Belgian newspapers may sue EC over web links to stories

Posted by Martin Stabe on 21 January 2008 at 06:01
Tags: copyright

Belgium’s French- and German-language newspapers may sue the European Commission over online links to newspaper articles, Bloomberg reported last week.

Copiepresse, the same organisation that sued Google over the Google News aggregator last year, says two web sites belonging to the European Commission may be infringing copyright laws by linking to Belgian newspapers’ articles.

Journalists’ use of Wikipedia and social networks

Posted by Martin Stabe on 7 January 2008 at 09:01
Tags: Ethics, Facebook, Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Privacy, Wikipedia, Wikis

In yesterday’s Independent on Sunday, reader’s editor Michael Williams looked askance at journalists’ use of Wikipedia to confirm disputed facts.

After surveying the usual pro- and anti-Wikipedia arguments, Williams concludes by reading the entries about the Independent and Independent on Sunday “a subject I ought to know something about.”

“After the first 10 errors, I stopped counting. You have been warned!”

Meanwhile, Guardian readers’ editor Siobhain Butterworth has looked at how reporters use social networking sites, asking whether Facebook members have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The issue has arisen again after the paper, along with several others, published pictures drawn from Facebook showing 19-year-old Bilawal Bhutto in fancy dress.

“There’s no call, in these circumstances, for a heavyweight public interest argument to justify publication,” Butterworth concludes.

3 comments

Bloggers benefit as Bush signs US Freedom of Information reforms

Posted by Martin Stabe on 2 January 2008 at 13:38
Tags: Blogs, Freedom of Information

In a move welcomed by American journalists, President George W. Bush has signed a bill which expands the US Freedom of Information Act into law.

Among other reforms, the bill adds a 20-day time limit for agencies to respond to requests, much like the UK Freedom of Information Act’s.

Also notable about the bill is that the definition “news media” for the purposes of FOI requests, has been expanded in a way that will benefit bloggers and other non-traditional journalists.

US “representatives of the news media” have long been able to claim a waiver from certain fees applicable under the American FOI act. Under the reforms, known as the OPEN Government Act 2007, this is defined as “any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience.”

Here in the UK, the Government is working on FOI liberalisation proposals of its own. The Ministry of Justice is currently running a public consultation about which public or quasi-public bodies should be added to the list of organisations that must respond to FOI requests. You have until 1 February to present an argument to the consultation.

@Society of Editors: Information Commissioner: Private broadcasters could come under FOI

Posted by Martin Stabe on 5 November 2007 at 18:05
Tags: BBC, Freedom of Information, ITV, Society of Editors, Society of Editors

The Information Commissioner has acknowledged that his budget for enforcing the Freedom of Information Act is “drop in the ocean”, and suggested that private broadcasting companies might be considered for inclusion in the list of bodies that must respond to FOI requests.

“I am really really struggling at the moment,” Thomas said. He described his office’s £4.7m annual budget to enforce the Freedom of information Act as “really a drop in the ocean”.

Marketing costs had been cut and the backlog of FOI cases is no longer growing as the office is now able to close cases as quickly as they come in, he said.

Discussing the Government’s recently-announced consultation on what private organsiations might be brought under the Freedom of Information Act, Thomas suggested that private broadcasters might be considered for addition to the list.

This would bring ITV and Sky into line with the BBC and Channel 4, which both have to respond to questions about subjects other than their “journalism, art or literature”.

“I would be really surprised if Network Rail weren’t brought under the Act,” Thomas said.

More links for Tuesday

Posted by Martin Stabe on 26 June 2007 at 09:29
Tags: Guardian News & Media, ITV, Media Law, Sport

Sport titles for sale? … Sir Trevor draws complaints … Aussie Football in latest journalist access row … New barrister for Guardian.

EDP’s FOI request on offender data stalls

Posted by Martin Stabe on 25 June 2007 at 07:33
Tags: Eastern Daily Press, Freedom of Information

The Eastern Daily Press is having difficulty obtaining documents about the offenders who are removing electronic monitoring tags as Mnistry of Justice stalls on answering its Freedom of Information request. The new Ministry is taking more time to assess the public interest in disclosing the number of offenders who breached their sentences by removing monitoring devices.

