An English PEN commentary on the idea that social media could be temporarily shut down in response to the #UKriots. We wrote lots of tweets on the issue, collected here.
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During Tuesday’s edition of Newsnight, hosted by Gavin Esler, one of the studio interviewees accused the BBC of selective editing.
The prgramme can be viewed online via the BBC iPlayer (available until 16th August). In a debate about why young people have joined the riots in London, student Yohanes Scarlett said:
First of all, I would like to say, earlier, during your newsclip here, you had a recording of a gentleman with a bandana across his face and sunglasses on, and I would like to point out right now right from the beginning that the BBC have cut out his original statement. I was there. He gave an original statement which he wanted the people to hear. It has been cut out, this is a misrepresentation.
Scarlett’s speech begins at about 15 mins 35 seconds on the iPlayer recording. The clip he referred to is at 7 mins 23 seconds.
Chairing the discussion, Gavin Esler immediately asked Yohanes Scarlett what the chap with the bandana said, but Scarlett said he couldn’t remember it by heart and was reluctant to paraphrase. He went to to say that the BBC should play the full clip. “Perhaps we will” replied Esler.
@Magic_Torch: @robertsharp59 @BBCNewsnight Just because they were accused it doesn’t mean it was true #justsaying
There is probably a simple reason why the interview was cut. Reporters have a strict time slot and the subject Liz MacKean was reporting on was very broad. However, it was an edit which a Newsnight interviewee – someone credible enough to be invited into the studio to talk specifically about the concerns of urban youths – thought was an unwarranted.
@Eastmad: @robertsharp59 @GavinEsler agreed – selective editing of people who you know don’t have much of a voice is egregious
Youths without a voice causing violence; youths causing violence because they have no polical voice. This context is important. This is not simply a case of a politician complaining about selective editing (which actually happens very rarely). Politicians have ample opportunity to clarify and expand upon what they say to broadcast journalists, and they are trained to talk in soundbites anyway. This is not true of the underclass, the submerged.
So fairly or unfairly, the BBC’s reporting has been called into question. If rebutting this criticism was in any way difficult, then maybe it would be appropriate for the BBC to shrug off Yohanes Scarlett’s comment, and the news cycle would move on. But in the age of YouTube and iPlayer, there is really no excuse for uploading Liz MacKean’s entire interview with the masked youth. It only takes a few minutes, and will give those who want it a deeper insight in the psyche of those causing chaos on our streets.
Of course, there are legitimate concerns about giving crimminals a platform, but in the case of the Newsnight package, I think that ship sailed when the anonymous looter was invited to give an interview in the first place. And it was only last week that I outlined my view on whether to censor the words of criminals: we are best served when the ideas of wrongdoers are openly discussed and rebutted. And it is in the BBC’s best interests to prove to their critics, over and over again if necessary, what responsible reporting looks like.
Update 12th August 2011
I’ve just received this response via e-mail from Newsnight’s Deputy Editor, Liz Gibbons:
With reference to your tweets about why we didn’t put the full interview and statement of the man who claimed to have some involvement with rioting on Newsnight on Tuesday night – it is standard televisual journalistic practice to choose clips from interviews in filmed pieces, rather than run interviews in full. This individual asked to make a statement to camera, but also agreed to do an interview in which our reporter was able to ask him some robust questions about why he thought it was justifiable to loot. I am sure you understand that it would be odd for the BBC to allow a statement from someone justifying criminal behaviour to be aired unchallenged, without us asking the individual some robust questions which the public would expect us to ask. We gave this individual no undertaking or promise of any kind that we would run his interview in full or that we would air his statement at all.
I have spoken to the reporter about the content of the statement that the individual made to camera and I am content that there was nothing he said in that pre-prepared statement that was not reflected in the subsequent interview exchange that was aired on the programme. Nor did he claim to represent any group, or organisation, or offer any insight beyond that which was reflected in the interview about why people were committing acts of violent disorder and criminality. You may have noted that Yohannes Scarlett who appeared in the studio, and was present when this interview was filmed, couldn’t actually recall what this individual even said in his pre-prepared statement.
I hope that allays your concerns.
And now for some Inside Baseball.
Last week, I managed to irritate legal blogger Jack of Kent (a.k.a. David Allen Green) by suggesting he was being stingy with his links, and then not telling him about it. This was not entirely true on either count – He was not being as unlinky as I had thought; and I had tried to let him know.
Since David and I have worked together on the Libel Reform Campaign, I assume that he is not going to sue me for trashing his reputation in the Guardian. However, elements of our exchange got me thinking about issues of ‘responsibility’ in blogging.
