Media Law: Libel and Defamation

Publication & Defamation & Identification = Libel

Defamation
If what you write:
-Lowers someone in the estimation of others
-Causes them to be shunned or avoided
-Ruins their profession
-Exposes them to hatred, ridicule or contempt

Defamation via pictures.
Careluss use of background shots, for example:
-Talking about an issue like fraud with an unrelated company in the background

Defamation Inferences
Things that could be read wrongly given the context.
An example of an innuendo in a headline being this:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/07/03/us-athletics-diamond-idUSTRE6622I420100703
Although this example being not necessarily harmful, journalists need to assess the whole context before hand.
Another thing to take into account is who you are writing about. Are they powerful enough to sue?

Libel Defences
-Justification - "It's true and I can prove it in court".
Having witnesses or defiant proof for something.
E.G. American media ran a story on Lindsay Lohan stealing a
$2,500 necklace, on the basis that the store in question stated
that they had CCTV footage of the star commiting the crime.

-Fair Comment - An honestly held opinion based upon facts or privileged material such
as press conferences. Or if the story is in the public interest.
-Balance - If the story explores both sides of a story or accusation fairly
-Bane and Antidote - Defamation removed by context (undoing what you've previously
said in the same article)
- Apologies and Clarifiation - For instance in this case
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3649261.stm

A journalist will have no defence if they have not:
-Checked their facts
-When they have not "referred up"
-When they have not attempted to put themselves in the shoes of those they are writing about
-Evidently got carried away by a juicy story
-Not bothered to wait for a lawyers opinion

Spot The Problem

We're back. After a lengthy Summer period which went past in a flash, we have returned to Winchester News Online. Where I now have the promotion from "What's On Girl", to Showbiz Editor. I do exactly the same thing, I just now sound more important when I fire off those oh so important emails begging for an interview.

Last weeks show was trial and error. I now have a producer in the form of Jake Gable, who is my camera man, co-presenter and general help when I start flapping over things like what to say in a link. We struggled initially to come up with a layout for the show, since this time around we wanted the show to be more engaging and more hands on. Anything showing the presenters up is going to be good viewing, and trying the events ourselves means we can have much more fun making the show. Especially when it's myself and Jake Gable who manage to find a pun or cheesy line to fit into any situation.

We narrowed it down to a Salsa Class, which Jake Gable attended alone on account of me being ill. A clip of Matthew LeTissier being interviewed which we borrowed from the guys over at Sports, and an interview we got with Rebecca Vaughan; the star of the show I,Elizabeth which is currently touring the country.
Although the show essentially came off without a hitch, we did encounter the usual problems upon the way. So in true fashion and to make my lecturers proud, I will simply list the things we could have done better.
Enjoy.

Problem #1:
Two cameras were originally just an idea to create a polished looking
finishing touch. (Two angles, practically Sky News). Instead it ended up
being a necessity, as, despite checking the cameras meticulously before
we left, one of them decided to give up on life just as we got into the
venue.

Problem #2:
Thanks to Problem #1, we captured Rebecca Vaughans answers to my
questions, but the moment she left, had to re-record me asking the same
questions, in the same tone of voice, to her empty chair. I literally
deserved an Oscar for my acting that day. I will thank the dead camera in
my acceptance speech.

Problem #3:
Dressing rooms have mirrored walls. Which is fantastic. Especially when
you don't want to get a reflection of a camera behind the stars head.
Lord knows we don't want the camera to be seen! A magician never reveals
their secrets.

Problem #4:
Props can't be hung on hot lightbulbs. Just saying.

I could go on. There was also the issue with the fact that I (unintentionally) gave myself the better camera angle whilst interviewing Rebecca, to the point where I made myself look more important. Given my (apparent) diva attitude and my (slight) tendency to want to hog camera time, I just get raised eyebrows when I say that this was NOT on purpose. Though I'm sure Freud would disagree.
Jake also encountered problems when he ventured out alone. Apparently Salsa classes are in the dark these days. Meaning poor old Jake was a mere silhouette upon our Final Cut Pro screen when it came to editing. Thank the powers that be that he did have shots in the light and we salvaged it with a voiceover (and a pun!).

