Deepsouth Media

We have seen great reporting this week from British TV crews risking their lives riding with the rebel army into Tripoli.

Much of the footage has been terrifyingly vivid. All hail the reporters for their skill and courage, but why do cameramen never share the credit?

The BBC’s Rupert Wingfield-Hayes gave a blistering account of being ambushed by pro-Gaddafi soldiers, with a Spielberg soundtrack of close gunfire and men shouting in panic.

But who dodged live bullets to film this real-life action drama? Apparently no-one saw fit to tell viewers.

The incredible Alex Crawford, of Sky News, broadcast live to satellite from the back of a moving pickup truck, with guns blazing all around her as the rebels swarmed into Green Square.

Who would have guessed that riding with her, equally exposed to sniper fire, was a man pointing a camera, and a Sky News producer?

It’s right that reporters should make the soldiers and the civilians the focus of the story. Ego-centric tales about the crews would be quite wrong, given the scale of the suffering they are reporting.

But surely it’s also right that the invisible heroes holding the cameras should be given discreet recognition.

So anonymous are these men and women that for a significant but unlucky few the first time viewers get to hear their names is when they are killed in action.

 - GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

Rolling news programmes, which in normal times are about as interesting as watching paint dry, suddenly become utterly gripping in moments of national crisis.

But as looters took to the streets last night it quickly became clear that neither BBC News 24 nor Sky News had enough camera crews on the ground or reporters in their newsrooms.

We now know that many more serious incidents occurred than were reported by these programmes.

Media criticism of the police for allowing looters free rein is a bit rich, when the media itself seems to have been caught off guard by the riots and failed to provide comprehensive coverage.

If the police were woefully undermanned and slow to realise how rapidly the looting gangs were being mobilised, the same could be said of the media. Frankly their network of local contacts looked pathetically poor.

Of course no-one can afford to keep a full-time standing army of journalists – or policemen – on standby for a one-in-a-lifetime story like this.

Maybe it’s time for a massive expansion of the volunteer Special Constabulary, with training in riot control. That sounds a safer option than the unofficial vigilante bands that one expects to spring up in defence of local communities.

And maybe news organisations could create networks of semi-trained citizen journalists, giving them an ear to the ground in every neighbourhood. There’d be no shortage of volunteers.

- GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

Spend zillions  of pounds and decades of research developing Britain’s first fully electric car and you can be guaranteed of one fact: Jeremy Clarkson will take the mickey out of it.

The Nissan Leaf, soon to be produced in Sunderland, was given the usual Clarkson treatment on Top Gear last weekend. He deliberately ran down the battery so that viewers could be treated to amusing scenes of the car being pushed to a recharging point and listen to his opinions on the hopelessness of battery powered cars while he waited hours for the top-up.

By choosing to drive in an area with few recharging points the programme made the car look an impractical proposition with a cripplingly short range.

It failed to mention Nissan’s point that 70 per cent of drivers travel fewer than 100 miles a day, so that most can easily top-up the battery very cheaply overnight at home.

Nevertheless Clarkson and his happy team of overgrown schoolboys vividly illustrated some important points: at £30,000 it’s expensive to buy, the 100-mile range is unpredictable and depending on how often and how quickly the £7,000 battery is charged it has a limited life. In other words, think before you buy one.

Nissan predictably took umbrage, but surely it could not have imagined that Britain’s best loved, environment-hating petrol-head was ever going to be kind to the Leaf.

The programme gave the Leaf the oxygen of publicity, generating discussion and support from lots of pro-environment types who would be proud to drive a zero-emissions car.  It’s not true that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but on balance I reckon Jolly Jeremy’s rough treatment has done Nissan a favour.

- GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

It’s time to give credit to the man who must surely be Britain’s greatest investigative reporter, Nick Davies.

The destruction of the News of the World was largely brought about by his relentless campaigning, the unflinching support of The Guardian and the refusal of the Murdoch empire to cleanse itself.

He first revealed his story of widespread police and press corruption THREE YEARS AGO, and it went far beyond the News of the World.

Much scorn was heaped upon Mr Davies when he published his book Flat Earth News, which catalogued among other sins the illegal activities of private investigators working for Fleet Street newspapers.

I hope he now updates this excellent book and republishes it because in a sudden and dramatic change of climate this country is now ready to listen to his message.

Perhaps all of us – readers, advertisers, journalists, politicians, government officers and policemen – have been complicit in accepting certain abuses, without realising how bad things had become.

It’s bad that politicians have been terrified into inactivity by the Murdoch empire. It’s bad that the police, the courts , government officers and the Press Complaints Commission knew about or suspected the illegal activities but failed to act.

It’s bad that in the heat of battle newspaper executives lost their moral bearings. It’s bad that readers and advertisers suspected much of this and continued to support the publications.

Murdoch should not have closed the News of the World, but he should never have tolerated these abuses for so long – and neither should his fellow proprietors, who I hope will soon be facing their share of the heat.

