I recently attended the Media Society’s debate – Phone-hacking: Is it time get tough on the press? – at the London School of Economics (LSE). The speakers were David Aaronavitch (The Times), Charlotte Harris (Mishcon), Paul Staines (Guido Fawkes blog) and Martin Moore (Media Standards Trust). The debate was lively and engaging with each of the speakers exploring a different aspect of the scandal and providing commentary on how their professions have been affected.

The speakers discussed the self-regulation of the British press and whether this could continue in light of the recent revelations. Having worked as a producer at the BBC and a journalist at a range of UK newspapers, David Aaronavitch was able to offer many interesting insights.  He explained that practices which could be considered unethical, such as undercover filming, were strictly regulated at the BBC under producer guidelines. In his experience, guidelines within UK newspapers to cover similar practices were much less stringent. This prompted the speaker to ask – Should a form of producer guidelines be in place in the British press?

While many agreed with the need for stricter guidelines, Peter Staines debated the effectiveness of such regulations within the current media landscape. As Peter pointed out, if a story could not be broken via traditional means it would appear online, drawing readers away from newspapers. He drew particular reference to the way in which super-injunctions were broken on Twitter.

All of the speakers agreed that recent developments have given rise to greater questioning of the British press. According to Peter, social media has made the public more aware of tactics used by the press. Peter referred to the Ulrika Jonsson and Sven Goran Eriksson story, which had been acquired through phone-hacking, as ‘the perfect story’. He argued that, in this case, the public were unconcerned with how information had been obtained. He contrasted this reaction to the reaction following the final News of the World allegations when he argued that the public became united in the belief that an outrageous breach of trust had taken place.

While the speakers acknowledged the events are ongoing, the debate provided an excellent insight into the views of some of those closest to the scandal and their views on how the UK media has been and will continue to be affected.

[Image Credit: Gene Hunt]

Welcome to Porter Novelli’s weekly digital news post.

Everyone likes a nice big fat update to software they love, and music streaming service Spotify launched an absolute doozy earlier this week. The ‘massive revamp’ saw a giant leap into social, enabling users to connect to one another more easily (using Facebook as the primary friending mechanism) and share the playlists they wish to share, as well as dragging tracks into their friends’ view by way of a new inbox function.

On top of this, Spotify has also linked up with iTunes to allow users to play their locally stored music through Spotify.

Despite one or two demand-related teething problems, the update has been received to overwhelming positivity and I’ve been upgraded. Having cultivated a loyal userbase, Spotify has now pulled out right into the path of competitor mflow by adding a social networking element. Game on.

Newspaper bias and blogger crackdown?

When Gizmodo paid $5,000 for a mislaid prototype of the next Apple iPhone, we  should have known it would lead to trouble. Despite Gizmodo saying it returned the device after an official request to do so from Apple, one of its editors, Jason Chen, had an impressive array of equipment seized by police from his home including four computers, two servers and an iPad.

The repercussions in terms of the demarcation between bloggers and journalists could be far-reaching. Gizmodo, according to Reuters, believes the search warrant was illegal:

“According to a search warrant posted on gizmodo.com, the computers may contain photographs of Apple’s “prototype 4G iPhone,” as well as email pertaining to its purchase, call records, and research on Gray Powell, the Apple engineer who purportedly misplaced the device.

“In a letter to the police also published on gizmodo.com, Gawker’s Chief Operating Officer and legal counsel Gaby Darbyshire asserted the search and seizure was illegal under California law, because Chen works as a journalist for the publication, protecting him from such action.”

Meanwhile, one newspaper journalist has undoubtedly overstepped the boundaries in its UK election coverage. The Sutton and Cheam Guardian, part of the South London Guardian and Surrey Comet Group, was caught out and exposed when blogger Anna Raccoon found that the local Libertarian Party candidate, one of eight, had a ‘joke’ biography in amongst seven more informative potted bios, and that the journalist involved was a member of the party most likely to benefit from LP ridicule.

To make matters worse, Anna’s further investigation appears to show that the newspaper had a genuine bio information available. Of course, it could be that the candidate’s response to the journalist’s request for information never arrived via email. Except the photograph he sent was used in the feature. Fail.

