Qualified and Absolute Privilege

Qualified Privilege 

Privilege is about what we can say outside of court. This includes our rights to report from a public meeting, local councils, committees, tribunals etc. These meetings provide us with stories as long as they are written in accordance to the rules of fast’, accurate and fair’. After the meeting ends anything said cannot be reported as you have no protection.

Privilege  
Your report must be: 

• Fair 
• Accurate
• Fast
• In the public interest
• Without malice 

Other occasions where qualified privilege arises would be in an annual general meeting (share holders). The share holders may defame the company but as a journalist we have qualified privilege to report this.

We are allowed to report the facts from the meetings that would be in the public interest. E.g. A story on the BBC news website today (26 Feb) ‘Credit Suisse allegedly helping wealthy US customers conceal their Swiss bank accounts to avoid paying billions of dollars in American taxes. The headline was: ‘Credit Suisse 'aided' US tax evaders’. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26335432

This is a defamatory statement but it can be printed due to Qualified Privilege.

Privilege part 1: No problem, no issue.         

Privilege Part 2: subject to explanation and contradiction-Public meetings, local councils and committees, tribunals, inquiries.    

Absolute privilege- This is another type of privilege which allows us to report from courts and legal proceedings. Again the report must be fair, accurate and fast.    

Pressers 

• Pressers are public meetings (Lords 2000)
• Written handouts also covered
• Consider risks of live broadcasting.
• There is no privilege outside main proceeding (e.g. illegal dog breeder)   
  

Inquests
The media rules that an inquest is protected by absolute privilege, covered by contempt of court art.    

Types of verdicts:

• Narrative
• Short form- natural causes, misadventure, accidental death, dependence on drugs. Unlawful killing or an open verdict.

Feature Interviews/ Profiles/ General Features

Distinct features

·         Confessional first person

·         Feature Interviews

·         Profiles

·         General Features

·         Simplicity- nice clean format (feature interview)

History of Interviews

·         1884 Pall Mall Gazette Editor WD stead (first interview

·         1890 US Pulitzer/ Hearst

·         1960 US New Journalism (literacy) reportage- Hunter S Thompson i/v Nixon, Tom Woolf, Norman Mailer- extravagant

·         Andy Warhol ‘Interview’ magazine 1969 dedicated to the cult of celebrity.

Interview Types

1.       Celebrity

2.       Briefing

3.       One to one

4.       Q & A

21^st Century

·         Interview ‘dying’.

·         Stars websites.

·         Q & A format, no freedom to write work in an interesting way.

·         Copy/ Pic approval

Tips for a successful interview

·         Don’t be late

·         Look Professional

·         Choose a quiet venue for the interview but also somewhere that has an atmosphere

·         Expect the worst; don’t assume every interviewee will give a great interview. Have a few confrontational questions on standby if your interviewee isn’t being responsive.

·         Never say no

·         Always prepare your questions

·         Do your homework, research your interviewee

Classic Questions

·         How do you know?

·         What makes you say that?

·         Can you give me an example?

·         Tell me a story about your childhood

·         Judges of the British Press Awards look for an imaginative choice of interviews as well as an ability to extract revelations from frequently interviewed subjects. They also search for a writer with a distinctive style in a highly competitive field.

Profile Writing is an obituary for a living person, not technically an interview. Man/ woman in the news. Anonymous, no direct speech.

Method:

·         Sketch out life map

·         Word length consistent in length

·         Indentify people to i/v

·         Friends and foe

·         Editor’s view

·         Straight chronological summary

·         Balance is essential

Copyright

The fundamental function of Copyright is to defend intellectual property. There would be no Journalism if there were no Copyright laws; therefore we must respect Copyright as it is in our interest to do so. Essentially the laws protect people’s creative content. Pretty much all original work is protected by Copyright laws including:

·         Books

·         Films

·         Music

·         Photography

However, the following is not protected by copyright:

·         Undeveloped ideas

·         Slogans

·         Catchphrases

Fair dealing enables people to ‘lift’ another person’s work. This means using extracts of someone’s work such as copying quotes and not simply copying it identically. However, all work must be attributed, in Public Interest and usage must be fair (no more than 50% should be lifted).

WARNING: Photographs are NEVER subject to Fair Dealing, you MUST always have consent. Watermarks are often added to stop people from stealing a photograph and claiming it as their own. An example of this is Photographer Daniel Morel was awarded $1.2 million in November last year, after suing photography agencies that attempted to pass his photos off as their own after pulling them from Twitter. (www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/1-2-million-lawsuit-shouldnt-steal-photos-twitter) This shows that danger is everywhere and social media is included on copyright laws.You must recognise the risks with Copyright, always allow yourself enough time to have Copyright cleared.

