College of Journalism Feed

How free will Russia's new public service TV channel be?

2012-04-20T10:00:10+00:00

Outgoing Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev has ordered the creation of a new public service television station to come on air on 1 January 2013.

Unveiling plans for the channel on 17 April, he pledged it would be free of "excessive state influence". There are, though, grounds for doubting whether the new channel will be a public service broadcaster in the true sense of the term and whether it will have much of an impact on Russia's heavily state-dominated television sector.

Doubts principally concern its governance and funding arrangements. According to Medvedev's decree, the interests of the public will be represented by the Public Television Council (PTC), which will be appointed on the basis of nominations submitted by an all-purpose oversight body called the Public Chamber.

No members of the PTC will be allowed to be members of parliament or government officials, which appears to be what Medvedev (above) was referring to when he said that there would be curbs on state influence. But, as several commentators have noted, the Public Chamber itself is a Kremlin-sponsored body and does not have the reputation for standing up for the public interest when it clashes with that of the state - witness its lack of support for the recent protests in support of fair elections.

What is more, the final composition of the PTC is subject to confirmation by the president, who will also have the right to appoint and dismiss the new channel's director-general, who will be its editor-in-chief.

As media commentator Anna Golubeva has pointed out, in most emerging democracies the head of a public TV service is appointed by an independent oversight body. And in cases where a senior politician has this power, such as France and Japan, the decision has to be approved by parliament. (It is also worth noting that the new channel is being created on the basis of a presidential decree rather than primary legislation.)

There are also questions about the station's funding. Medvedev's decree says it will initially function with the help of a state loan and thereafter on the income generated by a special endowment. A small part of the endowment will come from the state, and this will be supplemented by voluntary donations from the public. Contributions from any one individual or company will be subject to a limit that will be imposed by the board of the non-commercial company that will form the basis of the new station.

According to business daily Vedomosti, the endowment should ultimately amount to around a billion dollars, generating an annual income of $33 to 50 million. But this would make the channel very much the poor relation among terrestrial TV channels. The annual budget of Russia's most popular TV station, Channel One, is estimated to be in the region of $800 million.

As media academic Anna Kachkayeva says, this will hamper the new channel's ability to attract top talent.

With less than nine months to go before launch, there is even uncertainty about how the new station will be broadcast. The decree says the Defence Ministry should draw up proposals for using its own TV station, Zvezda, to transmit its programmes. But this begs lots of questions - for example, will the new station replace Zvezda or will it simply use its transmission facilities? And how will the Defence Ministry respond to this apparent incursion on its territory?

Moreover, Zvezda is only available to about 70m Russians, which means that half the population will miss out on public TV until at least 2015. After that, public TV should be available nationwide as part of Russia's first free-to-air digital multiplex.

Finally, there is the question of the channel's position in the overall media landscape, which is dominated by three TV channels - Rossiya 1, Channel One and NTV- that are all in one way or another controlled by the state and obedient to the interests of the current ruling elite.

The general rule in emerging democracies is for public service broadcasters to replace state broadcasters - as a signal of the government's commitment to media freedom, plurality and impartiality. According to Mikhail Fedotov, head of the Presidential Council for Human Rights and one of the public TV project's keenest advocates, the only other country that has gone down the same path as Russia of having public TV alongside state TV is Azerbaijan. But in the latest Press Freedom Index produced by Paris-based NGO Reporters Without Borders, Azerbaijan is 162nd, 20 places below Russia.

Stephen Ennis is Russian media analyst for BBC Monitoring.

China's role in Africa: pitting development against media freedom?

2012-03-19T16:13:24+00:00

Last week, I spoke at the Oxford University China Africa Network on the implications of China's media interventions in Africa.

There is ample discussion of China's role in the overall frame of African development. Opinion is divided on whether these interventions are a reinforcing of previous colonial relationships or an admirable route for Africans to access infrastructure and other key support, without the complications sometimes associated with Western aid?

China's intervention in the world of African media raises a number of other issues. Assistance with media - through technological support, training journalists or the investment in public diplomacy and soft power through expanding media outlets - prompts inevitable questions about Chinese attitudes towards media freedom and robust journalism. Does this kind of intervention best serve African audiences and citizens?

China likes to promote its involvement in Africa as 'ideology free'. But this cannot really apply to media and journalism because China's own media is subject to such restrictions. The BBC website is not freely available in China. Google and other search engines do not operate freely, and YouTube and Facebook are not accessible in the way they are in the West. The Chinese recently even devised a way of controlling social media sites such as Twitter.

One of the ways in which African countries such as Zimbabwe and Ethiopia have received assistance from China is in the supply of jamming technology that blocks internet sites or radio frequencies. This is hardly ideology free.

In some areas Chinese journalism has demonstrated an ability to speak out. Stories such as the devastating Sichuan earthquake in 2008 were fully reported and not covered up. Yet at other times there is an emphasis on the need for 'positive journalism' which values social solidarity more than speaking truth to power.

And it is this qualified idea of journalism which has parallels in some African countries where there is talk of 'developmental journalism' and antagonism by powerful rulers to journalists that they consider 'unhelpful' or 'irresponsible'. In recent months President Museveni of Uganda has called independent media "enemies of Uganda's recovery". The Gambian president has similarly criticised journalists who threaten stability of the state. And in Ethiopia journalists have been labelled terrorists and imprisoned.

I mentioned some of these issues at the conference in Oxford and was sharply criticised by a Chinese speaker who spoke of the need to value social justice over political democracy. He was a senior banker and even said we should consider some developing countries as young children who still need guidance.

But why should countries have to choose between stability and press freedom? Surely one can argue that a robust media will enhance progress - and in particular will act as an antidote to corruption, which is now such a problem in China.

Professor Suzanne Franks was this year appointed to a chair in journalism at City University. She has worked in current affairs television both at the BBC and own independent production company. She is the author of a forthcoming book, Reporting Disasters - Aid and the Media.

UN calls on journalists to help stop the killing of journalists

2011-10-03T13:38:41+00:00

It is high time journalists, media owners and editors stopped being passive in the face of the continued slaughter and silencing of journalists. They should demand protection for their colleagues who face violence and suppression.

That was the surprising message from a recent United Nations meeting aimed at agreeing new measures to stop the widespread killing of media workers in scores of countries around the world and ensure that those responsible are punished.

After the much-publicised killing of journalists like Anna Politkovskaya in Russia, Hrant Dink in Turkey, Lasantha Wickrematunga in Sri Lanka, and the 32 media workers massacred on a single day in Maguindanao in the Philippines in 2009, the argument for a more proactive UN effort to prevent targeted violence against journalists has been won - at least on paper.

After intense pressure from non-governmental organisations over many years, the UN convened the first-ever UN Inter-Agency Meeting on the Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity at UNESCO's Paris headquarters on 13 and 14 September.

It recognised that the high toll of journalist deaths is unacceptable and that the onslaught has a severely chilling effect. Societies where journalists, bloggers and others are forced to live in fear deprive themselves of the means to reveal and correct systemic corruption and abuses of power among their ruling elites and other powerful forces and criminal networks.

So far this year UNESCO has publicly condemned the assassination of 47 journalists. The International News Safety Institute says that in all 77 media workers have been killed since January. The INSI estimates that total deaths over the past ten years number more than 1,000.

Among the latest killings, UNESCO Remembers Assassinated Journalists recorded that the decapitated body of Maria Elizabeth Macias, a Mexican journalist who reported on organised crime, was found on 24 September with a message linking the murder to her reporting.