The time taken by public authorities in assessing the FOI Act’s public interest test has been a frequent complaint of journalists using the disclosure law. A Liberal Democrat MP’s bill which would have limited the amount of time allowed under such circumstances to 20 extra days recently stalled after being opposed at second reading in the House of Commons.

The EDP story comes as the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Select Committee called on the Government to scrap its proposal to change the FOI fees regulations, a move that many journalists fear would ‘neuter’ the Act.

FOI win may give more details of MPs’ expenses

Posted by Martin Stabe on 15 June 2007 at 12:35
Tags: Freedom of Information, Sunday Telegraph

The Information Commissioner has ruled that more details of MPs’ expenses must be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, in a move that is likely to raise a few eyebrows in Westminster, given the recent failure of David Maclean’s “squalid little bill” to exempt Parliament from FOI.

The decision notice (PDF) states that the total amounts claimed by some MPs under the “additional cost allowance”, which is used to reclaim expenses of running a home closer to Westminster than their constituency, must be disclosed under specific headings including “mortgage costs”, “hotel expenses” and so on.

The decision, made earlier this week, but only released today, followed requests from the various journalists. Ben Leapman of the Sunday Telegraph writes that an appeal by the Commons authorities to the Information Tribunal is likely, however.

Had it passed, the Maclean bill would have blocked precisely this sort or request to the House of Commons.

The Commissioner said that the public has a right to know expenses claimed by MPs in relation to their public duties.

In a press release about the decision, the ICO said: “The Information Commissioner does not believe it is necessary to disclose the full itemised details of expenditure on the running of a MP’s private household. To do so would invade the privacy of MPs and their families.”

Meanwhile, another private members bill is worth keeping an eye on: tabled by Lib Dem MP Tom Brake, the Freedom of Information (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill would actually strengthen the FOI Act. The Campaign for Freedmom of Information’s blog has full details, and Robert Verkaik wrote it up in the Indy this morning.

Update: More context on this decision from Martin Rosenbaum at the BBC

Update 2.10pm: Heather Brooke is not impressed with the ICO’s “regulation by press release” and says the decision resulted from an appeal that she had filed with the ICO. It certainly seems as though she’s been scooped on the decision affecting her own request because of the way it was released — by registered mail to her and by e-mail and RSS to the rest of the media. Martin Rosenbaum has had similar experiences.

2 comments

UK libel in the New Republic (plus journalists’ Wikipedia vanity)

Posted by Martin Stabe on 27 April 2007 at 10:19
Tags: Journalism, Libel, Wikipedia, Wikis

Press Gazette’s diarist, the shadowy Axegrinder, is becoming more web-savvy. The online version of his column is now a blog, and this week’s installment contains two items that could also have ended up here, and will be of interest to the newsroom geeks who read this blog.

UK libel law and online publication

In one post, Axegrinder notes a spat between Indy columnist Johann Hari and historian Andrew Roberts that is being played out in the US political magazine The New Republic. The dispute leaves Roberts suggesting that had Hari’s article appeared in a British magazine, he might have sued for libel.

As m’learned friend Axe rightly notes, the location of TNR is neither here nor there. Under British law, online “publication” occurs whenever – and wherever – someone reads something. The fact that Axe read about their dispute on the TNR web site while in the UK means that Hari’s screed has been “published” in the UK as far as the British courts are concerned. In fact, if you are in the UK and followed the link above, you just caused it to be published yet again.

Both TNR and Hari are, theoretically, at risk of receiving Roberts’ writs. But don’t hold your breath.

Journalist’s Wikipedia vanity

In another post, Axe pokes fun at Daily Mail columnist Petronella Wyatt, who created her own Wikipedia entry and was then horrified to discover it had been vandalised.

But Axe missed the netiquette angle: Wyatt was probably asking for her comeuppance because she had obviously violating Wikipedia etiquette.

By confessing in her column that she created her own entry, Wyatt was, in fact, boasting about breaking one of Wikipedia’s rules. Autobiographical entries and obvious self-aggrandisement are frowned upon by Wikipedians.

If you look at the entry now, you will find that it has been locked to prevent further vandalism — and is also being considered for deletion because it violates the anti-vanity rule. The matter is currently being adjudicated by expereinced Wikipedians.