The exemption when for using broadcast material is if it is used for the purpose of reporting on a current news event, such as the death of a famous figure.  For Example, after the death of Shirley Temple last week, an obituary including films that she involved in was broadcast on various News channels. This is possible because it is reporting on a current event under fair dealing. There is, however, a News Access Rights agreement which means that you can only show it for a certain amount of time. Again all work must be attributed and in the Public Interest.

Confessional Journalism

Lecture #5

A confessional interview is something emotional, medical, and accidental. Needs to give the reader a reaction, get the reader involved.

The main difficulty is finding a committed interviewee because the interviewee needs to be prepared to reveal a true life experience (something extraordinary).

Confessionals are usually ghost written rather than first person.
There are two styles of this: 

• You write it in subject/victims voice (use slang, colloquial terms, pauses, etc) this is seen in more down market publications.
• House style (publications such as The Guardian) no by-line. Note- keep all emails with commissioning editors for proof that you have written a particular article if there is no by-line.
• Should NEVER be in your opinion.
  

Roughly a confessional interview should last an hour, you would need to use all of this in your final piece but it is just about the right about of time to get a few decent quotes. Recommend asking questions such as: ‘What did you feel?’ ‘What did you say?’ Precise questioning. What we as journalists ask is very important, need to keep things fast and pacey.

The rules are that for news it is written in third person and for interviews is first person. All I,I,I subjects.

Showing copy

• If you are doing a first person interview, it’s only right someone should look at it, not for style but in terms of libel, it’s important for someone to check for any errors. People may want to check it for accuracy. 
• It’s not copy approval it’s using correct facts. 
• Your responsibility is to your readers, not the person you’re interviewing. However you need to keep a good relationship to that person you interviewed incase you need to ask them a few more questions/ request photos further down the line.

Womens magazines

• Confessional articles are very common in women’s magazines
• Not pegged to news
• Human Interest
• When pitching to magazines you need to be sure about what magazine you are pitching to and the style they use. 
• Often in weekly magazines such as Take a break but also in monthlies such as Cosmo
• My battle with ... cancer/drink/drugs/breakups 

Intellectual Confessional

• ‘Guardian Weekend’ – modest, measured style. In their weekend magazine they do an intellectual experience confessional interview. Same style each week.

Journalist Confessionals (new genre, started about 10 years ago)

• Tim Dowling (Columnist in the Guardian. Talks about how he is a rubbish husband )
• William Leith 
• Tanya Gold (Used to be on the guardian, now on the mail. Confessionals on weight and size.)
• Liz Jones she is a Daily Mail fashion editor - her claim to fame was she was the Marie Clare fashion editor. She then started writing a column for the Mail on Sunday about her critiques about her boyfriend. Made a fortune out of being a confessional journalist.
• Liz Jones’ husband

Critics within own papers

·         Jill Parkin

·         Hadley Freeman

Newspapers

·         Classic confessional journalism - headline, stand-first, then a dramatic start and into chronologically (telling the story) then a good dramatic end.

• Pegged to news 
• You get confessionals as a part of a big package of a big news event
• Train crash: survival stories etc

Trade Titles

• They are normally far less dramatic, they are still needed to balance dull stuff within the title
• First person but not confessional

Freelance Opportunities

• Celebrities are controlled by agents
• News agencies/PR agencies (useful to do up and coming people)

How to find a subject for a confessional

Look for ‘victims’

• Medical
• Social
• Support Groups
• Charity
• Internet
• Phone Book (use yellow pages to look up support groups etc)

Case Studies

• Good turn of phrase
• Great pictures/collects
• Attractive/ugly
• Happy ending
• Open, honest, realistic 
•  The subject is so important. If that person is engaging or a good talker, it will benefit. If it’s a good story but they’re not good at speaking it won’t work. 

Who to avoid

• Too vulnerable
• Hoaxers, mental health problems i.e. anorexia (unless they are recovered), people with Munchausen Syndrome by proxy (claims things have happened but they haven’t), confessing crimes. 
• Always check out the facts
• People you know - malice/vested interest
• Your interviewee can’t be anonymous, needs to be named and photographed.

Powerful quotes should be the headline to your interview. A descriptive opening in first person.

Freedom of Information Act

The Freedom of Information Act (2000) gives the public, (Not just Journalists) the legal right to access information held by most public authorities which is not otherwise readily available to them. This mean that anyone is entitled to request information from a public body (approx 130,000 in total), subject to certain exemptions:

1.       Absolute - this is where information is absolutely exempt from being disclosed, for instance security services or court records, they have no duty to confirm or deny any information that exists. This is information which relates to the courts and/ or the defence of this country.

2.       Qualified - ministerial communication and commercial confidentiality, such as if it makes a qualified body look bad. However, if the information is deemed to be within 'Public Interest' then it should be disclosed.