Despite our setbacks, which unfortunately everybody must face, we pulled together a show. And for our first week back it could most definitely have gone worse.
Next week we're prepared to face all this, but in London for our Halloween special. It's going to be scarily good, I promise. (Sorry, couldn't resist).
But if you can't wait that long, watch last weeks show and play "Spot The Problems" to yourself.
There'll be less and less problems each week so enjoy the easy levels why they last.

The Unintelligible Presenters

The American phenomenom which has had everybody talking lately has been the weird spate of high profile presenters suddenly talking unintelligible gibberish on television. Presenters including news anchors and the infamous Judge Judy begin talking normally but descend into words and phrases that don't make any sense.





These are just two cases of a handful of presenters who have experienced this in the past week. People behind the scenes have clarified that there were no auto-cue difficulties and the presenters themselves have claimed they were not in control of what was coming out of their mouths. A few also claimed to have suddenly experienced a searing head pain at the same time.
Both the anchor featured at the bottom of the two videos and Judge Judy (Judith Sheindlin) were rushed to nearby hospitals for tests where the anchor above was diagnosed with a severe migraine which could have caused a minor stroke. However there still remains no explanations for the remainder which experienced the same phenomena at similar times.

So: aliens? the military? I'm sure you'll find every available explanation for a few weeks. But as long as it doesn't occur on WINOL, we're good.

WINOL Reflection

After finally coming to the end of our first semester alone on WINOL, it's come to that time again to look back and reflect on everything we ever did wrong and publish it. Like a who's who and a what's what of our past six weeks of stress, frustration and hair tearing.

To be honest, I feel our time on WINOL without the third years could have gone worse. At the end of the day we are producing a bulletin every week complete with news packages, sports and good graphics. We always seem to have people on production which we never did last year and minor hiccups have been taken on board and reprimanded within the day.

The News Team have now got it all down in terms of framing interviewees and general shots of whatever their story is. Voice overs are clear and things are now getting to the point where there is no fear in introducing a cheeky pun (Sam Homewoods package about Marching Mums). There are no things such as white balance issues and overall I think the news team has become very strong and trustworthy with people like Andrew Giddings and Keiran Brannigan who seem to have a natural flair for it.

Sports of course is excelling. SportsWeek has hundreds of loyal followers and fans who never fail to watch or comment. It's the strongest area of WINOL and can stand on its own without the bulletin. I think this is largely down to Will Cooper at the helm as they have promoted and made connections in all the right places. They often get their packages down early which means they can spend time on perfecting areas like the title sequence-adding gloss to an already superb area of WINOL (and for me to say that about sport is unheard of).

The only issue, small though it may be, would be in the gallery itself. Although we have an extremely strong production team, for the first few weeks there were issues with people coughing during VT's which was picked up on microphones which hadn't been muted. For some reason as well this semester there seemed to be an extreme lack of talkback between the gallery and the floor which meant camera people had to cue presenters. Though these are minor hiccups they are the only things which if we got on top of, we would have a near perfect bulletin.

When it came to deadlines, we met them, but at a push. In terms of things like the script, it should be down to one maybe two people to decide whether it is good to go as opposed to other people coming over and making changes. Breaking news and script changes cannot be helped but when the script is due it won't do to have people coming over and putting in their opinion about how headlines should be written/said/typed. When it comes to their turn to write the script, they can then alter it how they see fit, but until that point, the script should be down to whoever is presenting the bulletin that week.

Subbing was of course a nightmare this semester. When the term began there was major confusion over who was in charge of what and why. When this finally got cleared up there was frustration from reporters about how their stories had been altered beyond recognition by subs, and sometimes filled with mistakes. This was finally all sorted out by changing how the site is handled. Editors are now in charge of their teams articles and publishing them as opposed to being handed to a complete different party.

This is a change for the better, and although I can see where reporters were coming from, they made it even more difficult by handing in articles at either midnight or 1am in which case by the time the subs woke up, they had no time to sub-edit it properly and get it up on the site before the deadline. The whole thing was not properly organised and the deadline in itself was unreasonable in regards to lectures we had Thursday morning.

