@Beyond the Printed Word: MySun moderators tested on 152-page policy

Posted by Martin Stabe on 8 November 2007 at 14:12
Tags: News of the World, Sun, Sun Online, The Sun, The Sun Online, User-Generated Content, thelondonpaper

Danny Dagan, head of online communities at News Group Digital which runs MySun and provides moderation for the News of the World and thelondonpaper.

The Sun and its sister titles take a very strict line on moderating content submitted to their sites, its approach is that contributing under the tabloids’ brands is very different than blogging on Blogger, he says. It demands higher standards:

• News Group has a 152-page moderation policy for what it terms “reader generated content” on MySun community and article comments. Moderators are tested on the policy each quarter, and the results affect their bonus.
• There are seven moderators and a manager at News Group Digital. The skills needed to recruit them depends on how much editorial input they have to have - and these are not necessarily journalists. But at the Sun, the ability to pun is very imporant.
• Qualifications for night moderators are somewhat different from day moderators, Dagan jokes. They tend to like sitting alone in front of a computer at night and may speak fluent Klingon.
• The Sun has a strong ethos - it’s very British, and want to be very fun. This isn’t the same as having a blogging tool or a blog on blogger. BLogging on a tabloid means you’re making a statement.
• Justifying the cost of moderation teams is easy when you compare it to the spending on editorial production, and compare the number of page impressions and user loyalty that user generated content.
• A key piece of registration data the Sun gets a high degree of voluntary disclosure on is “What is my favourite football team”. The default is “I don’t follow football”, which provokes and indignat response from users &mdash 60 per cent of registered user tell the SUn their favourite football team.
• Between two and 200 comments are removed each day, depending on the topics being discussed.
• Volunteer moderation is problematic, because there have been employment tribunal cases of moderators seeking retrospective payment.
• Dagan declines to answer the most interesting question at the close of the session: the proportion of Sun Online users who register and use Sun Online.

Fake Sheikh to quit?

Posted by Martin Stabe on 26 June 2007 at 07:35
Tags: News of the World

The Independent’s Pandora column today suggests that the News of the World’s controvertial investigations editor, Mazher Mahmood, may have explored the option of taking voluntary redundancy amid the current round of cutbacks at News International.

The Fake Sheikh, the Indy diary claims, “has been in aborted talks with management over a package to hang up his robes”.

An anonymous source talls Oliver Duff: “He discussed voluntary redundancy, but they didn’t want him to go. He is too valuable.”

No end in sight for ‘fake sheikh’ drama

Posted by Martin Stabe on 24 April 2006 at 15:24
Tags: Journalism, News of the World

The Fake Shiekh saga continued this weekend in the Independent on Sunday as News of the World editor Andy Coulson responded to Roy Greenslade’s attack on his investigations editor last week.

The former Mirror editor and City University journalism professor has long been an outspoken critic of Mazher Mahmood’s undercover antics and has supported MP George Galloway’s distribution of photographs of the journalist.

Coulson attacked Greenslade’s “obsessive hostility to our award-winning investigations editor” and defended Mahmood’s methods. “Subterfuge is an essential tool in the craft of investigative journalism,” he writes.
Coulson also rejected Greenslade’s call to retire the ‘fake sheikh’: “Maz will continue to operate as the sheikh and will also use a number of new identities we have created.”

Easter weekend ‘fake sheikh’ update

Posted by Martin Stabe on 18 April 2006 at 09:25
Tags: Guardian, Investigations, Journalism, News of the World

The controversy over the publication of pictures of the ‘Fake Sheikh’, News of the World investigations editor Mazher Mahmood, continued over the Easter weekend. Even the New York Times took notice, providing an outsider’s overview of a very British media squabble — and becoming only the third newspaper to print the pictures of the undercover reporter.

In the Independent on Sunday, journalism professor and commentator Roy Greenslade explained why he favours exposing Mahmood. The gist:

The reason is straightforward: Mahmood’s methods debase journalism. They often amount to entrapment and, on occasion, appear to involve the use of agents provocateurs. People have been encouraged to commit crimes they would not otherwise have conceived. As if that wasn’t enough, the public interest justification advanced for such activities by the NoW is almost always highly debatable.

The Guardian, meanwhile, reported on the the News of the Worlds’ version of events at the Dorchester Hotel, where MP George Galloway says he was the intended victim of one of Mahmood’s trademark stings. The paper specificially denies Galloway’s claim that its reporter tried to goad him into supporting anti-Semitic comments.