Like the great majority of journalists who have died in the course of their work, Macias was not a famous international reporter but a native of the country were she was killed.

And UNESCO says almost nine out of ten murders of journalists around the world are never properly investigated so the perpetrators go unpunished.

Human rights and media-monitoring organisations have forced these issues onto the UN's agenda. And at last enough states, including the UK, are backing the call for a coherent, UN-wide and "action-oriented" approach to preventing and combating these crimes.

The Draft UN Plan of Action includes: a coordinated UN mechanism to maintain a focus on the issues of safety and impunity in the work of all relevant UN agencies; better monitoring at national and international level; and extra steps (not yet spelled out) to press states where such murders occur to implement the international rules and principles they have signed up to.

Speakers at the Paris meeting provided powerful arguments for more rigorous measures to enforce states' commitments. But in each case they also urged media organisations to do more to assert the rights and protect the lives of journalists under threat.

Jane Connors of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called on journalists to make more use of the individual complaints procedure which allows the UN's independent body of legal experts, the Human Rights Committee, to rule on specific cases or establish commissions of inquiry into alleged violations of states' obligations.

She cited the authoritative Committee's latest jurisprudence, General Comment No. 34, which places a duty on states to "put in place effective measures to protect against attacks aimed at silencing those exercising their right to freedom of expression".

That text names journalists, human rights defenders, judges and lawyers as "frequently subjected to such threats, intimidation and attacks because of their activities".

Adam Rogers of the UN Development Programme raised the possibility that attacks on journalists limit freedom of expression and may therefore be considered attacks on a whole population and prosecuted internationally as crimes against humanity.

The UN also now says it is open to more participation by journalists in preparing UN development aid programmes in countries where media workers are targeted with violence.

Eric Chinje of the World Bank said journalists' organisations had so far not pressed for the issues of safety and impunity to be used as criteria in the bank's programmes worldwide. In future, states' performance with respect to those things could be taken into account in administering the UN's Millennium Development Programme, whose goals include better government accountability.

Chinje urged the international media to speak up more loudly and put a stronger spotlight on those issues.

Media editors and other journalists might shrug off these calls and retort that the core issue here is a shameful lack of will on the part of governments to confront official negligence or complicity in the epidemic of violence against journalists in the world's troubled places.

That charge is hard to dispute. UNESCO's own attempt to audit the systemic failures of some governments to protect journalists or to seriously investigate their murders has produced limited results.

Out of 28 governments asked in 2010 (on a voluntary basis) to account for the killing of journalists in their jurisdiction in the previous two years, 13 refused even to respond to the request from UNESCO's Director-General for information on the cases and any attempts to bring the perpetrators to justice.

At the Paris meeting, journalists' representatives and other civil society speakers all called for that rudimentary system of oversight to be made compulsory, with stronger intervention powers by appropriate UN bodies.

But another lesson that may be drawn is that, to achieve major changes of that kind, journalists themselves will have to engage more fully by raising public awareness, training members of their profession to understand how to assert their rights, and banging on the doors of governments and UN agencies to demand effective action.

Apart from particular outrages like the shooting of Anna Politkovskaya in her Moscow apartment block in 2006, how much attention do the Western media pay to the steady toll of journalist killings and the stifling self-censorship that often results?

And don't those media have a direct interest? After all they depend heavily on local journalists in war zones and under dictatorial regimes who often pay for their work with their lives or freedom? The death of 15 journalists in the 'Arab Spring' uprisings during the first four months of 2011 illustrates the point.

Perhaps journalists everywhere should make it their business to know what emerges from the UN's Action Plan on Safety of Journalists and understand what it means for journalism.

They might note that 23 November, the anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre, has this year been designated a global Day Against Impunity by the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, IFEX.

And they should realise that the struggle for survival of free and independent journalism in Mexico, Somalia, Russia, Egypt, Pakistan and the Philippines is also in a real way their own.

Related websites

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Impunity Index

UN Inter-Agency Meeting on Safety and Impunity.

William Horsley is International Director of the Centre for Freedom of the Media at the University of Sheffield and co-director of The Initiative on Impunity and the Rule of Law.

Libya coverage exposes China's internal split

2011-08-30T14:15:21+00:00

As the fighting continues in Tripoli, a war of words is taking place in the Chinese media and blogosphere. The revolution in Libya has become a subject of heated debate which may reveal more about China than the Libyan conflict.

As they have for the past six months, China's state media are still focusing on the "chaos" in Libya. By 25 August, in its reports on Libya, the state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) continued to use an on-screen title: "War and chaos continue in Libya."

On 22 August, the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily carried on its website a Xinhua news agency photo report featuring pictures of Libyans celebrating the fall of Gaddafi's regime. But the report was headlined: "Full-blown riot breaks out in the Libya capital."

The headline was widely ridiculed on Weibo, China's domestic Twitter-like microblogging platform. Blogger Truth Will Out said: "The people are celebrating their victory on the square, but Xinhua calls it a full-blown riot in Tripoli. Haha!" Blogger Huang Kui said: "Xinhua has come out to shame itself again. Has anyone ever seen riots that are so happy?"

The developments in Libya have become the hottest topic on Weibo in the past few days. According to Xu Danei, columnist for the FT's Chinese website, liberal intellectuals, who are overwhelmingly dominant on Weibo, have been celebrating the end of the "dictatorship" in Libya and the "liberation" of the Libyan people. Blogger Shanghai Zhao Xian, for instance, expressed his excitement by saying: "I'm close to tears. It'll soon be our turn."

The Chinese Foreign Ministry's statement that Beijing "respects the Libyan people's choice" also provoked a lot of responses from microbloggers. Zhong Lei asked: "When can you respect the Chinese people's choice? Can we have an election?" Huang Yan answered: "What is implied is that the people can only make their choices with violence. There are no other means."

Chinese media have given different explanations for why Gaddafi's regime is coming to an end. The Global Times, a nationalist tabloid run by The People's Daily, accused the West of prolonging the civil war and causing unnecessary bloodshed. Its 22 August editorial said: "During the half-year civil war in Libya, there were many opportunities to end the killings and reach a political solution. But all of these opportunities were blocked by the West, who insisted on the condition that Al-Qadhafi must step down."

But the market-oriented popular press have given some alternative explanations. Qilu Wanbao, a popular tabloid in Ji'nan, attributed Gaddafi's failure to his authoritarian rule: "The reality of this country is very far from the so-called 'people's state'... Only the people can dictate the directions of history. Instead of agonising over how to keep their rein on power, heroes and strongmen should give power back to the people as early as possible." The article was later deleted from the Qilu Wanbao website, but it was later reposted on many internet forums.

Popular internet portal Sohu asked why Gaddafi has been cast aside by the people despite his economic achievements. The reasons given included his personality cult, ideological paranoia, "violent stability-maintenance" measures (Chinese: baoli weiwen) and corruption, which led to the phenomenon that "the state is rich but the people are poor" (Chinese: guofu minqiong). Sohu clearly sought to link Libya to China, as the expressions "violent stability-maintenance" and "the state is rich but the people are poor" are often used by Chinese media to describe the current situation in China.

The Global Times dismissed the voices of dissent over the Libyan situation. It said in its 23 August editorial: "Gaddafi did become a 'vehicle for casting aspersions' for some people in China to vent emotions, but this is nothing. Chinese society has long since been accustomed to hearing some 'strange voices', which is perhaps an embodiment of China's constantly expanding political adaptability."

But it may not be wise to disregard all these "strange voices". As media observer Xu Danei pointed out, most unofficial opinion leaders in China seem to see Gaddafi's fall as a "victory of freedom".

