News: can you believe it?

Michael Jackson dies and teaches us that the new media is exactly the same as the old media.

When celebrity news site TMZ reported that Michael Jackson had died last week, we didn't quite believe it. The BBC, the LA Times and others reported the fact that TMZ had reported it but wouldn't confirm it. A number of serious news sites reported the story with inverted commas around the word "dies".

Who can blame them. The TMZ story, of course, turned out to be true. But so many others have not. Jeff Goldblum, for example, was reported dead the same night. This was a fake story. If you want to recreate the fake go to fakeawish and type Jeff Goldblum into the boxes. That's exactly how the story got started. Harrison Ford also didn't die that night, despite rumours.

It is heartening to see the news working exactly as it should. The Jeff Goldblum story got little traction because it could not be confirmed. The Michael Jackson story was huge. The truth outweighs the fake. (Although one suspects that for many outlets, confirmation involved waiting for the LA Times [whom we trust] to publish it and then going for it ourselves, which is not quite the same as getting a statement from the presiding doctor).

1. We don't run a story until we can confirm for ourselves that it is true -- the way it should be, the way it has always been?

The Guardian later described TMZ's story as "the scoop of the decade". Although it is a big story, and although TMZ undoubtedly got there first, it is difficult to accept it as the scoop of the decade. After all, what would have happened if TMZ had not existed? We would have read about Jackson's death about 40 minutes later than we did. Not quite Nellie Bly exposing New York asylums or William Howard Russell reporting from the Crimean War. They changed things with their scoops. TMZ really didn't (sorry guys, but you didn't).

It is the same as it ever was. In our rush to break a story, we forget that the news is elsewhere. The only reason that someone dying is news (I hate to tell you, but many people die every day and don't make it on to TMZ or anywhere else), is because of its impact on others. The mass emotional response to Jackson's death is where the real story is.

This is why the BBC, despite much criticism, was right to send Emily Maitlis to LA to film young people moon walking. The fans and their response are real story. I must be right -- Boris Johnson agrees.

2. Journalism is more than writing a story. It is about how that story affects people.

Yesterday, the Sun had a scoop of its own when it reported that Jackson had been bald and emaciated at the time of his death. TMZ reported the LA Coroner's statement that the story was false:

The report that is being published did not come from this office. I don't know where the information came from, or who that information came from. It is not accurate. Some of it is totally false.

he said. This is the same TMZ which picked up and ran with the Sun story about two hours previously. So maybe other news sources were right to pause over the celeb site's original story.


One Twitterer on a commuter train out of London on the night Jackson died reported that people around him could not resist gossiping about the story. But the concensus was that they wouldn't believe it for sure until the saw it on the BBC.

3. You only become a trusted source if you get your stories right most of the time. Being first doesn't help your credibility.

When readers become users

Understanding web users and their day-to-day behaviour has never been more important


The New York Times has stopped calling its readers readers and started calling its users users, Advertising Age reports.

It reflects the venerable US paper's realisation that no longer do we passively take what we are given. The web has changed all that. Now we expect to interact. To click, to vote, to comment. To drive with our reading (sorry -- using) habits stories up or down the most popular ranking. To add our own pictures and stories to the melange.

This week I found myself, on the recommendation of a friend, using two web stories:

• The Interview with Alaa al Aswany from the Observer
• Show or Tell from the New Yorker

The first was 2200 words, the second 5600. No in-line links, no commenting, no video footage. There were admittedly pictures and, in the case of the New Yorker, cartoons. But as an experience, frankly, it felt a lot like reading.

Web writers are beginning to realise that rules they used to apply do not always work. Or, perhaps, that others are succeeding without adhering to the same rules. How can this be? The two examples above show us that our stories can work without fitting into an arbitrary word count. It is not true that every story needs a direct headline and a news-style intro. We don't always fail if our work is insufficiently loaded with multimedia gadgets.

"As an experience, frankly, it felt a lot like reading"

In discussions about the future of journalism, two concepts have caught my eye:

• Hyper-interest
• Context

These seem to me to be the keys to rule-free web writing. Hyper interest (I didn't coin the phrase but I have lost the reference -- apologies to whoever did) is the same as interest but accounting for digital language inflation (geeks exaggerate). It is neologism meaning that no trick or gadget is ever going to beat something that genuinely catches our imagination.

I think the two articles cited above are genuinely interesting, but you may disagree. This is the problem with hyper-interest -- so much depends on the user. It means that before you write something interesting, you have to work out who it is going to be interesting to.

Context means that the same user will find different things interesting according to what is going on in their world. If they are sitting on the sofa on a Sunday morning surrounded by toast crumbs and cats, the New Yorker may be the very thing. If they are on their way to work on Monday and just want to know whether we have the same prime minister so they don't look stupid in the 9:30 meeting, then maybe the BBC's news feed 31 character headlines are what they want.

"If they are sitting on the sofa, surrounded by toast crumbs and cats, the New Yorker may be the very thing"

For writers, hyper-interest means you have to model your reader more carefully than ever before, so you know intuitively what will grab and keep their attention. Context means you have to go even further and model their behaviour patterns. This may mean providing information in a variety of formats so that users can choose the one that suits.

Reader modelling is old school but it is more important than ever. Ironically, some writers freeze on the idea that because anyone in the world (not really) can read their stuff, they have to write for everyone in the world. In practice, the web loves specialism. Writing that focuses on a small group of readers and gives them what they want is generally the most successful.

Firefox dominates

Firefox is the dominant browser amongst WriteThinking visitors and IE7 has finally overtaken IE6, the latest statistics show.

