Directing WINOL for the first time

This week I directed the WINOL news bulletin for the first time ever. I wasn't expecting it to be easy but it was a lot more stressful that I thought it would be. The main problem was the lack of time for rehearsals. This was no one in particular's fault as the news reporters had to keep adjusting the lengths of their pieces due to other stories falling through and I appreciate that but having no news packages at 3 o' clock for a bulletin that's supposed to be recorded at 3 left me just a little bit panicky to say the least!

When we eventually had time for a rehearsal the main things that I wanted to practice were the handovers so both the camera operators and the presenters were happy with them. Chris Ship (ITV's Senior Political Corespondent) was the guest editor for this weeks bulletin and was really helpful in the rehearsal stage of the bulletin. In an ideal world we would have prerecorded the headline because then they would be 100% correct and as Chris said, if the top of your programme is wrong then why would the viewer want to watch the rest? We got the headlines spot on in the last rehearsal and they looked really slick however in the live bulletin I cued the news anchor, Jake too early and he spoke over the soundbite in the headline. I did think when I got the headline with a soundbite in it was a bit adventurous. When there are soundbites in the headlines there needs to be a lot of attention to detail because they have to be spot on, unfortunately due to time constraints we didn't give the soundbite the necessary attention that it needed.

As far as the rest of the bulletin went, I think it went really well. Because of the lack of stories we were quite ambitious and had a live link to Joey in the newsroom during the bulletin which I think worked well and looked really professional. We also had a live studio guest, Guy Butters, the manager Winchester FC which also went well but as Chris Ship said it did look a bit like a game of musical chairs!

The handovers went really smoothly and the presenters knew exactly what camera they were looking in to at all times. There was only one bit where I forgot to get camera 1 to get a close up of the sport anchor, Karen, and then when she introduced the Totton highlights the camera was still on a two shot and the guest was still in shot and this looked very silly.

I don't think I gave the vision mixer, Jon, enough direction during the bulletin as it was his first time doing that job and I was more concerned with VT's and the presenters and making sure they knew what was going on and Jon just had to follow me and this is why there were a few black holes in the bulletin. Luckily we were able to remove them in post production though. However the main problem that caused the black holes was yet again the timings. My role for the last two weeks had been PA and I had a massive problem with the timings then and this week it seemed a lot worse. None of them were correct and this is why I had to keep a close eye on the VT's so I knew roughly when to cue the presenters. This is something that could have been addressed had we had more time to rehearse.

Next week I hope for a much more technically better bulletin with no black holes and rehearsed so well that it looks highly polished and professional. The main thing that I want to get right next week are the timings because if the presenters are given an accurate count down from 10 then they will be less likely to panic and feel a lot more comfortable about when they are to start talking.

Finally, I would like to thank my team in gallery and on the studio floor and the presenters who all did a brilliant job of bringing the bulletin together in a very short space of time. WELL DONE TEAM!

Here is the WINOL news bulletin for 27th October 2010:

Media Law - Privacy and Confidentialty

Privacy

Under Section 8 of the Human Rights Act (1998) "Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence." This basically means that everyone is entitled to private enjoyment of family life. This affects taking photographs too because unless the person you are photographing is engaging in a pure public duty then now because of section 8 of the Human Rights act there has to be consent!

There are two types of consent, explicit consent and implied consent. Explicit consent is where a contract has been signed to agree consent. Implied consent is where for example there are posing in front of a camera and it is obvious that they know they are being photographed.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is the right to tell somebody something and they won't disclose it to anyone else. It depends on the importance of the secret and the relationship with the person. To sue on breach of confidentiality the information must have a quaility of confidence, it must have been said in confidential circumstances, there must be no permission to reveal the secret and it has to cause actual damages when told.

The Official Secrets Act is used by the government to protect secrets to do with military operations or intelligence that might help enemies.

Media Law - Qualified Privilege

Privilege allows us as journalists to write or broadcast material which may be defamtory,  untrue, or even both at the same time. It gives us protection from being sued. There are two types of privilege, absolute privilege and qualified privilege.

You have qualified privilege as long as your report is fair, accurate and contemporaneous. Fair would mean that in a court report you would report everything that was said that said in court that day and if for example the prosecution were giving evidence, then you would report all the evidence giving a fair account and then as long as you write/say "the trial continues",then that gives balance and makes the report fair. Accurate would mean that you have to accurately report what was said in court not just roughly what was said- this is where the skill of shorthand comes in very handy. Contemporaneous means that the report must go out in the first available bulletin after the events in court. For a newspaper this might be the following day. However for a news broadcast programme this might be that evening. The report must also be without malice and on a matter of public concern.