Source: BBC Monitoring.

Undercover in Syria: how Sue Lloyd-Roberts became a student of Byzantium

2011-06-24T13:29:26+00:00

Sue Lloyd-Roberts reported from Syria for Newsnight this week. Because foreign journalists are not allowed into the country, she went undercover. This is her account of the trip:

I have been working undercover in countries which are unfriendly to journalists for 20 years now and I follow a strict code of practice.

When you have been arrested and strip-searched in the course of your business (which has happened to me several times), you have to pay meticulous attention to the smallest detail.

I have posed as a twitcher in Bosnia, which meant equipping myself with binoculars and birdwatching books; a clothes manufacturer in Burma, which entailed learning technicalities of the rag trade and carrying appropriate fashion samples; a Roman Catholic church worker in Zimbabwe, clutching my rosary and Bible; and a tourist (left) in the jungle in Burma (where I may have taken the 'tourist' thing a bit too far).

It goes without saying that anything recognisable as a reporter's notebook or useful cuttings must be left behind as you enter the country, and all local contact numbers have to be carefully concealed. Lives could be at stake here.

When I went to Syria for this week's reports, I was a PhD student of Byzantium. The good news was that I was equipped with a letter from my 'supervisor': a genuine Professor of Byzantine Studies at Oxford University and an old friend. The bad news was that I had to be weighed down with several cumbersome volumes on the subject in order to corroborate my story.

I took a Panasonic palmcorder with which, I explained to anyone who asked, I planned to meet the requirements of the illustrated lecture I was expected to give on my return. I had spent a day in neighbouring Lebanon filling a camera cassette with pictures of Byzantine remains there; again to add credibility to my cover story.

I could not check into a hotel as I would be followed, so local contacts arranged for me to go into hiding, along with hundreds of political activists who have had to leave their home during this tense period and move to borrowed rooms and flats where the authorities have no trace of them.

On occasions, I would make my way to the tourist attractions of the Old City of Damascus to rendezvous with political activists, or they would come to collect me from my hideout in the suburbs of the city.

It was a frustrating way to report on the Syrian uprising, not least because it was impossible to get a camera out to record a demonstration or even a street scene. I would have been arrested immediately. Not only were foreign journalists forbidden access to Syria but there were no foreign tourists there either.

I felt horribly conspicuous. However, I did manage to interview a good cross-section of those who represent the opposition in Syria today - from opposition leaders who have been challenging the government for decades to young mothers who braved the bullets to go out on to the streets after Friday prayers simply because they wanted to change the Syria which their children would grow up in.

The most important consideration while doing this kind of work is 'am I putting others in danger?' The worst that could have happened to me, I calculated, would have been a few days arrest and expulsion from the country. Any local caught working with me would face a long prison sentence.

I had more interviews arranged which I wanted to record but, after five days, I judged it was time to leave. It was clear that my hideout had become insecure and that I was compromising the safety of those I was working with.

I won't say how I got my material out because it is a method I may want to use another time. Suffice to say that I was fortunate in meeting many former political prisoners who have had years of practice in smuggling essentials in and out of prison. A wife of a former political prisoner prepared my camera tapes for me in such a way and it worked to perfection. I am out, and I have a story to tell. There are thousands of brave political activists still in Syria who gamble with their lives every day.

Super-injunctions: a landmark in press freedom

2011-05-24T15:13:02+00:00

I thought this might be a good moment to think a bit about some of the important landmarks in press freedom here in the UK... or, more accurately, England.

1641: The abolition of the Star Chamber

This had been the monarchy's most potent tool of repression for centuries: a court that held secret sessions, without juries, and produced arbitrary judgments... all to please the king.

The abolition marked the end of blanket censorship in England.

1694: The lapse of the 1643 Licensing Order

This was the 50-year-old order that required pamphlets and proto-newspapers to be licensed before they could be published. John Milton's tract Areopagitica was a blast against this order.

The lapse was the consequence of legislation following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 which, among other things, established the sovereignty of parliament.

1727: Edmund Curll convicted for obscenity

Curll's knee-trembler Venus in the Cloister or the Nun in her Smock was the first book to be banned for its sexually explicit content. He was charged with disturbing the King's peace - though, since George I's grasp of English was less than perfect, it's unlikely his peace was too disturbed by the book's rampant prose.

Obscenity laws became a permanent fixture until 1960 when the Lady Chatterley trial began to chip them away.

1738: Parliament bans reports of its proceedings

Unsuccessfully, it turned out. And the number of reporters recording speeches and debates grew steadily until...

1771: Parliament lifts ban on reporting

Several reporters, publishers and printers were arrested for breaching the reporting ban - but it proved no deterrent. The radical MP and journalist John Wilkes mounted a legal challenge to the ban, which MPs then lifted.

1803: Reporters allocated seats in the House of Commons

Two hundred years ago, newspapers vied with each other over the quality and accuracy of their parliamentary reporting and the gallery was one of the most important assignments a reporter could land.

1811: Hansard begins publication

The record of parliamentary proceedings wasn't called Hansard until the end of the century, but it was in 1811 that Thomas Curson Hansard, the printer to the House of Commons, took over its production.

1840: Parliamentary Papers Act

This was the Act that established qualified privilege for the reporting and publication of parliamentary proceedings. It followed proceedings for defamation against Hansard.

During those proceedings, it became apparent that, while MPs were protected by privilege, reporting them was not.

1926: The BBC and the General Strike

During the strike, the BBC's first director-general, Sir John Reith, instructed news bulletins to report all sides in the dispute and to do so without comment.

This brought him into conflict with Labour leaders and with the Archbishop of Canterbury. But Reith feared that by deviating from his strict 'no comment' policy he would give the government the opportunity it sought to take over the national broadcaster, turning it into the state broadcaster and ending its independence for good.

1977: The Gay News trial

The success of Mary Whitehouse's private prosecution for blasphemous libel over the poem The Love That Dare Not Speak its Name resulted in the Gay News publisher Denis Lemon being sentenced to nine months in prison - a sentence quashed on appeal.

1988: Spycatcher cleared for publication in England

Peter Wright's account of life in MI5 - a life that included bugging prime minister Harold Wilson's phone - was written in 1985 and banned in England. But it was published - and imported from - almost everywhere else, including Scotland.

2000: Human Rights Act comes into force

The Act, passed in 1998, established 16 human rights - including the rights to free expression and respect for private and family life.

Oh dear.

2006: Wall Street Journal versus Jameel

The House of Lords judgment that consolidated the defence of 'responsible journalism'.

2008: Offence of blasphemy abolished

Although it seemed to many that the Racial and Religious Hatred Act of 2006 had simply reinvented it by other means.

2009: Trafigura gag revealed

The Labour MP Paul Farrelly asked a parliamentary question revealing an injunction obtained by Trafigura to prevent the publication of a report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in west Africa.

The terms of this 'super-injunction' meant that the existence of the injunction, let alone its content, could not be reported.

2011: Ryan Giggs named in Parliament

All press freedom's roads lead to this moment.

The historic conflicts - from the abolition of the Star Chamber, the arrest of political reporters, the struggle to resist government interference and the power of big business.

And in a world where over a hundred journalists and bloggers are in prison in places like Iran and Syria and China and Burma.

Or risking their lives to confront authority in places like Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan.

Is it anything short of a freedom's magnificent miracle that here, now, in England, we have, apparently for all time, established the unqualified right to know which Premiership footballer has slept with which Big Brother contestant?