The News of the World says the undercover reporter is endangered by having his picture published and has asked rival publishers not to print the pictures distributed by Galloway even though they are widely available on the Internet.

One of the pictures is a passport picture of Mahmood; the other is a grainy shot of him wearing the famous ‘fake sheikh’ disguise.

The Guardian is the only British national paper to have run the disguised picture so far, and has defended its position. The East London Advertiser also published the passport photo this week, and the New York Times used both images on its web site.
In last week’s Press Gazette, we argued against printing the pictures because there is no public interest in doing so.

Who is right?

‘Fake sheikh’ gag order lifted

Posted by Martin Stabe on 6 April 2006 at 17:41
Tags: Blogs, Ethics, Injunctions, Investigations, Journalism, Media Law, News of the World

At 4pm today, the News of the World’s injunction against publishing pictures of its undercover investigations editor, Mazher Mahmood, was lifted.

MP George Galloway promises to publish the photograph on his web site, and many others have, as well. The Guardian has published the pictures, distributed by Galloway on Tuesday, it on its web site.

But even before the injunction was lifted, the image was widely available online. A number of bloggers received the Screws’ writ, but some chose to ignore or satirise it in one way or another. Tim Ireland created a video game, Sheikh Invaders, using with the image. Some bloggers published the image in other jurisdictions.

One bloggers who openly violated the injunction, Guido Fawkes, today reflected:

Guido wonders can gagging injunctions work in a world with millions of citizen publishers? Secrets are difficult to keep when one person can broadcast to the world. Interesting.

Another blogger, one of a number who pledged to violate the injunction even if the Screws had pursued its planned appeal to extend the gag, is less than impressed with us in the MSM:

I was riled enough when our supine press wouldn’t publish the Danish cartons … as I felt it was a sad reflection on the belief systems adopted throughout journalism: exceptions to the rule as ever but we have a dead-tree media that relies on famous people for nothing stories, photo’s and tittle-tattle gossip to sell their publications.

The NOTW has successfully requested an injunction forbidding the publication of photographs of a man who makes money from dressing up and elicting information under false pretences. That ‘newspaper’ and its sister titles should be boycotted for being so spineless. They are continuing to pursue Guido and Galloway.

Another blogger was outraged into posting several Mahmood pictures when he received a rather firm e-mail allegedly from Zak Newland, the News of the World’s Night News Editor:

There is currently a High Court injunction in place banning the publication of the photos of Mazher Mahmood which you have posted on your webpage. I have passed the link to your webpage on to News International lawyer Tom Crone.

One blogger defending Mahmood and disagreeing with other bloggers’ decision to publish his picture was journalist Paul Linford.

Linford says the campaign to out Mahmood was “spearheaded by an unholy alliance of George Galloway, the most ridiculous man in British politics, and Roy Greenslade, the most ridiculous man in British journalism.”

Galloway and Greenslade, Linford argues, “want to neuter investigative journalism and remove the threat that it presents to those who abuse their positions of privilege and power?”

“This attack on Mazher Mahmood is nothing less than an attack on journalism and an attack on freedom,” Linford says.

Is it?

Bloggers get ‘fake sheikh’ writs, too

Posted by Martin Stabe on 6 April 2006 at 14:31
Tags: Blogs, Contempt of Court, Freedom of Expression, Injunctions, Journalism, Media Law, News of the World, copyright

Bloggers who published the pictures of News of the World investigations editor Mazher Mahmood that George Galloway distributed earlier this week have been hit with the same injunction that other media, including Press Gazette, received from Screws lawyers on Tuesday.

Journalist Alex Hilton, who blogs under the name Recess Monkey, removed the picture from his web site after receiving the injunction, but has posted a version of the image digitally altered to show Mahmood disguised as Che Guevarra.

Pseudonymous blogger Guido Fawkes has also received the writ, but is also displaying some doctored versions of the image, saying that he “just can’t be bothered with this injunction malarkey”.

Another blogger, Tim Ireland, has already developed an online game, Sheikh Invaders, mocking the tabloid’s attempt to gag the blogosphere. Players zap Mahmoods flying through space.

Other bloggers are engaged in a civil disobedience campaign against the injunction, with some setting up new blogs in the United States or other jurisdictions outside the court’s immediate reach.

