.

After looking for writing tips from journalists on the web, I’ve come across many others who experience the same feelings when it comes to writing. Some suggestions I’ve found include outlining stories in your head rather than plotting them out on paper. I’m definitely guilty of spending almost as much time making notes about things like what I’m going to include in the story and the order I’ll make my points, as I do actually writing it. I think that whilst it is important to plan and organize your thoughts, it is equally as important to get some words down so that you can structure your story as you go.

Another tip I have come across is writing the story in one go from start to finish. You can go back, make changes and add in information once you’ve completed a first draft but I agree with the idea that the story will have a more natural flow and progression if you write it all in one go, rather than starting and coming back to it part way through.

The exercise was certainly useful and interesting as it clearly showed us things like the type of quotes to use in news stories. As all the information we needed for the story was there presented to us, it was just a case of us selecting the most important and relevant details to include. It was interesting to see the importance of the source of a quote, for example; there were some quotes that seemed more relevant to the story or may have given more information but were from a member of the general public, this would have come second to a source from say a local celebrity or someone of particular interest, even if their quote might have less information or relevance.

Overall I think that practice does make perfect or improvements at least, and the more writing you do the easier it becomes. I’m now in the process of working on a story based on Bournemouth’s refugee community and how public sector cuts are effecting them, hopefully with the help of the International Care Network based in Springbourne, story to follow…

A Story Around Every Corner

My undergrad journalism unit continues…so far I’ve discovered the importance of talking to anyone and everyone and therefore being a good communicator; writing towards a deadline and using a variety of sources to create a balanced story.

Now comes working the patch, in pairs (for safety reasons), we have been assigned specific areas of Bournemouth, I was lucky enough to receive Springbourne and Lansdowne to work on.

I consulted the Guardian Careers’: diary of a budding journalist for advice. The diary follows one of City University’s MA magazine journalism students, Nikki Osman, who reported on her experiences of working her patch; a corner of London.

Whilst Bournemouth and London hardly compare in terms of the drama and excitement they see, I thought that it would be useful to follow her approach to finding a story. Nikki identifies a difference between finding the story and getting the story.

On a walk through her patch in search of a story she encountered arrests, fights and a business scam as possible leads, all to her disappointment, coming to dead ends. With police refusing to be interviewed, sources not turning up to meetings and a lack of eye-witnesses to substantiate a story it seems that the role of a journalist involves as much chasing as it does writing.

She finally managed to put together a piece, meeting her deadline on a national story. She decided to interview locals from her patch on budget cuts, a story that was bound to provoke reactions. She found that people were more than happy to talk to her, expressing anger at police cuts and telling her their experiences of crime.

So far I have taken a walk through both Springbourne and Lansdowne, my eyes and ears constantly searching for possible leads. Whilst these areas do have a lot going on, sometimes sadly for the wrong reasons, I found it difficult to actually find people to talk to. Timing is always something to be taken in to consideration when looking for people to talk to, I visited my patch on a weekday early afternoon so not surprisingly found few people in the streets.

Nikki noted that incessantly talking to people was the only way to obtain a source for a story. She made several phone calls and interviews before even deciding which story to follow up which is why I am due to meet with several locals this week.

Braving the Cold

So last week the UK was once again gripped by its all too favourite topic of conversation…the weather.

With temperatures plummeting below -11°C in some parts of the UK, what better time to go out and find a story?

In our journalism seminar we were set the task of going out in to the field to find out how Bournemouth University was coping with the cold. An easy conversation starter, you might think; ‘ask any person in the UK how they’re coping with the weather and you’ll have a friend for life’…I thought in error.

We paired off and set about utilizing our time and trying to come up with an original story, something that no one else will have thought of. We firstly decided to take a practical approach, quizzing university staff, care-takers and car parking attendants on anything that the uni had actually implemented to protect vulnerable students from the menacing chill. To our dismay there were no ground-breaking stories to be had there, so we moved on to the students themselves.

The most interesting headline we could come up with was: “Students risk £900 fine to avoid walking in the cold” referring to information from the car-park attendants on the number of students who risked receiving a fine and being clamped by parking in the staff car park, as opposed to parking outside and making the ten minute walk in.

Whilst we weren’t holding our breaths for a call from the Guardian in want of our hard-hitting journalism, we did find the experience to be very useful. I personally have always been a very quite and shy individual so the task of approaching strangers and starting a conversation is always more than a little daunting for me. I’ll be honest and say that I held back and let my partner do the talking more than I should have but I found that when I did get talking, the conversation came naturally.

It was useful to see the importance of not just interviewing people but in having conversations and getting to know them. Going out there and simply asking “so how are you coping with the cold?” would most likely draw a blank and get a response along the lines of “not too bad”, what a brilliant story that would make! No, the real stories came out after having a bit of a chat. Stating that we were journalism students also made people more prepared to talk; seeing that we had a genuine interest in what they were telling us. When I head out in to the field looking for stories again I will definitely be taking some form of dicta-phone, the stop and start of asking questions and writing down responses broke up the conversation and became a distraction.

Life or Death Reporting

As mentioned in my previous post I’m pretty in to volunteering. Not wanting to sound preachy or self-righteous but I made the decision to sign up with the British Red Cross partly after experiencing the moment when you wonder ‘where is my life going?’ during my second year of uni, but mostly after watching the Unreported World documentaries.

As anyone who has seen them will know, the subject matter of the films often leave you feeling disgusted with humanity and repeating the question “why?” in your head for days. I think I’m at the age where you question things the most and I suppose studying a media degree might contribute a bit so, as a result, the films left me feeling a little unsettled to say the least.

I felt frustrated watching films that documented human rights violations such as rape being used as a weapon in the Democratic Republic of Congo and babies and toddlers being given heroin as a means of pain relief in Afghanistan. The International Committee of the Red Cross work around the world to safeguard health care and protect civilians from conflicts and natural disasters.

The Unreported World documentaries allows the victims of such crises’ to tell their story to the world and raise awareness in the hope that people will take action and implement change. The stories told in the films are often shocking and highly controversial in some parts of the world, therefore the reporters, producers and fixers that are involved in making them sometimes put their own lives in great danger.

In October 2011 Frontline interviewed members of the Unreported World team some of whom secretly went undercover to report on the Syrian uprisings during President Bashar Al-Assad’s violent attack on protesters in opposition of his regime. They told them that making the films was a completely different experience to news reporting; rather then going straight in with the hard-hitting news questions they felt more inclined to get to know ordinary people and spend more time trying to understand their personal experiences. They agreed that having contacts was key to the success of the films, making contact with fixers in the countries reported on was crucial to gaining a deeper insight.

The above image links to the Syrian Unreported World episode, I think that there a parts of this film that really show the danger that the fixers and reporters put themselves in, living in constant fear of being found out. This really shows the importance of news and the risks that people are prepared to take to show the world their story, it highlights how those involved in the film would risk imprisonment, torture and even death rather than carry on living in that particular situation.

Of course, the people involved in these films are not the only ones risking everything to get the story out to the world. Bloggers and citizen journalists have played a huge part in making the world aware of all that is taking place within the Arab Spring conflicts and as a result put great pressure on their leaders who have betrayed them.