Kevin Marsh is the former Executive Editor of the BBC College of Journalism. A version of this post first appeared on Story Curve.

Ten years on from the 'storming' of Russia's NTV

2011-04-21T14:28:19+00:00

Russian media watchers marked a grim anniversary last week. Ten years ago, on 14 April 2001, security guards and police acting on behalf of the state-owned Gazprom-Media took control of the premises of the independent broadcaster NTV.

The takeover is seen as a turning point in the recent history of media freedom in Russia, presaging other events that led to the entrenchment of Vladimir Putin's "vertical of power".

Predictably, the anniversary went almost completely unnoticed by the main TV channels.

Founded in 1993 by oligarch Vladimir Gusinskiy, NTV had embodied the spirit of Russia's 'wild' 1990s. Its team of talented writers and journalists, including Yevgeniy Kiselev, Leonid Parfenov and Viktor Shenderovich, produced news and current affairs programmes that set new standards for independent reporting in Russia, especially in their coverage of the war in Chechnya.

In the words of newspaper editor Pavel Gusev, NTV was a "school both for free journalism and for free TV journalism".

The channel also produced the controversial puppet show Kukly - the Russian version of Spitting Image - which mercilessly lampooned public figures, including presidents Yeltsin and Putin. Yeltsin generally put up with being the butt of jokes, but Putin was more sensitive. According to scriptwriter Viktor Shenderovich, Putin's aides tried to have the show censored.

NTV certainly had ill-wishers among Yeltsin's people, but its problems really started when Putin entered the Kremlin. A few days after the new president's inauguration in May 2000, tax police raided the channel's Moscow headquarters and the offices of Gusinskiy's company, Media-Most. A month later, Gusinskiy was arrested as part of a fraud investigation. The charges against him were dropped after he agreed to sell his media empire to Gazprom-Media, one of NTV's shareholders and creditors.

Over the next few months, Gazprom-Media mounted a concerted campaign to secure control of NTV in the face of opposition from many of its journalists, led by Kiselev, and from Gusinskiy who, from the relative safety of exile in Spain, said that the agreement to sell Media-Most had been extracted from him under duress.

Members of the public also joined in the struggle. On 7 April 2001, up to 30,000 people attended a rally in Moscow in support of NTV's independence, but to no avail. A week later, Gazprom-Media gained control of the channel, and Kiselev and his supporters were ousted.

With the benefit of ten years of hindsight, it is apparent that the events of April 2001 had important consequences for Russia.

First, they initiated what Shenderovich has called the prolonged "strangulation" of the Russian media.

Kiselev and his team attempted to revive the spirit of NTV at TV-6, a channel whci hwas majority-owned by exiled oligarch Boris Berezovskiy, and then at TVS, which was backed by a consortium including metals magnate Oleg Deripaska and national grid chief and liberal politician Anatoliy Chubays. In each case, though, a reason was found to pull the plug on the venture. Kiselev, like his former NTV colleague Savik Shuster, ended up pursuing his TV career in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the journalists who stayed on at NTV, including Parfenov, faced pressure and harassment from the authorities. US citizen Boris Jordan, who took over as director-general in 2001, was forced out in 2003 after being carpeted by Putin for the channel's coverage of the 2002 Moscow theatre siege which claimed the lives of more than 120 hostages. Putin accused the channel of trying to boost its ratings and profits at the price of "our citizens' blood".

A year later, Parfenov left after criticising the channel's decision not to broadcast his interview with the widow of Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who had been assassinated by Russian special forces in Qatar.

Parfenov's departure was in "complete accordance with the logic" of the new rules introduced in April 2001, Shenderovich wrote in a recent blog post. It also removed the last vestige of independence from NTV. When Russia was rocked by the Beslan school siege in September 2004, Putin had no reason to criticise the channel's coverage of the ordeal.

Journalists had to adapt to the new conditions. For Ekho Moskvy commentator Sergey Parkhomenko, one of the most damaging results of the "trauma" of April 2001 was the emergence of the practice of self-censorship, which, he said, has become widespread and is "the most effective tool for controlling from within the activities of the Russian media".

A recent example was the decision by the owner of the niche TV channel Dozhd, Natalya Sindeyeva, to block the scheduled screening of a poetry recital poking fun at President Medvedev. But, if Ekho Moskvy editor-in-chief Aleksey Venediktov is to be believed, Sindeyeva's fears appear to have been misplaced. Venediktov said he had it on good authority that when Medvedev saw the poem on the internet he "had a good laugh".

The decline in journalistic standards has also affected audiences, thinks Yevgeniy Kiselev. Ten years of Putin's "information regime" have created a new generation of viewers who are "more than satisfied with the chewing-gum news that is served up by the bulletins on state TV and which forms public opinion", he told Ekho on 14 April.

Changes in the media are seen as examples of wider political trends. "After the TV space and the media space, they purged the legal space, the electoral space and the right to protest. They purged everything," said Viktor Shenderovich, once a regular of NTV.

Like Shenderovich, opposition commentator Liliya Shevtsova traces the process of change back to April 2001. In a blog post entitled "When did Putin become Putin?", she said that this was the "date of birth of the current authorities and the date of the funeral of the hopes for a new Russia".

If Medvedev wants to show he is serious about change, says Shevtsova, he should "return to the starting point and begin with freedom of speech and liberate TV from the humiliating obligation to serve power".

Over the past several months, some current affairs shows on NTV have challenged or broken a few of the TV taboos of the Putin era. Vadim Takmenev's satirical current affairs show Tsentralnoye Televideniye (Central Television) has even taken a few backhanded swipes at Prime Minister Putin.

In general, however, NTV, like state channels Rossiya 1 and Channel One, continues to submit to the interests of the authorities - whether that means running hatchet jobs on out-of-favour officials, such as former Moscow mayor Yuriy Luzhkov, or glossing over the recent Putin-Medvedev split on the military intervention in Libya.

Stephen Ennis is Russian media analyst for BBC Monitoring.

The case of the disappearing newspaper campaign

2011-03-31T12:46:46+00:00

The relaunch of one of Russia's most prestigious newspaper titles has been beset by a mystery surrounding a provocative advertising campaign which may be further evidence of a rift in the country's political establishment.

The Moscow News began life in the 1930s as an English-language newspaper aimed primarily at foreigners visiting the Soviet Union. It continues to publish in English and Arabic to this day.

A Russian version of the paper, Moskovskiye Novosti, was launched in the 1980s and soon became synonymous with the new spirit of Glasnost. In fact, in 1990 it had the distinction of being the county's first independent media outlet. It was also very popular. As human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseyeva recently recalled in an interview with Radio Liberty: "In the Perestroyka era, it was a landmark newspaper. It shaped people's minds. Crowds gathered around shop windows displaying Moskovskiye Novosti, because, despite the huge print run, not everyone was able to buy a copy."

The paper's star waned in the early 2000s as it passed through the hands of a succession of owners, and in 2008 the Russian version disappeared from the newsstands altogether.

Plans to relaunch Moskovskiye Novosti were unveiled last November by the current owner, state news agency RIA Novosti, and the Vremya Publishing House, which produced the liberal daily Vremya Novostey. In accordance with the plans, Vremya Novostey ceased publication on 17 December. Most of its journalists, including editor-in-chief Vladimir Gurevich, have now joined the staff of Moskovskiye Novosti.

The paper's columnists include Mikhail Fishman, the former editor of the magazine Russkiy Newsweek, which folded last autumn.

The first edition of the revamped Moskovskiye Novosti appeared this week with a modest print run of 33,000. It will be published five times a week with a bumper edition on Fridays.