Public interest is where something is in the interest of the public for instance health and safety not merely interesting to the public.

E.g. How many NHS nurses have criminal convictions? - This is public interest.

How many NHS nurses are divorced? - This is merely of interest

The Government wants to be seen as legitimate, promoting transparency and accountability by offering the public the chance to further their understanding of public issues. Therefore, bring to light any information that may affect public health and public safety; both of which are of public interest.

There are around 100,000 requests made a year, costing around £34m, with only 12% of the requests coming from Journalists. Anyone can make a request, and it doesn't have to apply to just paper files, it can include information on video, tape or electronically too.

Making a request is simple, either through the website 'WhatDoTheyKnow?' or simply by emailing the public authority. You can email about almost anything without having to provide them with a reason as to why you want to know and the best thing is that it is free.     
By law the public body must reply to you within 20 working days, this is around four weeks. It is important particularly if you are working on a news story to plan ahead.
If the authority is debating whether or not your request is within the public interest they can take 40 days to consider it, so bare this in mind when planning ahead for potential news stories.

If your FOI request is declined then you have the right to bring it to the attention of an Internal Review- Information Commissioner- Information Tribunal- High Court e.g. Heather Brooke

There are also laws in place to protect our information, including:

The Data Protection Act which works to protect information away from public domain with respect to personal data. All the information that is held about us is confidential and stops others obtaining the information. The only people entitled to gain access to information about yourself, is you, especially if you feel they hold any incorrect information about yourself.                

The Official Secrets Act protects sensitive material and documents held relating to the defence of this country, for example the Ministry of Defence.           

There is a story in the news today concerning confidentiality and the NHS.  The Independent reported that: ‘’Patient confidentiality ‘to be breached by police’: NHS database to be made available to investigators, claims former shadow Home Secretary David Davis’’.

FOI was a new labour policy introduced by Tony Blair in 2005. At the time of the introduction, Blair deemed it to be a great idea, considering that journalists could gain access to the Conservative ‘dodgy’ dealings during power. However, after a period of time passed with Labour in power, the roles soon reversed and he regretted introducing the act. He soon realised that it was rarely used by 'the people' instead it was used mainly by journalists trying to uncover new material to be exposed in the media. Additionally he felt it was dangerous, because the government needed to discuss issues "with a reasonable level of confidentiality".       

In the future, under the coalition Government a review of the FOIA may be considered to essentially limit people from making too many requests where they become too 'burdensome', particularly Journalists. They could lower the limits on costs, leading to many more requests being refused, further to this, altering other factors such as time take to release information or not in to the cost calculations. Press organisations and freedom of speech campaigners have been very critical of these plans.

Gonzo and New Journalism

Tips for creating ‘Gonzo Journalism’:

·         In gonzo go for the 'quest.'

·         Get the style right, it's important to not take yourself seriously.  

·         Pick an unusual situation

·         Go into the situation with no prejudice views.

·         Do something that you have never done before, that way you will be more interested in the subject.

·         Focus on small details. Fascinating over something so small is what gonzo journalists do. Similar to Tom Wolfe's style or like John Steinbeck (fiction author). 

Tom Wolfe's rules

The 4 tools for story telling (New Journalism style):

1.      Scene by scene construction (with jump cuts or punctuation)

2.      Phonetic dialogue, actual speech (wild track)

3.      Third person restricted point of view (no 'I see," used "it is")

4.      Concentration on symbolic status life as the subject matter.

Performance Journalism is very popular. Essentially it is factual features. The documentary ‘Supersize Me’ is an example of performance journalism where the journalist has to actually participate in the subject. For instance, in ‘Supersize Me’, journalist Morgan Spurlock has to eat only McDonalds for one month to investigate the side effects of the food.

Performance Journalism appears to be heading towards ‘Roman Circus Journalism’ where the journalist is tortured live on TV etc to get ratings. ‘Gonzo’ is now the default format for almost all TV Journalism and also for feature writing too. Often a lot of Solipsism in confessional interviews is used (Gonzo Style).

New journalism: 

Photography in journalism was only introduced in the 30's. This is shocking to here when you think that at present most Journalism is picture led.

During the 1960s/70s- popular culture in USA was a generational change. ‘The new left’, alternative society.

At this time people were finding their voice and encouraged the following changes: Anti Vietnam War, anti consumerism, feminism (spare rib magazine just females), black power, popular existentialism movement (just do it slogan), rock music, the Beatles, post-expressionism, the baby boom. 

During these changes some of the elite gonzo journalists wrote many interesting articles. E.g. Tom Wolfe's ‘Radical Chic’ and ‘The Electric Cool Aid Acid Test’. Hunter S Thompson wrote ‘fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’ commissioned to write about drag racing. Rsyzard Kapuscinski wrote ‘The Emperor’.