Here’s the thing: When David asked me “why didn’t you check?” I felt strangely short-changed, despitre the fact that I certainly had not checked with him beforehand. This is because when I typed the original post, I fully expected David to become aware of it. Incoming links and twitter recommendations usually alert people to the fact they are being discussed. Moreover, I think some part of my subconsicious decided that to cite him was, in effect, an invitation to respond. The invitation was not explicit, but to me it feels like an integral part of the blogging conversation.
I write this not to try and get myself off the hook for the pint I know I must pay to David, but instead to ask how responsible blogging might be different from responsible journalism. A key pillar of the existing Reynolds Defence (a public interest defence for libellous statements) is the idea of verification before publishing. But should this hold for bloggers? What of the idea (which I had internalised until David complained) that the early publishing of comment or allegations on a blog or twitter, is in itself part of the verification and fact-checking process? For citizen bloggers, publishing a claim online carries the implicit (and often explicit) request – “please help me verify”.
Mainstream media critics of blogging, and the politicians, certainly disagree, and see the publication of anything unchecked as being irresponsible. I would appreciate thoughts on this from The Man Himself – Could this form of early publication online be considered ‘responsible’, due to the very nature of the medium?
As tweeted yesterday, I was asked onto Paul Hammond’s morning show on UCB Radio, to discuss Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breiviks’ manifesto, which has been published online. I made the case that, unpleasant though Breivik’s views are, censoring his manifesto would only give him a martyrish status. Also, the reasons given for suppressing such writings would quickly be used to attack and censor other books (like the Bible).
Here is the audio of my segment [6 Mb].
On the UCB’s Facebook page, a few people raised dissenting views.
… surely the human rights of the Norwegian students and there families should be held in higher esteem the Anders Behring Breiviks. He gave up his rights the moment he blew up the building in Oslo.
I think this is just a confusion of the concept of human rights. Of course rights such as free expression may be lawfully removed, but its wrong to say that a killer or any other hated person in society can forfeit their rights in this way. If that were the case, we would call them ‘privileges’ not ‘rights’.
Another common sentiment:
But I would caution against publishingg such material. Not everyone has the wisdom or intelligence to be able to read it. God forbid but what if there was to be a copycat killing because of publishing this?
To this, I am reminded of Bronwen Maddox writing in The Times, discussing the ramblingsof another killer, Cho Seung Hui:
The accusation that the NBC broadcasts may provoke copycat attacks — the most serious charge against the network — appears to rest on a notion of severe mental illness as contagious, common and predictable.
UCB is a Christian radio station, and as such there were a few comments invoking the more nebulous concepts of God and Satan:
He had his foot in satans kindom, he is a freemason wich is v evil ,he also listend 2 chantin an playd demonic games on computa,he gave the devil an entrance 2 his mind.ther so much ocult activities that warp the mind an insesetive the value of life
I don’t think this is helpful. Evil and even satanic Anders Breivik may be, but these are adjectives to describe his end state of mind, not the process by which he became like that. Explaining a good or a bad act as being the work of God or Satan is a way of avoiding hard thoughts and (maybe) a difficult truth.
In my morning trawl through the Internet, I noticed two examples of a practice that has become mainstream: denying the object of your opprobrium a link.
First, the fascinating Brian Kellet writes this, in a fisk of a Liz Jones column about the NHS says:
I’m not going to link to the original story because I don’t want to send visitors to the rag that is the Daily Mail.
Then, in a battle of the pseudonyms, highly respected legal blogger Jack of Kent decides that he is going to have an argument with Gudio Fawkes, but without actually namechecking Guido or linking to the ridiculous Death Pentalty campaign he just launched. I’m particularly disappointed in Jack of K, as he writes, in his very next post, that one should “use links and sources wherever possible.”
Linking out, regardless of whether you agree with the person you”re linking to, should be the standard for blogging, just as it is for academia. It is the link to sources which gives the work credibility. In contrast, anonymous gossip disguised as lobby reporting is one of the reasons why there is so little trust in journalists at the moment (a topic discussed at the recent POLIS journalism conference, where I asked a panel of spin doctors and hacks whether the press should abolish anonymous sources)… and the fact that a tabloid does not have to cite its sources is one of the reasons why #Hackgate could happen.
Moreover, we know that our online bubbles are not as diverse as we like to think. Safe silos like Facebook actually filter content to prioritise those people that you already agree with, and our failure to link out just strengthens the confirmation bias. I disagree with Paul Staine’s worldview and his approach to blogging, but I do actually want to know what he is saying about the death penalty, the better to campaign against him.
So, just as we’ve stopped using the Blame The Daily Mail cliche as a substitute for actual political analysis, can we have a moratorium on the whole “I’m not linking to those people” schtick, please? I know we can Google pretty much anything we want to these days, but not everything appears on page one of the results. Worse, a failure to link looks a bit sly and scheming. Let’s leave the obfuscation and misdirection to those outlets with lower standards: The Newspapers.