Speaking ahead of publication, Gurevich said that his aim was to bring the prestigious title back into the "ranks of the leading quality press" in Russia. He wanted the publication to respond to "the stirrings of civil society" and to reflect the fact that "what is happening outside the country is having an ever stronger influence on our life within it".

The print edition of the paper is just one part of the new operation. The relaunch is taking place across a range of platforms - a website (left), an iPad supplement and a PDA version for mobile phones. It is also supported by accounts on various social media including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the Russian social-networking site Vkontakte.

The strategy, Gurevich explained to Radio Liberty, is to appeal to both traditional and younger audiences.

Gurevich will have his work cut out to achieve the business plan of breaking even within four years. Moskovskiye Novosti enters a crowded media marketplace where newspapers in particular are having to battle to survive.

To maximise its impact, the relaunch was preceded by a controversial advertising campaign.

A couple of weeks ago, residents of Moscow were confronted by banners and billboards showing the paper's logo and the slogan "telling it as it is" next to historical quotations that appear subversive in the context of contemporary Russia. They included:

"Russian history before Peter the Great was one long funeral and after Peter the Great it was one long criminal case" by 19th-century poet Fedor Tyutchev.

"Honesty is inseparable from freedom, just as corruption is from despotism" by French playwright Anatole France.

"A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges" by Benjamin Franklin.

The campaign was reminiscent of the publicity for the rebranding of another RIA-backed project: the English-language TV channel RT, formerly known as Russia Today. This featured billboards posing questions with alternating images that suggested possible answers. For example, the question "Who poses the greater nuclear threat?" was accompanied by images of Barack Obama and Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinezhad.

That campaign picked up several industry awards and seems to have helped boost the channel's ratings.

But on 19 March, a scandal flared up over the Moskovskiye Novosti campaign when a number of the banners mysteriously disappeared. Writing on the news website Lenta.ru, Aleksandr Polivanov suspected that the newspaper or its owners were responsible. He noted that the first reports about the missing banners appeared on RIA and that the Russian Agency of Legal and Judicial Information, which is controlled by RIA, reacted to the incident "amazingly quickly".

On 24 March, though, RIA reported that advertising space operator News Outdoor had removed the banners and was refusing to sign a contract to extend the campaign. It also said that News Outdoor was refusing to explain its decision. This showed that suspicions about the paper's role in the scandal were "unfounded", Gurevich told RIA. He also said he was sure that opposition to the campaign had not come from the city authorities in Moscow.

So, who might be behind the apparent attempts to rain on the paper's parade?

The Moskovskiye Novosti relaunch appears to enjoy the approval of major figures on the liberal wing of the Russian establishment. For example, its Twitter account has been added to the select number of feeds being followed by President Dmitriy Medvedev.

It may also be no coincidence that the relaunch coincided with reports that the Kremlin was interested in boosting the fortunes of the liberal, free-market party Pravoye Delo (Right Cause) ahead of November's parliamentary elections. The front page of the first new edition of Moskovskiye Novosti featured a prominent photograph of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov who is tipped in some quarters to take over the leadership of Pravoye Delo.

It is perhaps possible that the disruption of Moskovskiye Novosti's advertising campaign was inspired by figures opposed to Medvedev's promotion of liberal values and is further evidence of a split in the ruling establishment?

On 21 March, Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave sharply differing assessments of the military intervention in Libya, in their most serious public disagreement since Medvedev became president.

Stephen Ennis is Russian media analyst for BBC Monitoring.

French media embrace Sarkozy's Libya action

2011-03-29T08:52:23+00:00

Nicolas Sarkozy has not had it this good for years. Despite his dismal personal poll ratings, more than 66% of French people approve of their president's Libya initiative, and the media are mostly behind him too.

Christophe Barbier, editor of L'Express, said: "Nicolas Sarkozy will be the president who rallied the democratic nations against Gaddafi." Le Point went further with its front-page headline: "Sarkozy the Emperor."

Surveying the media scene last weekend in Paris (above), I found the independent online news service Mediapart had been one of the few critical voices - perhaps not surprising since its founder, Edwy Plenel, a former editor of Le Monde, is a long-time opponent of Sarkozy. He recently published a book about Sarkozy: Le President de Trop (The President of too Much).

So why have most of the French media been so supportive of Sarkozy when the international media have been more sceptical?

Sarkozy's close friendship with French media bosses is well known in France. Many of the TV channels and major newspapers are owned by big business: TF1, the first ever channel in France, belongs to Bouygues, a leader in construction; Le Figaro is owned by Dassault, a manufacturer of aircraft including the Rafale jet fighter. In a recent book, Crisis in Sarkozistan, the author, who remains anonymous (common for journalists in France to protect their careers), claims it is difficult for journalists at Le Figaro to write critical articles on Sarkozy and his policies.

And in a recent book, OFF: What Sarkozy Should Never Have Told Us, the journalists Nicolas Domenach and Maurice Szafran describe Sarkozy's efforts to develop a close relationship with journalists by making them feel part of his exclusive inner circle. For them, Sarkozy developed "an intimacy he meticulously managed with most of the major political journalists for 20 years". They acknowledge being seduced by his charm and the sense of privilege and complicity of sharing information with him, at the risk of compromising their objectivity.

In the case of Libya, Bernard-Henri Levy (aka. BHL), a well-known philosopher and prominent figure in the French media (he sits on the Board of Le Monde), has played a key role in legitimising Sarkozy's intervention. BHL is seen as a representative of the Left, making him an excellent alibi for the right-wing president.

A number of news magazines reported BHL's side of the story, with accounts of how influential he had been and how he met the Libyan rebels in Libya and organised a critical meeting with Sarkozy at the Elysee on 10 March.

Le Point and other media even portrayed BHL as the "other minister of foreign affairs". In fact, while foreign minister Alain Juppe was in Brussels negotiating an action plan for Libya, the President caught him off guard by recognising the Libyan opposition - with BHL subsequently announcing that France would open an embassy in Benghazi.

But was it BHL's role to become the Elysee spokeperson? Apart from Le Monde, which asked the question on 11 March, there were few critics among journalists.

Canard Enchaine, the satirical weekly paper, and Mediapart, both independent media outlets, analysed the political objectives of the international intervention. Edwy Plenel is convinced that, "from day one of his presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy has been looking for his war". Some question the timing, noting that Sarkozy's approval ratings have sunk to an all-time low of 30%.

The Libyan intervention highlights the relationship between many French journalists and political power. It is nothing new: de Gaulle's Minister of Information, Alain Peyrefitte, was known to call the editor of the television news to find out what would be in the programme, and sometimes make changes.

Sarkozy's relationships are more subtle. His powerful friends don't exert direct censorship, and his intimacy with some journalists is hard to pin down: does their access to him make their reports more genuine, or reduce them to his communication agents?

Veronique Forge is a freelance print and television journalist now based in London. She was previously a journalist and presenter on the TV channel Direct 8 in France.

How social media gets information to Libyan population

2011-02-22T15:05:51+00:00

With severe restrictions imposed on the media in Libya, the internet has emerged as an important window through which traditional media outlets, particularly pan-Arab TV channels, can provide coverage of the unrest.

Libya does not allow foreign media to operate freely on its soil, which has made it difficult for international broadcasters to cover the protests that have gripped the country since 17 February.

But user-generated content has helped channels such as Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya to report some of what appeared to be a brutal crackdown on protesters demanding an end to the 42-year rule of Libyan leader Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi (Colonal Gaddafi).