Simon Singh and the jury

Simon Singh, the science writer best known for Fermat's Last Theorum, must decide whether to contest a libel claim by the British Chiropractic Association following a High Court ruling that the meaning of what he wrote is much worse than he intended.

If he wants to continue, Dr Singh may have to prove the BCA was dishonest. A tall order. Everything seems to be against his continuing, but he may have one thing on his side: the jury.

In an opinion piece for the Guardian, Dr Singh described as bogus BCA claims that chiropractors could help (amongst other things) childhood asthma. In a preliminary ruling, the court said that this meant the BCA was being consciously dishonest.

There are three main defences to libel, as student journalists will recall. The obvious protection for an opinion piece comes from the defence of fair comment. In other words, Dr Singh is entitled to his opinion. But fair comment is a conditional defence and one of the conditions is:

you cannot pass off as comment allegations of criminal or immoral behaviour.

The High Court's interpretation of the article would seem make it an allegation of immoral behaviour and so the defence may be less robust than Dr Singh would wish.

It is difficult to see how the second possible defence, privilege, would help. The most useful flavour, a common-law form of privilege known as the Reynolds Defence, requires that the writer gives his subject the right to reply to allegations. It is not usual to include such responses in an opinion piece.

That leaves the defence of truth, known in England and Wales as justification. There are no conditions to the justification defence -- if it is true, you can publish. However, there are a couple of awkward wrinkles:

• The burden of proof in libel is reversed -- the writer has to prove it was true; the claimant does not have to prove it was wrong
• The meaning you are judged on is not what you intended but what would be understood by a reasonable person in the worst case (hence Dr Singh's problem with the High Court ruling)

There are many from the scientific community (and many more who care about free speech) who would like to see Dr Singh continue to fight the libel action. But there is a slim chance of success and, if he loses, he faces enormous costs.

"One glimmer of light is the
standard of proof required"

One glimmer of light is the standard of proof required. It is not the proof beyond reasonable doubt that we see in criminal cases. In libel, proof on the balance of probabilities is used. In practice, that means the winner is the one who convinces the jury.

Notoriously, in libel, the celebrity usually wins (of course, the celebrity is also usually the one suing and so this may not be a good guide in the Singh case). Juries tend to have a natural disposition to side with the well-known. As a famous author, this may give Simon Singh an edge. On top of that, there is the evidence that the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against a chiropractor who claimed he could treat children with colic.

Neither of these factors would amount to a proof that would see a defendent convicted in a criminal court. But could they be enough in a civil suit?

Juries are picked at random, so if Dr Singh continues there will be huge element of risk, with hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal expenses at stake. Hypothetically, one jury may be sympathetic to Dr Singh but feel the word bogus was going too far. But another may feel he had a point. No-one can say for sure until there is a real jury and they have heard the evidence. By then the losing side may be facing a bill for millions.

See also:

• Nick Cohen's article in today's Observer
• The BCA's statement on the case [PDF]
• Jack of Kent's commentary on the case
• The Facebook page For Simon Singh and Free Speech

Notes:

• The author is a journalist not a lawyer (and a lover not a fighter, but has no firm view on the dogs vs cats thing).
• The piece is written for general interest and does not represent legal advice to Simon Singh or anyone else.

Journalists thwarted by FoI delays

Journalists are being discouraged from using the Freedom of Information Act by the delay tactics of officials, according to a report.

A shock to the system [pdf link], written by the BBC's Jeremy Hayes for the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism describes some notable successes for journalists using FoI. But it says the time government departments take to respond is limiting journalists' ability to be effective.

Hayes cites an investigation by Chris Hastings of the Sunday Telegraph into Formula One Boss, Bernie Ecclestone's donation to the Labour party and Tony Blair's involvement in F1's exemption from a tobacco advertising ban. It took two and a half years before Hastings was given the relevant documents and in the meantime Tony Blair had left office.

According to Hayes' report:

The evidence of the more contentious and disputed cases points to a standard gestation period of over two years before disclosure . . .

Examination of the decision notices by the Information Commissioner [shows] the propensity of officials to use exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act to prevent disclosure . . .

In case after case, the exemption clauses cited are many in number, applied blanket-style, and have the effect of creating layers of defence, each of which has to be considered in its turn, thus adding to the complexity of the process and the time needed to complete it.

Telegraph shuts down MP's blog

Legal action by the Telegraph has resulted in the blog of tory MP Nadine Dorries being shut down, the Guardian reports.

The paper's lawyers moved against the blog's host rather than Ms Dorries herself. The 1996 Defamation Act was supposed to prevent this type of action. The section 1 defence protects people (such as internet hosts) who publish libellous statements but who are not directly responsible for creating the libel.

The problem is that the defence is conditional on the internet host taking all reasonable measures to stop a libel being propagated. If the libel is drawn to the internet host's attention, then they have to do something about it. The usual response is to delete the offending material without contacting the author.

In this case, the internet service provider has taken the entire blog off line.

Blogger settles libel claim

A tax accountant blogger who wrongly accused Lord Ashcroft of helping people to dodge tax has paid a substantial sum to a charity as part of a libel settlement, Press Gazette reports.

Richard Murphy, director of Tax Research llp, claimed that tory deputy chairman's company BB Holdings helped customers unlawfully evade tax. Lord Ashcroft's lawyer said that Mr Murphy appeared to base his allegations on his interpretation of what he read on another website. That website subsequenty said it was not making such allegations and was not even referring to Lord Ashcroft's company.

The lawyer also pointed out that Mr Murphy had not approached his client for comment before publishing.