John Reith, the BBC and Guglielmo Marconi

John Reith was born on 20th July 1889. He founded the British Broadcasting Corporation, formerly the British Broadcasting Company, in 1927. His vision was to establish the corporation as a means of entertaining, educating and informing the population. Reith began his career with the BBC in 1922, on seeing an advertisement in the ‘Morning Post’ for a general manager. He was offered the position the next day, despite having a complete lack of prior experience in broadcasting. He was even quoted as saying, “The fact is I hadn’t the remotest idea as to what broadcasting was.” In 1927 Reith became the Director General, thus cementing his status in the British Broadcasting Corporation.

During his sixteen years working for the BBC, Reith was determined to run things abiding by his ideas, which centred on the concept of holding the public’s interests at heart. He fought off politicians who wanted to influence the type of broadcasting he relayed to the nation and resisted allying his corporation with a political party. In his quest to provide the nation with newsworthy broadcasts, he tried unsuccessfully to televise all of the wedding of the Duke of York – later George V. Reith even changed the day-to-day mechanics of the BBC, as demonstrated by his decision to replace the call ‘2LO’ (where LO represents London) to the much simpler, and perhaps more effective, ‘London calling’. The Radio Times and the concept of television listings were another innovation of Reith’s, born out of his desire to make it easier for the public to access broadcasting.

Arguably, Reith’s time at the BBC was incredibly successful as the number of licence fee payers increased, but he was left feeling unfulfilled stating: “What I was capable of compared with what I achieved is pitiable.” In fact, Reith was notably disappointed with his knighthood, which he was honoured with in 1926, saying that he was insulted with an “ordinary knighthood’. The reasons behind Reith’s departure from the BBC in 1928 are unclear, even to this day. It appears that he made his decision after a meeting with Neville Chamberlain, at which it is speculated that the Prime Minister asked him to leave and accept the position of chairman with Imperial Airways. It is widely accepted that Reith had the opportunity to refuse, but chose instead to accept the new occupation.

Whilst Reith dominated the BBC, Guglielmo Marconi dominated the wireless system of communication. He invented the wireless telegraphy system and pioneered the radioing of ships at sea – a vital achievement, particularly in warfare. On the topic of wireless telegraphy Marconi is quoted as saying it was “So elementary, so simple in logic” - a demonstration of his scientific knowledge. By 1897 Marconi had shown his patented system to the armed forces and the General Post Office. Throughout his life, Marconi paid witness to the success of his invention. A notable occasion in 1910 saw Marconi’s wireless system aid police in the arrest of a murderer.

Bibliography:
www.wikipedia.com
www.marconicalling.com
http://www.bbc.co.uk/historyofthebbc/resources/in-depth/reith_1.shtml

Media Law - Defamation

Tuesdays lecture on Media Law delved deeper into the world of defamation and left me with this point in mind - know your defences. In a libel case our defences as journalists are justification, fair comment and qualified privilege; of which the latter is divided into two: statutory and common law.
Below is a useful link to a piece which takes you through the definitions of statutory qualified privilege and common law qualified privilege:

http://www.yourrights.org.uk/yourrights/right-of-free-expression/defamation/qualified-privilege.html#top

Interestingly the site also makes reference to the Reynold's case, stating the 10 point test.
Throughout the piece the phrase 'fair and accurate account' frequently appears. To me this appears to be the core of journalism; its fine to argue a point, as long as you are balanced and have a strong hold of the facts.

The other thing I took away from this weeks lecture was the idea of the Innocence Project. Although its highly doubtful we would ever find a victim of false conviction, the project sounds very interesting and I look forward to hearing more about it.

Media Law - Libel

Comment. Fact. Lie.
As a journalist it may be a slippery slope between these three, but the ability to differentiate between them is vital.
Comment: Any comment based article needs to be clearly shown to be opinion (writing COMMENT in large, red letters across the top of the page is entirely acceptable)and must be somewhat based on fact. As a defence, the proof that an article was in the public interest to be published is also key.

Lie: This is easy enough to understand - NEVER LIE. The likelihood of getting away with a bare-faced lie in professional journalism is very slim. Malice is unforgivable in court - your defence will not be accepted if the defendant can prove what you have written is untrue.

Fact: As a journalist, the best route to go down is writing facts - a provable story, with strong evidence, will allow you to use justification as a defence, should you ever need to.

As the quote goes, "Comment is cheap. Fact is priceless."

From Tuesdays lecture, the point that stood out to me the most is the huge detrimental effect that defamation can possess. It struck me that anything can be defamatory, even a statement as simple as 'Horrie was late' (which, I'd like to point out, is used purely as an example). I think it is important to define defamation, so I've outlined McNae's definition below.

A statement is defamatory if it:
- exposes a person to hatred, ridicule or contempt
- causes a person to be shunned or avoided in society
- discredits a person in their trade or profession (if a person successfully sues for this, a sum can be attached as compensation for their lack of wage)
- or generally lowers a person's standing in society to any 'right-minded' person

And remember, libel is defamation, publication and identification.

Court Reporting

I'm writing this blog from my hometown of Croydon - a town well known for its high crime rate - and it occurred to me that Tuesdays lecture on court reporting would be vitally important for me if I were to begin my career here, given the number of cases that pass through Croydon Magistrates Court each day. The ins-and-outs of court reporting may take some getting used to, but hopefully I have whittled down the mass of information into a few key points:

- a defendant is ‘innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt’

- the accusation of a crime MUST stand up in court

- the role of the judge is to conduct the trial fairly on behalf of the jury; not simply to pass sentence

- the contempt of court act is important for any professional journalist, allowing a journalist to print the following details of a case:

- the defendants name and age

- address and occupation

- charge/ offence

- date and location of Crown Court hearing

- bail and legal aid conditions (where applicable)

- names of counsel

- term ‘the case is active’ is a particularly valuable one, although once in court a journalist can report everything that is said, as long as it remains:

- accurate

- free from malice or a lack of balance

- and is reported instantly

And as the BBC would say, the case continues…

Better late than never...

I've taken a couple of days to mull over the two lectures of Tuesday and have made some fairly startling observations. The morning lecture, Media Law and Ethics, left me feeling slightly worried that prison is just a tiny mistake away. It seems that contempt of court is a frighteningly easy crime to commit and, more worryingly, an extremely serious one I had never properly considered before. (Although if you pay attention to 'wikipedia', the maximum sentence is two years - not the thirty years we were previously told). I was also unaware of the crime 'blasphemous libel' - a crime which only applies to the Christian God - and of the fact that Winchester Crown Court is the secondary court after the Old Bailey. I look forward to experiencing that!

I came away from our afternoon lecture, the History and Context of Journalism, with one major point in mind, namely Plato's view of the world. To see the world as such a flippant idea and the thought that we are living in a shadow, or cave, with the real 'perfect' world outside is, at the very least, a difficult concept to take in. Either Plato was a genius, far too forward-thinking for his time, or he was slightly insane... I'll let you be the judge of that.

And just so my opinion is known - yes, if a tree falls in the woods and no-one is around to hear it, it does still make a noise.