The Libyan authorities have been imposing a media blackout on the actual developments in the country. TV, which initially ignored the protests, has been trying to depict the demonstrators as saboteurs and foreign agents. Most airtime has either been dedicated to showing recorded images of pro-Qadhafi rallies or patriotic songs and music.

From time to time, quiet streets have been shown, with banks operating normally and other similar images, in an attempt to suggest the situation has not spiralled out of the control of the authorities.

Although Libya has one of the lowest internet penetration rates in the Arab world (about 5.5%), web-based social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube are accessible, despite unconfirmed rumours on the blocking of Twitter on 17 February.

The social media represents a small window through which pan-Arab traditional media outlets can see and relay part of what is going on in the country, and has proven to be highly important when picked up by stations such as the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera and the Saudi-funded Al-Arabiya.

Both stations are widely watched inside the country and by millions of Arab viewers in the Middle East and around the world. Satellite dishes are widely available in Libya.

Al-Jazeera's Sharek and Al-Arabiya's Ana Arab are two dedicated portals through which both stations have been receiving the user-generated content from within the country.

Since the start of the unrest, both TV stations have been broadcasting images of the clashes between protesters and the security forces, scenes of violence against demonstrators and other developments on the ground.

Despite the denial of the use of mercenaries to clamp down on protesters, on 21 February, Al-Jazeera showed footage of Libyan protesters in Benghazi appearing to hold a person of African appearance who they described as a mercenary.

There has been an emphasis on the scope of brutality against demonstrators, which may have earned them the support and sympathy of other Libyans who decided to join the demonstrations, thus spreading protests even further.

Both Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya have shown scenes of people killed or injured. Al-Jazeera even warned its viewers that it had received very shocking images of the victims of what it said were air attacks on the protesters, and it would not be showing them. However, the station later said that, after it received numerous phone calls asking it to show the images so that people could learn the truth, it had decided to show them. The images were indeed very shocking, showing several bodies lying in a morgue, burnt and dismembered.

Muhammad Shukri is Middle East Media Analyst, BBC Monitoring.

How did British journalist offend Russian security services?

2011-02-15T10:14:41+00:00

After the Guardian's Moscow correspondent, Luke Harding, was briefly barred from entering Russia early in February, most commentators in Russia's liberal and opposition media rallied to his cause and attacked the security services for discrediting the country in the eyes of the world.

The one exception was Yuliya Latynina, despite being an outspoken Kremlin critic. She turned her fire on Harding, accusing him of being a propagandist for terrorists in the North Caucasus, and said the security services were perfectly entitled to bar him.

Harding was refused entry into Russia when he returned after a two-month absence on 5 February. He was given no explanation for the refusal at the time.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later said that the Guardian journalist had violated the terms of his accreditation. He also mentioned that Harding had made unauthorised visits to a "zone with a counterterrorist operation regime". Lavrov added that Harding could facilitate his return to Russia by "formalising his status".

The Guardian journalist was then granted a visa and returned to Russia on 12 February.

Like the Guardian, liberal media in Russia linked Harding's expulsion to his articles attacking the Russian leadership, in particular Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The subhead of an article on news website Gazeta.ru, for example, said he had not been "allowed to enter Russia because of his article about the 'mafia state'".

This was a reference to an article, published in December, in which Harding reported allegations made about Russia's leaders in US diplomatic material released by Wikileaks.

Gazeta.ru went on to say that Harding had written about many issues that are "rarely covered by Russian journalists". He was, it said, "the first foreign correspondent to raise the issue of Vladimir Putin's personal fortune", and had assisted opposition activists Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov to defend a libel case brought by one of Putin's wealthy associates.

Gazeta.ru also mentioned an article Harding had written in June 2010 entitled "Dagestan: My Daughter the Terrorist". The article was largely based on an interview with the father of Maryam Sharipova, one of the suicide bombers involved in the attacks on the Moscow metro in March 2010.

Another popular Russian website, Newsru.com, noted that Harding had recently written an article in which he quoted US diplomats as saying Putin was likely to have known about plans to murder former FSB (Federal Security Service) officer Aleksandr Litvinenko.

Several commentators, including Mikhail Rostovskiy writing in popular daily Moskovskiy Komsomolets, saw the Harding case as reminiscent of "something from the Cold War".

Yuliya Latynina, though, took a different line. In article on opposition website Yezhednevnyy Zhurnal, she dismissed the idea that Harding was being punished for his role in publicising the Wikileaks material or an article he had written about the wealth of Putin's associates. No, she argued, the Guardian reporter was barred because of his article about Sharipova.

She also said that the FSB was perfectly entitled to bar Harding because he had allowed himself to be used by "terrorists" to "propagate their ideas". She added, though, that the security service should have explained why it had blocked his entry.

Latynina accuses Harding of uncritically promoting claims put forward by Sharipova's father, Rasul, that the 27-year-old Dagestani woman may have been forced to take part in the metro suicide operation by the security forces, who were out to discredit peaceful Muslims.

Latynina also alleges that in an "article of more than 3,000 words Mr Harding did not find a place for anything else other than to put forward the propagandistic versions from her family, every member of which is a militant fundamentalist".

This was one of a number of errors in the article: in fact, Harding wrote: "The source [said to be familiar with Dagestan's "militant underground"], who knows Rasul personally, believes it is most probable that Maryam did indeed decide to volunteer as a suicide bomber. To suggest otherwise, she believes, is 'wishful thinking'."

Latynina also falsely accused the Guardian journalist of ignoring allegations that Sharipova had been the bride of a leading terrorist in Dagestan.

Latynina is a complex figure. She regularly writes for opposition publications, including the investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta and Yezhednevnyy Zhurnal. She also has a weekly radio show on the editorially independent radio station Ekho Moskvy.

In keeping with the general editorial drift of these outlets, she is a fierce critic of Putin. In a recent article about the race riots in the centre of Moscow, she accused the prime minister of presiding over a "failed state". She has also made numerous hints and allegations about the enrichment of Putin's associates.

Her attitude to the FSB, though, appears ambivalent. Sometimes she criticises the force for its failings. An article on 25 October railed against the "lack of professionalism" shown by the security services in their counterterrorist operations in Dagestan.

At other times, though, she attacks its critics. She has defended the FSB against allegations that it was behind the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings. She has also given short shrift to some people who claim to be its victims.

Several commentators have seen Harding's expulsion as a demonstration of the FSB's power.

Business daily Vedomosti said it, and the investigation into the Moscow airport bombing, showed that the force was "subject to the minimal state and public control even by the standards of special services".

Journalist Andrey Kolesnikov went further. In an article for Forbes Russia, he said the FSB is "a state within a state, and, what is more, is completely sovereign and independent of state policy and good sense".

Stephen Ennis is Russian media analyst for BBC Monitoring.

Twitter-versus-TV debate after Moscow airport bombing

2011-01-27T11:51:48+00:00

Reporting of the bomb blast in Moscow's Domodedovo airport has sparked a new round in the debate on the merits of social versus traditional media in Russia.

Russian users of Twitter have been crowing about how the story broke on the microblogging service well before it was reported on TV and radio.

As after the suicide attacks in the Moscow metro in March, they were particularly scornful of the response of the main state-controlled TV channels Rossiya 1, Channel One and NTV.

News of the Domodedovo blast broke on Twitter at around 16:40 local time on 24 January, just minutes after it happened. #Domodedovo quickly became a trending topic and, according to the US website Global Voices, was at one time receiving 100 posts per second.

Reports started appearing on the country's established broadcast media 20 minutes later.