There are two levels of qualified privilege -

1.Without explanation or contradiction such as -

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

2. With or 'subject to' explanation or contradiction such as -

• Public meetings - Findings or decisions are also covered
• Local councils and committees - Findings or decisions are also covered

Findings or decisions in these meetings are also covered, as are written handouts.

In summary your report must be fair, accurate, contemporaneous, without malice and on a matter of public interest. It is also worth noting that you have NO privilege outisde main proceedings, so no protecion for speeches outside the court/meeting or phone calls etc.

Media Law - Defamation and Libel

Defamation is all about the meaning of words in the eyes of a 'reasonable man'. The criteria for defamation is that you what write about the person you are defaming 'tends to' -

• Lower them in the estimation of right thinking people.
• Causes them to be shunned or avoided.
• Disparages them in their business, trade or profession.
• Exposes them to hatred, ridicule or contempt.

Defamation is also possible via pictures and is common danger in TV. Careless use of background shots with a voice over can be defamatory- for example a voice over could be talking about paedophiles and there could be a clearly identifiable man in a background that is then libeled as a paedophile. People or companies must not be identifiable in certain contexts for example child abuse or fraud. Care must be taken when using 'imprecise' shots.

If you defame someone you are more likely to be sued by them if they have a reputation at stake. Reputation is precious, especially if you are in the public eye, have money or both. If there is a possibly of defaming someone by inferring something or through an innuendo then don't do it. You need to assess the whole context of the story before publishing. When you publish something is when you libel someone.

Publication + Defamation + Identification = Libel

However there are defences against libel - 

• "It's true and I can prove it" (in court)
• Fair comment - This is an honestly held opinion based upon facts, or privileged material in the public interest.
• Absolute privilege - Court reporting
• Qualified privilege - Police quotes, Council meetings etc

There are the main defences but there are others -

• Bone and antidote - Where defamation is removed by context
• Apologies and clarification - Rarely accepted
• Reynolds defence - Journalists have the right to publish an allegation even if it turns out be wrong
• Public interest
• Product of 'responsible journalism'

You will have no defence -

• When you have not checked your facts
• When you have not 'referred up'
• When you have not put yourself in the shoes of the person or company you are writing about
• If you get carried away with a 'spicy' story
• If you have not bothered to wait for a lawyers opinion

Again it all comes to recognising the risks and asking yourself questions -

• Who am I writing about and could they sue?
• Is what I'm writing potentially defamatory?
• Do I have a defence?
• Don't forget that lawyers never mind being asked!

Media Law - Reporting the Courts

If there is a risk of prejudice then this could lead to contempt of court. Under the 'Contempt of Court Act 1981' journalists are not allowed to report an material that might prejudice a trial. By the time a case is in court there are very few things that you can report. When the case is 'active' no details of the case may be reported but the following -

• Name
• Age
• Address
• Occupation
• Charge(s)
• Date/Place of Crown Court hearing
• Bail 
• Legal aid conditions
• Names of counsel

Police normally have a maximum of 24 hours to question but this can be extended by 12 hours by a senior officer and then a further 36 hours questioning time can be granted by a magistrate but the overall questioning time cannot exceed 96 hours. The only exception to this are terror suspects, where the limit is 28 days.

There are three different categories of offense - 

1. Summary - These offences stay in the magistrates court and are things like driving offences.
2. Either way - These types of offences can go to crown court or magistrates court
3. Indictable - These types of offences are for the crown court only and carry a sentence of 5 years and above.

Magistrates have limited sentencing powers and they are as follows -

• 6 month prison sentence and/or fines up to £5,000
• Suspended sentences
• Conditional discharges
• Community orders
• Binding orders
• ASBOs

The key stages that take place in a trial i.e. important things to report during a case - 

• Prosecution opening
• Key prosecution witnesses
• Defense opening
• Key defense witnesses
• Judge's summing up
• Jury sent out, deliberation and verdict
• Sentencing

The main points to consider when reporting about children and young people are that children are legally juvenile until they are 18 and most under 18s enjoy anonymity, this means that you must be extra careful about accident identifying them.