A temporary extention to the 24-hour injunction, which Mahmood’s learned friends obtained to buy time for an appeal, is due to expire at 4pm today. Galloway — and presumably an army of bloggers — is expected to publish the picture online, although the News of the World has again appealed to the media not to use the images. This clearly won’t impress some bloggers who hold Mahmood with contempt.
The episode shows how the Internet is making a nonsense of traditional legal mechanisms for controlling the spread of information. It is the second time in a month that the News of the World has learned this the hard way. Remember Ashley Cole?

Boris at it again (world yawns)

Posted by Lou Thomas on 3 April 2006 at 09:48
Tags: Journalism, News of the World

Conservative shadow higher education minister Boris Johnson has been uncovered by those self-appointed moral guardians at the NoW.

The ex-Spectator editor has apparently wooed (among other things) Times Higher Education Supplement reporter Anna Fazackerley. He must have have made a good impression on her when the two met for an interview in January. If only all interviews led to similar outcomes.

*sadly your correspondent can’t quite find an excuse to interview Scarlett Johansson for PG*

Where’s George Galloway?

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 3 April 2006 at 09:31
Tags: Journalism, News of the World

The News of the World’s promised George Galloway revelations failed to materialise this weekend.

The Respect MP issued a press release on Wednesday night threatening to un-mask the NoW’s investigations editor Mazher Mahmood and saying that he had been the victim of his trade-mark fake shiekh sting.

The NoW said it would publish the results of its investigation this Sunday - but the only MP-related expose in Sunday’s paper was news of Boris Johnson’s latest extra marital “scrum down”.

Could it be that Galloway’s threats hit home?

Inside this week’s Press Gazette

Posted by Martin Stabe on 30 March 2006 at 13:23
Tags: ABC, BBC, Citizen journalism, Daily Telegraph, Economist, Guardian, Journalism, Mirror, Mobile Phones, NUJ, New Media, News of the World, Online, Regionals, Spectator, Sunday Telegraph, Times, War reporting

Some highlights from tomorrow’s Press Gazette:

The owners of the Daily Telegraph, the Barclay Brothers, have discovered that their ploy bringing libel cases under French criminal law — a tactic most recently deployed against the Times — cuts both ways. The Sunday Telegraph has paid out to the estranged father of comedian Jimmy Carr after his lawyers threatened drag the paper before a French tribunbal.

George Galloway has threatened to publish pictures of Mazher Mahmood after the News of the World’s “fake sheikh” attempted one of his famous sting operations on the controvertial Respect MP. (The Guardian’s Duncan Campbell today has more on the foiled “sheikh-down”.)

A former Times fashion journalist, Emily Davies, is at the heart of a plagiarism row after an American publisher gave her a £515,000 advance on a book. In a statement to us, Davies admits “genuinely accidental misattribution” of parts of the book proposal — but says there is “a dirty tricks campaign” to discredit her. Lawyers have stopped us from publishing Davies’s publicity photograph.

Regular Dog readers already know this, but the Guardian’s web site will make £1 million profit this year. This emerged at the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit, where Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow enthused about citizen journalism.

Roy Greenslade told a Newspaper Society conference that regional newspapers need to challenge to the online competition from the BBC. His most recent Daily Telegraph column is adapted from the speech. We hear that Greenslade, who recently resigned from the Telegraph, has some super-secret online project for the Guardian up his sleeve.

Multichannel television on mobile phones set to be launched by mobile network O2 within a fortnight, and if the results of a recent pilot of the service in Oxford is anything to go by, news is set to be one of the most popular offerings.

New Economist editor John Micklethwait says he wants to double the magazine’s circulation to 2 million readers worldwide over the next 10 years. Speaking of new magazine editors, we also have an interview with Matthew D’Ancona of the Spectator — he’s into punk rock, apparently.

The National Union of Journalists is backing Richard Gizbert, a London-based correspondent for ABC News, who was sacked after he refused to go to Iraq. The American television network is appealing against an Employment Tribunal ruling that Gizbert was unfairly dismissed.

British Press Awards: The Cudlipp Award

Posted by Martin Stabe on 20 March 2006 at 20:43
Tags: British Press Awards, Journalism, News of the World

The Cudlipp Award, which is awarded to teams of journalists and recognises excellence in popular journalism. It was awarded to the News of the World for “What about the Victims”