GARETH WEEKES,  Deep South Media Ltd

The public’s view of newspaper journalists has traditionally ranked them way down at the end of the list of least admired occupations, alongside estate agents and politicians. 

Is there any defence against the widely held view that you can’t get any lower than a journalist?

You have to wonder after today’s allegations that a  News of the World investigator hacked Milly Dowler’s phone, deleted voicemail messages and hampered police enquiries.

The tabloid fringe has always had a dubious approach to morality. Who can forget Kelvin MacKenzie’s boast that in his days as editor of The Sun some of the best stories were “too good to check”?

Admittedly this is not in the same league as illegal phone hacking, but it’s another example of the dishonest journalism that drags down the reputation of reporters and editors everywhere.

It doesn’t take much thought to work out the unfairness of this. In my long experience the overwhelming majority of journalists are honest. They’re not all competent, of course, and there have been many poor judgment calls. But I have never known any journalist bent enough to do business with a man like NoW private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

A few ­- a substantial minority, I would say – come under the category of “the dearest and the best”. These are the journalists who are infused with the notion that the truth shall set you free and seem genuinely committed to making the world a better place.

These are The Guardian journalists who exposed the News of the World phone hacking scandal. They are The Daily Telegraph writers who revealed the vast scale of MPs’ fiddled expenses and The Times journalists still doggedly campaigning to make it easier for children to be adopted.

People like this still exist in the regions, like the Daily Echo journalists who, with the support of 178,000 people, are campaigning to save a local children’s cardiac care unit.

But can a newspaper occupy the moral high ground and stay in business? You would hope so, but which titles sell the most copies in Britain? Ah yes, The Sun and the News of the World, ahead of the others by a mile.

So who really cares about the reputation of journalists? Who cares how they get their stories? And who cares whether they are true or not? There are at least two million people who apparently don’t give a toss.

GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

The Daily Mirror, that fearless warrior against fatcat bosses, is strangely reticent when it comes to the case of Sly Bailey.

As chief executive of a struggling British company Ms Bailey defied indignant shareholders and accepted a 36 per cent pay increase to £750,000 a year.

Profits and shares have slumped and the group’s workforce has been halved since 2004 but she pocketed a total package last year, including bonus, of £1.71 million.

This tale of epic greed has not made it onto the pages of the Mirror for the simple reason that Sly Bailey’s company is Trinity Mirror, owner of 160 regional newspapers and five nationals, including the Mirror.

The Mirror’s silence perfectly illustrates the dilemma facing journalists trying to avoid accusations of hypocrisy when they talk about media freedom. How can a newspaper claim to be independent when it applies one rule to itself and another to everyone else?

I guess all the Mirror’s editor can do in this situation is shrug and ask politely: “Well, what do you expect? Do I look like a turkey who would vote for Christmas?”

All the same, the media would dampen reader cynicism and recover some of its lost credibility if it strived harder for true independence of editorial content. Trinity Mirror and even Sly Bailey could stand taller if its newspapers and websites carried stories like this.

Geoff Rich, legendary editor of the South Wales Echo in the 1970s and 80s – in its pre-Trinity Mirror days – is said to have announced to his senior news team that he would be spending the next day in court on a charge of drink-driving. He invited them to cover the case and make their own decision about how newsworthy this was. To everyone’s credit, the story appeared on the front page.

Nobody lost their job and the affair ended with Geoff’s and the paper’s reputation enhanced. Now that’s fearless journalism and ethical media management.

- GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

As anyone with a smidgeon of management experience will tell you, getting rid of staff you don’t like is a tricky business in which you ignore legal procedures at your peril.

That is, unless you are a bully, or are incompetent, or unless you are Ed Balls, the former Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

When Mr Balls announced the sacking of Haringey’s director of children’s services in a televised press conference he was flouting the employment law that every employer in this country is obliged to follow.

By publicly scapegoating Sharon Shoesmith he cleverly deflected media criticism away from his own department, and focused all the blame for the death of Baby P on her.
The Court of Appeal has now ruled that he broke the law and made her a public sacrifice. Whether she deserved to be sacked is beside the point. Generations of our forbears have campaigned for the right of workers not to be dismissed at the whim of an employer.

If you want to sack someone you issue a series of warnings, lay out the evidence against them, and give them opportunities to put their defence and to appeal. And unless you are a complete bastard you don’t announce it at a press conference before you have informed the employee.

Mr Balls ignored all of this and joined in the media hounding of a professional woman struggling to be effective in complex and difficult circumstances.

It was dispiriting to hear John Humphrys continue this relentless interrogation of Ms Shoesmith on Saturday’s Today programme and to learn that the current Education Secretary Michael Gove is to appeal against the decision.  

Why is no-one putting pressure on Ed Balls? He ran a government department that must bear some responsibility for not helping local authorities protect children from bullying parents. He sacked someone unlawfully. Through his recklessness he incurred a loss to the public purse, in legal costs and compensation, of well over £1million.