In terms of people within the class I think there is a lack of communication and understanding between team members. Everybody's job is just as important as the others and no one is better and/or should be undermined. As well as this people should listen to each other and talk properly as opposed to immediately ranting. At the end of the day this is a course, not a career. Although I myself went through a phase of needing to remind myself that I'm not actually getting paid to work for Winchester News Online.

With a few more weeks practice I have every faith in us that we can achieve Soccer Saturday. It would be an incredible coup for us in terms of future work and practice for live television. It would be difficult and a lot more stressful than our "worry Wednesday" but I think it can be achieved and it's something we need to be passionate and put our all into.

After all "WINOL in this together!"

The Outsider

Like James Joyces' Ulysses, The Outsider seemed to be written like a thought process.

The style was disjointed with short snappy sentences. With quotes like "With the 2 o' clock bus...should get there before nightfall" it's like the reader has entered the characters head, with all his reassurances, worries and random thoughts.

The theme of existentialism runs throughout the book with ideologies like time being completely irrelevant to the story. The characters can exist and react in a sort of suspended reality where there is little to no past guilt and no thought of future consequences. The present time is also non-existent. "Mother died today. Or, maybe yesterday".

In terms of the future, Meursault seems to not even have an inkling of it when he is faced with old people. Rather than understanding that they are people and a majority of us will face old age at some point, he regards them with interest as almost being separate entities.

They were "noiseless" and "grouped around the keeper". He can't decide whether "they were greeting me and trying to say something". He exists in the present and therefore old age is something non-existent in his world. Also the fact that he hasn't seen his mother for years implies that he probably didn't witness her aging either.

Later on Meursault agrees to marry Marie just for the sake of it with little care for the actual ceremony and sacrifices of marriage in regards to just answering the simple question of "will you marry me?".

His consistently living in the present means the things that occur to him right then and there he will become consumed with. When a woman cries at his mothers funeral he feels like "she will never stop", this is probably just because Meursault has no comprehension of a few minutes time when she no doubt will. In a restaurant Meursault becomes randomly interested in a woman who he coins "the little robot". She has funny movements and he follows her out of interest until he can no longer see her again at which point she is forgotten about.

In existentialism the past is pure guilt. To live a peaceful existence you need to have no recollection of the past and no thought for the future, which in itself is dread. Meursault epitomizes this after he has killed the Arab. It isn't until he is being interrogated that it suddenly dawns on him that he took a life. Even then it comes across as nothing more than a fleeting thought, a sort of half interested realization of what he has done. If it wasn't for the rules and regulations of society forcing that emotion in him, it wouldn't have phased him. It also can be assumed that as he is shooting the Arab he is not thinking about the impact that would have in the future in his own life.

His detached emotions are summed up right at the beginning of the book when his mothers hearse casually reminds him of nothing more than the pen trays in his office at work. Things are very mundane to him and no object or item is more significant than the other. He also displays emotional detachment when it comes to Salamano abusing his dog and Raymond beating his girlfriend. Although it is noted at one point that when Salamano loses his dog and begins to cry, Meursault thinks of his mother. Though he himself makes no connection. He also comments at one point "one can't help feeling a little guilty I suppose", like emotions are things to be embarrassed about.

According to existentialism; guilt, fear and worry are all things that come from others. "Hell is other people" is a quote that epitomizes the existentialism view. Meursault has a few examples of his own although some of the time, the judgement from others is in his head. When the old people appear at his mothers wake he notes that "they came to sit in judgement of me". When he asks for time off of work he "had an idea that he looked annoyed and I said 'sorry sir'". When he reaches the old people's home he comments about the warden: "I had a feeling he was blaming me for something". Even after his mother's funeral he leaves the grounds to go for a walk and thinks to himself "what an agreeable walk I could have had if it hadn't been for mother". Although the premise is that he is still feeling grief and therefore can't enjoy himself, the phrasing and wording of it sounds accusatory, as if it was selfish of her to die at that point in time when he could have enjoyed a walk.

In the world of the outsider, there is no affection; merely getting "used" to each other. There is nothing remarkable in the world of Meursault. As Edmund Husserl, a phenomonolgist once remarked: when objects are paid attention to is when they become a problem. If you just breeze through life and pay no attention to the world around you, the past, the future, or even the present that much, you will be the perfect manifesto of existentialism.