The following court report shows examples of how a court case can be reported when a case is over and also has an example of juvenile's that are under 18 and therefore cannot be named and how to report that - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-11564234

Media Law - Overview of the court system

The key skill for journalists when it comes to law is to learn to recognise the risk. For example recognising when something could libel someone as they could then sue you. People with reputations are more likely to sue.

I have made a diagram to illustrate the  hierarchy of criminal and civil courts -

There are many sources of law but the main ones are as follows -

• Common law tradition - This comes from ancient law.
• Statute law - This is when the government actions new laws.
• EU law adding to British law.

Court reporting used to be a big part of journalism but is becoming less and less popular. I found the following article about how court reporting is a dying trend, which makes for a very interesting read - http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2010/oct/19/court-reporting-dying-art-lawyers

Video - How to submit an article on Joomla to the WINOL website

(Watch it in full screen so you can actually see what's going on!)

Production Meeting Notes - Introduction to Joomla

Flash/PHP - Part of the WINOL website is produced in flash and the whole magazine will be created in flash. Flash is a very powerful program that mixes visual images and text. Chanin Lloyd will be in charge of flash. As far as the magazine goes, the picture editor Jason Curtis will take thousands of fantastic images to go in it and make it look brilliant. Most of the site is made in PHP, which is a modern version of HTML. The HTML program Dreamweaver is also sometimes used, with this program you can hand make websites. Not many people really use it anymore because there are so many templates, for example there are loads right here on Blogger, etc.

Joomla - This is a content management system (CMS), most organistations have their own CMS that is customised to them, for example and at the BBC their CMS is called CPS. Joomla is fairly robust at enabling people to submit articles and then the sub editors can they receive, check and put them on the website very quickly. The pages do look a bit boring and its quite hard to put pictures on and make them looks nice therefore it is quite hard to create designed pages on Joomla.

Live bulletin - We mainly used LiveStream last year as it gives us the capability to stream the bulletin as live. The only thing that can stream the bulletin as actual live is UStream, which we need to set the Tricaster up for, we did this for out General Election Coverage. We have four LiveStream channels for news, sport, community and entertainment. This enables us to loop a verity of content across these channels.

The website - www.winol.co.uk is a forwarding address domain name and the actual resident URL of the site is www.winchesterjournalism.co.uk/joomla_1.5_winol/. If you are not an administrator then you will need to log in from the WINOL homepage. However if you are an administrator when you log in this the screen you will be greeted with - the control panel.

Add New Article - Does exactly what it says on the tin, allows you to add a new article.

Article Manager - Displays all the articles on the site at any one time. Allows for quick publishing to the site and/or front page and the ability to change the order that the articles appear on any page. You can also control who has permission to view certain articles. It also displays the section of the site that the article comes under (news, sport, etc) and then categories within that (football, cricket, etc). It then displays who wrote it, making you personally liable for suing purposes - however you hopefully won't get sued. You need to know when there might be problems, you don't really need to know the law, just recognise the risk. The date the article was last edited, the amount of hits it has had, and it's unique id is also displayed.

Front Page Manager - The front page is the first page people will see when coming to the site and in most cases the only page they will visit and so it's absolutely crucial and you need to have lots of hooks to draw the reader in. Good sub editing will help with this. We also need barkers that display content on the site. The whole magazine business works on churns and uses barkers to sell the magazine content using the front page. Three vital words for the front page are WIN, FREE, SEX for tabloids. We should operate under a similar scheme. Maybe not sex though, the law on pornography is that the material has been produced with intend to create sexual arousal. So legally we could have our own Page 3 WINOL girls. Essentially all we really need is WIN and FREE. So we need a good competition like 'Date with Fate' last year when anyone has the chance of winning something for free.

Section manager/Category Manager - Already set up. The separate section and catorigories of the site.

Media Manger - This is where you will upload any type of media (pictures, music, video, etc) to include with your article and to put on the site.

User Manager - Keep your password safe and don't tell anyone else so you someone else can't make you appear liable and frame you as it were. The permission or articles that you have access to are also displayed on this page. When you log in to the user manager it will show you everyone's status. Chris can control what access that you will have to the site. Here you can also change your password. When you're logged in you can see who else in online and when they were last on, etc. You won't  be able to log in to the administrator page if you are not an administrator and will only be able to log in on the homepage.