Leveson Inquiry: Tabloid Witch-Hunt or Hunt for Media Standards?

As the first seminar of the Leveson Inquiry into media standards and ethics began yesterday morning, it saw the start of what would be a lengthy debate into the controversial matter of the phone hacking scandal. This inquiry has brought forth many key issues: The treatment of individuals as a mere ‘story’ rather than as people in their own right; the constriction of free speech and sharing of information; or can the ‘pressures’ journalists are facing justify their illegal actions?

I agree that journalists are constantly under pressure to get a story published quickly, especially as they are up against such competitive social media platforms and a decline in circulation. However, this ‘pressure’ has seemingly led certain journalists to take shortcuts in their practice which is, in effect, damaging to the institution of journalism, especially in the public eye.

I have to admit I was hooked reading the live feed of the seminar as it happened. Although, the battle between the tabloids and broadsheets as to ‘who said what’, and the fear that Leveson was out to get the tabloids, did seem to steer away from the objective of the inquiry. They understood that what happened was illegal, but I am not sure that the defence was strong enough; especially as one line of defence was “good journalism at times breaks all these [moral] codes, and breaks the law maybe in a small way.”

Leveson concluded that the seminar had “achieved what I hoped it would achieve”, giving the viewpoints needed to help shape its direction further. I know that there was an array of perspectives, but I am not sure that the focus on the point of ethics was made clear enough. I am looking forward to the next instalment which will take place on Wednesday 12th October 2011, but I do hope the fundamental value of genuine journalism is remembered in order to ‘shape’ the future of media standards.

PR in the Middle

Being social media savvy is now second nature to PR and is something that personally fascinates me.  Similarly, our journo cousins have embraced this new medium – as enthusiastically as us – many setting up their own blogs, groups and micro-sites.  

What’s less clear is how journalism uses social media to source articles and research stories. In this age of instant digital information, is the press release still the best way to grab a journos’ attention or should we dazzle them with blogs, forums and vodcasts? Even more worryingly, is PR still important to modern journalism?

A recent survey by Cision and the University of Sunderland, aimed to find out.

For all PRs holding your breath, fear not!  The survey showed journalists still view traditional sources like press releases and direct contact with PRs as paramount. 

Although journalists’ use of social media and search engines over the past three years has increased, traditional channels are not being negated but are used in conjunction with social media. 

In fact, only a small minority of respondents reported using traditional channels either more or less than they did three years ago.

The survey revealed networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook were the single most important social technology for journalism by approximately 30 per cent of UK respondents, with Twitter not far behind.

More surprisingly, Wikipedia was the most used online tool for journalists –with over 60% using the site to check and source stories at least once a week, compared to 22% for blogs, or 34% for news wire services.

However, story ideas, concepts and angles were still drummed up via traditional sources, such as direct PR contact and via corporate sites.

Overall it seems journos are not at all behind the times when it comes to social media – they have welcomed it with both hands. Thankfully it seems that PR is firmly in this three way embrace and PR is still in the middle.

Embracing social media – different paces abound

We have all embraced social media in a big way – particularly in PR where it is such a natural fit for us – it’s pretty much second nature after all, we are so used to having dialogues with journalists, sharing stories and having on-going conversations with all types of people.

So it’s easy to forget, perhaps, that social media is still evolving at a rapid rate and that businesses aren’t all embracing it at the same pace.

Just in the past few days, I’ve heard of two global brands who are way behind the curve. One has flatly refused to have anything to do with social media and the other, is ‘way behind’ in their social media conversations according to an inhouse marketeer.   For those kind of brands struggling to persuade directors to embrace social media  – here’s a useful post from an interesting US online publication, ‘the social media examiner’, ‘9 ways to sell social media to your boss’.

And then of course, there’s the other problem that businesses are online but don’t know what the guidelines are.  The rules are still evolving and changing, again at a pretty rapid rate.  Twitter is still largely unregulated and businesses are still learning and experimenting with it.  Here’s some latest guidelines that have come out of oatmeal.com.  They are not necessarily right, in fact I would question many on the list, but it’s interesting to see guidelines attempted to be set.

And then of course, there’s the fact that Facebook is only just starting to be used as a valuable marketing tool  for businesses. The largest social media tool on the planet provides a huge opportunity to businesses – the social media examiner has lots of ideas on how to maximise your Facebook profile to generate interest among customers and prospects as well as some great recent campaigns that have really worked for brands.

So as we all move at different paces, and standards and guidelines continue to evolve as time passes, once the revolution is over, it’ll be great to see what transpires.

AOL slams the door on social networking

Yesterday AOL announced that it planned to sell or shut down the social networking website Bebo. The news comes a few months after the digital media giant announced that it would cut one-third of its work force in an attempt to save $300m a year.

Despite this, the move to sell Bebo, one of the top 10 social networking websites, seems surprising at a time when social media is on the rise.  However, Bebo’s global unique visitors in February totalled 12.8 million, which was down 45% on February 2009. In comparison, Facebook had 462 million visitors, MySpace nearly 110 million, and Twitter 69.5 million according to figures from ComScore. Clearly the ability to attract advertisers and ultimately revenue is becoming more difficult – one of the core reasons for the purchase at the time in many industry commentators opinions.

At the same time AOL continues to invest heavily in digital content. In March this year it bought the local US news site Patch for $50m as part of its ongoing plans to invest in local news digital content. It also acquired StudioNow Inc. , an online platform for quality video creation and distribution, which is going to be integrated into its content management system Seed.com.  The interesting concept behind Seed.com is that users can upload original photos, music and or written content and get paid a certain percentage of the profits. However, AOL retains the rights to the product which allows the company to exploit successful content across its digital media platforms or to sell distribution rights to broadcast/music/publishing companies.

This can potentially generate high revenues, especially if the company can successfully utilise its business connections with Time Warner. Following on from this, it is not surprising that AOL has decided to refocus its core business strategy on content management and creation and avoid heavy investments in the highly competitive social networking market.  The company is trying to reposition itself as a major digital content provider and it shifts its direction towards niche markets, localised information and user generated content.

The internet now drives opinion not the print media

The furore since Thursday evening over the Daily Mail’s Jan Moir’s take on the death of Stephen Gateley serves to demonstrate that communications and opinion is no longer in the hands of journalists alone.  Twitter not only ‘breaks news’ – it also provides the facilitate to quickly garner masses of public opinion around news.   In the old days, a journalist would express a view and all that might happen is a letter from Mr Angry from Bournementh in the letters page the following week.   Many of might have wanted to comment but didn’t have the inclination to write a letter.  Not only does the popularity of Facebook and Twitter  now enable people to comment instantly but these social media tools also enable us to come together collectively, quickly and forcefully to drive comment and lead opinion.

Is this new wave of influential public opinion revolutionary? Well almost.  When before could a swell of opinion be expressed so quickly and powerfully? Long-term, this must have a positive effect on the old powers of the handful of media moguls who have long domintated the printing presses. Surely, long-term, it will be public opinion that drives the news agenda.  This new power of the people can’t be underestimated. Such was the rumpus caused by the Daily Mail article that the  newspaper lost significant advertising revenue. The mail had to remove adverts from big brands like Marks and Spencer, Nestle, Visit England, Kodak and the National Express. 

As the Observer recently reported, the print media is changing beyond all recognition and will never be the same again. We are currently living in a period of incredible change in communications and social media. No one really knows what the outcome will be, all that is for sure is that it won’t be the same as before. 

Sue Grant