Also notable is that Wyatt used the experience to criticise Wikipedia, which led one editor of her entry to add the following paragraph, which has since been deleted again:

On 23 April 2007, Ms Wyatt wrote an article in the Daily Mail about the inaccuracies and practical flaws that Wikipedia suffers from. She created her own entry containing facts about her career. After noticing that her page had been vandalised, Ms Wyatt got in touch with Wikipedia and complained. Wikipedia thereby locked her entry to prevent further vandalism. It should be noted that due to the open nature of Wikipedia, articles can suffer from occasional, or sometimes in the case of popular articles, regular bouts of vandalism, necessitating correction from other users. This can be mediated somewhat by placing articles that are frequent targets of vandalism under varying levels of protection.

Axegrinder as ‘News Sushi’

Before anyone asks, Axegrinder is one part of Press Gazette that I’m not ashamed to be repurposing in what Guardian blogs editor Kevin Anderson wonderfully calls the “news sushi” approach to newspaper blogs.

The Axe blog isn’t really a proper blog. It doesn’t really seek to join an online conversation, and only rarely links to other blogs. But it is published in Wordpress because blog technology is particularly suited to this sort of column.

Diary columns like Axe consist already consist of bite-size chunks of information, which is perfect for the blog treatment. Axegrinder’s new blog cuts the column apart into a number of individual posts. Each post is tagged with the names of the protagonists, meaning that as the blog’s archive grows, there will be a unique (and, in a deliciously evil twist, very search-friendly) page chronicling that individual’s diary-worthy peccadillos.

5 comments

How should journalists use social media material?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 20 April 2007 at 09:45
Tags: Ethics, Journalism, MySpace, Privacy, blogging

The Virginia Tech massacre may have made a talking point out of the ethics of journalists’ use material posted on blogs and social networking platforms, but Gary Andrews today highlights another, lower-profile case from the UK regional press where similar issues were raised.

When a student was found dead after a night out in Exeter several months ago, journalists quickly found his MySpace profile, and, in Andrews’ words, “liberally lifted from both his profile and the tributes left by his friends”.

At the time, Cardiff journalism student Chris White pointed out that the Basingstoke Gazette’s coverage had provoked outrage among the dead student’s friends, who felt that the paper had used the MySpace material out of context to portray him as a heavy drinker.

Andrews suggests that journalists must be more careful about how they use such material if they want to avoid alienating the vast user-base of blogs and other social media — which basically means their most engaged readers.

He also suggests should probably treat different bloggers in different ways, depending on how much of a public figure they are within the blogosphere:

While, say Tim Worstall, probably wouldn’t be too upset if a reporter contacted him out of the blue to do a quick piece on a unique bit of economic commentary he’s done on government policy [4], a less high profile blogger isn’t likely to react so favourably.

He is probably right: blogging blurs the line between public, one-to-many broadcast media and private one-to-one or one-to-few communications. The more high-profile the blogger, the more they will think of their blog as a publishing platform. Lower-profile bloggers, like the students in both cases, tend to think of their use of these technologies as a semi-private conversation among their friends, often forgetting that they are actually putting private material into the public domain.

Is this a matter of educating journalists about the changing meaning of ‘public’ and ‘private’ online, or a matter of educating the wider public that everything online is in the public domain and therefore fair game?

9 comments

MPs bid to stall bill to exempt Parliament from FOI requests

Posted by Martin Stabe on 19 April 2007 at 16:51
Tags: Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill, a private members bill that would exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act, will have its final reading in the House of Commons tomorrow morning.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who recently used the Act to force the House to disclose his fellow MPs’ travel expenses, has vowed to use fillibustering tactics to ensure that the bill runs out of time before passing.

And it looks like he’s been busy. Baker, along with a cross-party alliance featuring fellow Lib Dem Simon Hughes, Tory Richard Shepherd, Labour’s Mark Fisher and Plaid Cymru’s Hywel Williams — has tabled a long list of amendments to the bill.

Another amendment apparently aimed at undermining the thrust of the bill has been tabled by Labour MP Andrew Dismore, who is attempting to insert a clause to ensure that the bill does not prevent the disclosure of MPs’ expenses.