Editorially independent Radio Ekho Moskvy first mentioned the blast at 17:00.

The state-owned news channel Rossiya 24 flashed it four minutes later at 17:04. For the next 45 minutes or so, it provided intermittent updates, including audio comment from officials, before going into rolling news mode at around 17:50.

The main terrestrial TV channels were much slower to react.

Channel One's first report was in a scheduled bulletin at 18:00. It followed this up with a special five-minute bulletin at 18:55, which tided viewers over until the main evening newscast at 21:00.

Rossiya 1 flashed the news at 18:04 in a five-minute bulletin that had been trailed by ticker-tape at the top of the hour. Its next mention of the blast was in a trail ahead of the main evening bulletin at 20:00.

NTV was the laggard of the big three. Its first reports appeared at 18:30 in a special live edition of its crime news series Chrezvychaynoye Proisshestviye (Emergency Incident). This programme was devoted entirely to the events in Domodedovo, as was the main evening news bulletin that followed at 19:00.

Later in the evening, NTV aired a special live edition of its talk show Chestnyy Ponedelnik (Honest Monday), which included eyewitnesses of the attack among its studio audience.

As commentator Sergey Varshavchik noted, Chestnyy Ponedelnik stood out from the other programmes on the main federal channels that evening by attempting to analyse the issues surrounding the bombing.

It was also exceptional in being live. Nearly all political talk shows on Russian TV are pre-recorded.

Twitter users were quick to round on the TV channels.

"Channel One - TV show, Rossiya 1 - serial, Centre TV - talk show, NTV - serial. Shall I go on? CNN - live! BBC - live!" tweeted well-known blogger Valeriy Nazarov.

Sasha Sukhanov spoke for many when he posted: "Today is the day when Russian television as a channel for the rapid dissemination of information officially died."

Some of the criticism was a little unfair.

Nazarov should have perhaps included Rossiya 24 in his comparison of how Russian and international broadcasters responded to the events. It is, after all, Russian TV's nearest equivalent to CNN or the BBC News Channel.

Also, while the main TV channels didn't cover themselves in glory, they did arguably do a little better than after March's metro bombings when none of them carried any special programming for several hours.

Twitter and other social media certainly played an important role in conveying news about the blast. As well as breaking the story, they provided the first video and photos from the scene.

However, the microblogging service also displayed its usual frailties: exaggeration and rumour.

The most informative and oft-quoted Twitter user was Ilya Likhtenfeld, who made his first tweet about the "terrorist attack" at 16:44 and provided a graphic account of the scene over the next hour or two.

Likhtenfeld correctly tweeted that the bomb was on a person and not in baggage, but he also made three tweets asserting that the blast had killed "at least 70 people"; twice the actual death toll.

In the hour or two after the blast, numerous Twitter users accused taxi drivers at the airport of hiking fares, as they had done after the metro bombings. Others responded by reviving the #helpcar tag which had been used in March to offer people free lifts.

All very laudable, you might think, except that the reports about fare hikes appear to have been false or else much exaggerated. Drivers who arrived at the airport offering free lifts found "there were far more people offering help than there were people needing it".

Most of the talk among Russian media watchers, though, has been about the shortcomings of the main TV stations.

Arina Borodina of the business daily Kommersant is one of their sternest critics: "Now it is the norm that when foreign media are telling the whole world about the terrorist attack in Moscow, Channel One does not interrupt its programme Federalnyy Sudya [Federal Judge], Rossiya 1 goes on showing the long-running series Yefrosinya [girl's name] and NTV shows another repeat of [crime series] Ulitsy Razbitykh Fonarey [Streets of Broken Lamps]."

The root cause of the problem was diagnosed by star presenter Leonid Parfenov at an awards ceremony last November. "For a correspondent of a national TV channel, the top officials are not newsmakers, but the bosses of his boss. Institutionally, a correspondent is not a journalist at all, but a functionary who follows the logic of service and subordination," he told a stony-faced gathering of Russian TV's great and good.

For the information functionary, getting the story out is probably not the main priority.

Stephen Ennis is Russian Media Analyst for BBC Monitoring.

Andy Coulson: my part in his downfall (with apologies to Spike Milligan)

2011-01-24T09:02:45+00:00

On 25 November, my Coventry Conversations series featured David Yelland, former editor of the Sun, now a PR man and an alumni of Lanchester Polytechnic, the forerunner of Coventry University.

Yelland was 'back home' and unloaded himself honestly about his life, his alcoholism, his alopecia, Rupert Murdoch and more. Towards the end of the hour I threw him a softball about his former number-three on the Sun, Andy Coulson, claiming to not know about the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire being paid Â£100,000 a year to hack into mobile phones to get a story or two.

Yelland (right) was quick and ruthless: "As an editor, I can't believe a fellow editor would not know phone tapping was in action, especially with the rumoured remuneration of Â£100,000 to a private detective. Anything more than Â£1,000 would have to be signed off by someone in deep carpet land. It would be impossible for anyone at News International to not know what was going on."

With one or two phrases, Yelland had destroyed the 'single rogue reporter defence' which Andy Coulson and others in News International's 'deep carpet land' were using to deflect the attacks on their journalistic ethics.

These things have habit of spreading beyond Coventry.

I sent it to Journalism.co.uk - "Former Sun editor expresses doubt over Coulson's phone hacking denials" - and within a day Yelland's comments had been picked up by Alan Rusbridger, Editor in Chief of the Guardian, and from him to Nick Davies, the paper's ace investigator who had driven the Coulson story.

Thence to media commentator Roy Greenslade in his Guardian column, replete with a jibe or two at the editorial abilities of Yelland. Yelland on Coulson was now 'out there'.

A colleague said to me after Yelland had left us: "If you report what he said about Coulson you could cost Andy his job."

Prescient? Small ripples in the tsunami that eventually consumed Coulson. Adieu Andy.

John Mair invented and runs the Coventry Conversations at Coventry University. This week, Andy Kershaw and Chris 'Starsucker' Atkins will be coming to converse on Thursday and Friday 27/28 January.

Jeremy Hunt meets protesters - in the best LSE tradition

2011-01-13T08:21:23+00:00

Student demos were all the rage when I was at the LSE in 1968. They are again today, thanks to the coalition government's hike in tuition fees.

As an LSE alum, and the producer of last night's Media Society/Polis event with Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, I guess I should have expected trouble.

It came in loud droves.

First, like distant drums. Was that just traffic noise, or was it muffled cries of "Tory scum" from outside the packed 400-seat theatre?

Hunt was doing his best to dodge questions, from Raymond Snoddy, on Rupert Murdoch and media plurality and was in full flow on his pet project - local television - when, with a crash, the doors beside the stage burst open and 30 chanters appeared.

"Tory scum, culture vulture." Hunt stayed calm as the School security tried to corrall them in one corner. They didn't get quieter - the bullhorn helped - with one demonstrator peeling off to hand out leaflets; another to harass the minister, who never blanched. The security men looked lost.

The LSE taught me - inside and outside the classroom - the importance of discussion and dialogue, so I took the bull by the horns and went to talk to a ringleader. I played the LSE alumni card heavily. The man was fairly open when I suggested they ask one question of the minister.

They did - about Murdoch and plurality. No answer for them, either. They were not happy and wanted to ask supplementaries, which they did. The audience of the broadcasting great and good, getting restless, started to barrack them in a fairly undemocratic fashion.

A stand-off, but one which nobody would win. So I asked the ringleader to put it to his team that they should leave. They agreed, with a couple of parting shots to me - one kind, one not so. With that, the protest snake made its way through the auditorium, chanting to the exit.