 Now that’s what I call a sackable offence.

- GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

Here’s some advice for anyone flattered by an invitation to be interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live. Don’t drink alcohol, have a good night’s sleep, make sure you know what you’re talking about, and be prepared for an ambush.

Oh, and if you’d like to know how badly even an old hand can screw up click on this link to read the full transcript of Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s interview yesterday with Victoria Derbyshire.

Actually the advice holds good for anyone agreeing to a BBC interview, even a harmless sounding local station, where interviewers are bred to ask challenging questions.

As Mr Clarke blundered into a chaotic attempt to defend a possible change in sentencing policy he seemed to have forgotten that reporters can bite.

By concentrating on sentences for rape, Ms Derbyshire caught him unawares with a verbal shoulder charge. The genial minister’s muddled response confused listeners, enraged feminists and made him sound like a blithering idiot.

Poor Mr C was having a very bad day. In the ensuing media firestorm, as he repeatedly tried to clarify his intentions, he still failed to give a clear explanation of his ideas.

He might have said that prosecutors secure convictions in a pathetically small percentage of rape cases, and most victims who brave the torment of giving evidence in court fail to get justice. Why not at least think about giving an incentive to accused rapists by reducing their sentence if they plead guilty at an early stage? That way more rapists might be convicted and jailed and fewer victims might be dragged through the courts.

Instead, he blundered into an argument and gave the impression that some types of rape were not serious. And how did the hapless minister attempt to get out of this hole? He carried on digging, accusing the media of using rape as “an example mainly to add a bit of sexual excitement to the headline.”

Vivienne Hayes, of the Women’s Resource Centre, said: “Kenneth Clarke’s appalling comments smack not only of ignorance but of outright misogyny.” I found this a ludicrous overreaction. Mr Clarke, surely a decent man, spoke carelessly but not maliciously.

It just goes to show that you are never too old to learn a lesson – or to be given a good hiding by the media. As his 71st birthday approaches he will have to work harder to stay in tune with young voters – and tread much more carefully in radio studios.

GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

Would any editor hold the front page or indeed even a tiny corner of page 22 for the news that a man was fined £1,000 for failing to pay his TV licence?

Well, maybe they would if they knew about it, but newspapers no longer have enough reporters to cover minor court cases and there seems to be no system in place to provide them with the information.

But wouldn’t you would be interested in stories like this if the offender was your neighbour, or your uncle? And if you were thinking of not paying the licence wouldn’t you be stunned and deterred by the size of the fine?

Editors know readers are interested, but  this is not the point. The resources aren’t there, and that’s that.

And yet there are good reasons why court stories should continue to be published – reasons to do with justice, public order and public relations.

Old-style weekly newspaper editors used to justify their extensive coverage of magistrates courts by maintaining that the shame of public exposure deterred would-be criminals.

In their view publicising court decisions was an essential part of the justice system – people needed to know the end result of criminal investigations.

And even now, when police forces are being pushed to explain why their budgets are so high, there is a clear public relations incentive to let people know the outcome of their work.

So hats off to West Midlands Police for finding at least a temporary solution. Five police press officers attended Birmingham Magistrates Court on Tuesday and posted the results on Twitter.

The stories they tweeted ranged from an armed robber who had breached his bail conditions to people stealing mobile phones and bikes. The exercise saw followers of @WMPolice increase by more than 300 ‘tweeters’.

This is not a sustainable long term answer to the media’s inability to ensure that justice is seen to be done.

But it raises an important point. There ought to be a way of getting court results into the media cheaply and efficiently. And is there any reason why Ken Clarke’s Ministry of Justice couldn’t come up with an answer?

A simple court results information service could do wonders for the public’s perception of what the police actually achieve. By naming  the guilty it would help deter others from offending. And it would be of great interest to readers and viewers.

GARETH WEEKES, Deep South Media Ltd.

For an example of how regional newspapers are suffering in these straitened times look no further than the business pages.

A few titles are still managing to fund vibrant, independent-minded business sections, while others have either heavily pruned them or axed them completely.

With newsrooms beginning to resemble the Mary Celeste it’s hard for editors to find anyone to cover local commerce and industry, but there’s danger in abandoning this sector of news.

It’s probably true that well researched business pages do not dramatically improve newspaper sales. In the latest daily paper circulation figures, titles with the best business pages do not seem to be faring any better than those that have given up.

But readable, accessible, relevant business coverage is an essential part of the news mix. It can affect thousands of readers and if the job is not being done another reason for using newspapers is removed.

Newspapers and their supporting websites need to retain credibility with the business community for all kinds of reasons, not least advertising and the fact that many business leaders are key opinion formers.

Business is a difficult subject to cover without boring non-business readers. But it can be done and papers that do it well are providing an important service, protecting their own brand and earning respect.
-GARETH WEEKES, DEEP SOUTH MEDIA