The Secretary of State offered to talk to the demonstrators on the way out, as he had on the way in.

A win for the right to demonstrate and the ultimate right to freedom of speech for all, however unpopular what was being said.

The place has a history. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the LSE founders in 1895, would have been proud.

Welcome to 2011, LSE.

The College of Journalism's video of the protest is here.

Inconvenient truths

2011-01-11T11:35:47+00:00

Jack Straw's comments that some UK Pakistani men see white girls as "easy meat" for sex abuse has really set the debate over what is taboo and what isn't alight.

Two of his Labour colleagues have rounded on him for "stereotyping" an entire community. The former Home Secretary has urged the Pakistani community to be "more open" about the abuse which exists. He told Newsnight that:

"These young men are in a Western society, in any event, they act like any other young men, they're fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani heritage girls are off-limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically."

Earlier that week the media had picked up on the Times story "Revealed: conspiracy of silence on UK sex gangs" which, if you haven't read, unfortunately, you'll have to pay for the privilege - but that's another story.

On the face of it, the article was a brilliant piece of investigative journalism.

The Times had evidence that:

"17 court prosecutions since 1997, 14 of them during the past three years, involving the on-street grooming of girls aged 11 to 16 by groups of men. The victims came from 13 towns and cities and in each case two or more men were convicted of offences"

and that:

"In total, 56 people, with an average age of 28, were found guilty of crimes including rape, child abduction, indecent assault and sex with a child. Three of the 56 were white, 53 were Asian. Of those, 50 were Muslim and a majority were members of the British Pakistani community."

Furthermore, the article quoted Detective Chief Inspector Alan Edwards as saying:

"No-one wants to stand up and say that Pakistani guys in some parts of the country are recruiting young white girls and passing them around their relatives for sex, but we need to stop being worried about the racial complication."

And before I end quoting the Times, it also said it had seen a briefing document from UCL's Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime which said:

" 'most central offenders are Pakistani', warning that 'race is a delicate issue' that needs to be 'handled sensitively but not brushed under the carpet' ".

Now you can't argue about a well researched piece of work, can you?

Except you can - because as journalists I believe we have a responsibility to put things into context.

I believe that no subject should be taboo - as long as we shield ourselves with the cloak of accuracy, fairness, balance and impartiality ... and context.

I agree completely with the Chancellor of the University of Lincoln, Lord Adebowale, that it's a bit deeper than that. Let the facts speak for themselves and ask pertinent questions until we arrive at sensible, unspun, logical conclusions, free from bias, assumptions and personal prejudices, which fit the evidence, no matter how uncomfortable, without fear or favour.

There's nothing complicated about that. As academics we do it all the time, don't we?

Denial

Except, critics say, when it comes to race. Then all the bets appear to be off and we appear to tread on egg shells. In 1997, Kamlesh Patel, now Lord Patel of Bradford, produced ground-breaking research which showed without a shadow of a doubt that there was a massive drugs problem in the South Asian communities.

There was a culture of denial among so-called community leaders and he had to fight to get his voice heard. Now, South Asian men and women are being treated for their drug habits when once they would have been sent to the South Asian sub-continent to get better by concerned parents, who didn't realise that not only would they get worse, but they would forge routes and contacts to smuggle in heroin and other Class A substances.

I reported on the racial divides in Oldham and how mainly Pakistani young men were trying to create no-go zones for white people.

Greater Manchester Police rejected the idea, community elders rejected it ... and six weeks later Oldham went up in flames. I was roundly condemned by some BBC colleagues for playing into the hands of the BNP - and called other names too - even though in every conversation I put in the caveats that it was a minority and possible bravado.

The result was a summer of disturbances, three national inquiries and at least four reports - one from the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality, Lord Ouseley, who warned that across the towns and cities of Britain we were living parallel lives.

The outcome is that Oldham Council is trying its level best to make sure that segregation becomes a thing of the past.

My point is that good can often come from bringing things out into the open.

If we castigate people for speaking out, no matter how uncomfortable their perception, we end up with frustrated people without a voice. And that means we end up with sensible people in a desert seeing a mirage. And that mirage is extremists waiting to groom young Muslims to blow themselves up on packed commuter trains in rush hour and white men collecting arsenals of weapons to make nail bombs because they hate immigrants.

In this country we have the right to challenge, the right to debate and the right to argue. So let's challenge, debate and argue so there is an outlet for misunderstandings, misconceptions and misheard convenient and easy truths. It's one way to counter problems without resorting to violence.

Context

So what do I mean by context?

I mean facts and figures which are incontrovertible. The UK prison population as of 7 January 2011 is: 82,991. This means that 99.9% of us in this country are law abiding. Now that's got to be worth some sort of celebration, hasn't it?

But what happens if it's controversial evidence? In 2008, there were 8,106 male sex offenders, according to research carried out by Sheffield Hallam University. And here's where you come to the real context part: once you read the entire report, you get a more rounded picture of how Black Minority Ethnics account for only 18% of male sex offenders ... but are over represented because BMEs account for about 8% of the UK population.

This means there could well be cause for concern and it follows that we need a conversation, an open, unfettered debate to find out why this is happening to get at anywhere near the truth.

But what about the context for the research quoted in the Times.

Ah, you see, if you'd watched Newsnight on Friday 7 January 2011 you would have heard Helen Brayley, one of the researchers who carried out an independent study into sex trafficking and whose findings were quoted by the Times, say:

"The main problem is that it's been taken out of context. We were looking at two police operations both very close geographically. Based on that data we did find that there was a large Pakistani contingent in the offenders and the victims were predominantly white.

However, when you look at the census data for the demographics in that area, there were some Asian and black victims and they were actually over-represented when you look at the sheer percentages."

She continued:

"The problem is that when you jump in and think about race too quickly, you can miss a whole load of other things that are happening in other areas.

By racially stereotyping this, early on, without a national scoping project, we don't know what the situation is around other areas around the country; that you might be leaning towards a self-fulfilling prophecy or if people are looking for Asian offenders they will only find Asian offenders. And offenders of other ethnic groups might develop a sense of impunity to this."

The big problem is that journalists and journalism deal in shorthand.

How do we put the war between Jews and the Arabs into context? It takes far too long and with shorthand we risk leaving something out, so we don't bother. And that's what causes problems.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with shorthand - but it's when journalists throw accuracy to the wind or bend facts to fashion their own version of the truth, that's when I want to shout at the top of my voice: 'I feel cheated and I'll never trust you again.'

Letting go

In 2004 the former editor of the Today programme, Kevin Marsh, was asked to speak to the Society of Editors about what makes a good journalist. He said:

"The ability to grasp the big truths - with the humility to let them go again when the facts don't fit."

It was a wonderful moment of clarity for me and made me realise that I was allowed to work on a story for months and months and not feel disappointed or a failure when the facts didn't fit and I couldn't run the story.

No-one is suggesting for one moment there isn't a problem with young Pakistani men. But I bet there are just as many problems with young white men, black men, Indian men.

Few shout that we shouldn't talk about these problems for fear of causing offence. But the many want the chance to talk and say things without being labelled a racist.

And when it comes to journalism, the first draft of history after all, surely we owe it to ourselves, our audiences and our future generations to make sure we deal in facts and get them right, on what we know, at that moment, on the evidence we have seen, to the best of our abilities.

This post, by former BBC journalist Barnie Choudhury, is reproduced with permission from the Experts Comment Blog of the University of Lincoln.