Facebook Open Graph

In San Francisco last week, Facebook’s F8 conference played host to the launch of Open Graph, a sophisticated third-party content integration mechanism which effectively puts Facebook’s stamp all over the social web. The best explanation I’ve seen comes from We Are Social’s Stefano Moggi, who outlines the process by which consumers of content online can ‘like’ or ‘recommend’ it to their Facebook friends without logging in.

So, when you see ‘Like’ or ‘Recommend’ buttons alongside web content – as Stefano mentions, they’ve already begun appearing at places like CNN and Internet Movie Database – it’s Facebook’s way of making the sharing of content easier and more integrated into the FB network. Clever.

Of course, all this could provide some rather valuable data for Facebook to…store.

‘The voice of assholes?’

Letters to the editor: one of the oldest forms of what would now be called social media. The online extension of this (apart from emails to the editor, I suppose) is the commenting function available on most newspaper websites. ‘Here’s the news, what do you think?’ It’s engaging, or at least listening. But it’s far from unproblematic.

Jeff Jarvis (the Buzzmachine guy, to you and me) whipped up the debate recently by revoking his advocacy of reader comments:

“I defended comments for years. But the problem is that comments are too often the voice of assholes.”

Blunt though he is, Jarvis has touched upon a valid concern. For one reason or another, I find reading newspaper comments quite addictive. Sometimes they’re funny, resembling little mini-memes when readers pun their hearts out at the bottom of a light-hearted story. Sometimes they’re incredibly informative.

Sometimes, though, they’re just depressing, highlighting the narrow-mindedness and bitterness affecting much of society. Or, as Jarvis puts it, assholes. Anybody who’s read his work before will correctly assume that he’s angling for better engagement, not cutting people out of the loop.

Shane Richmond at the Daily Telegraph neatly sums up Jarvis’ point and an opposing one, made by Ilana Fox. Her argument is that newspapers value their comments – Shane, with his history at the Telegraph, is in a position to confirm that.

For me, the problem is not one of a bigoted underclass, or a spread of dubious politics. It’s largely one of trolling, certainly in the newspapers I read online.

Welcome to Porter Novelli’s weekly digital news post.

If we were to draw up a list of people not to annoy, the President of the United States of America would most likely appear somewhere in the top, ooh I don’t know, one. It’s a shame 25-year-old Frenchman “Hacker Croll” didn’t have the same view, because he could soon be in jail.

It’s not really fair to call the guy a hacker. He’s supposedly more like a geek who thought it would be clever to log in to the Twitter accounts of celebrities as well as Barack Obama. His high-tech method was allegedly to guess their passwords or hint questions for their email addresses, according to BBC News.

While we could question whether Hacker Croll would be sent to prison for hacking any other Twitter account, if he is convicted I think it could be argued that he’ll be doing a stretch for stupidity.

More on paywalls

The paywall debate is picking up speed as the UK national newspapers begin to put in place their new online business models. The Times will soon launch its paywall model (charging for access, with the lowest price point being £1 for one day). The company clearly believes the paywall is a workable and viable system, but Will Sturgeon points out a slight problem: on the day the paywall was confirmed, The Times‘ top story was shared by most of its competitors – including The Guardian, which will remain free.

In other words, the newspaper is asking an awful lot of loyalty from its readers.

Elsewhere, The Independent might just be going the other way. Evening Standard owner Alexander Lebedev has bought the group and is rumoured to be considering boosting circulation (and ad revenue?) by making the print edition free. Clearly making the Standard free has done the business.

Liddle blog censured by PCC

The Press Complaints Commission has ruled that a Spectator blog by Rod Liddle breached the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code of Practice and that the Spectator must ensure that the inaccuracy is corrected.

Back in December Liddle caused a wave of outrage with a blog post which claimed that “the overwhelming majority of [violent crime] in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community”. Unsurprisingly, complaints were made and action taken. However, this is an intriguing precedent. As Londonist notes, Liddle is the first journalist to have a blog censured by the PCC.

Who knows whether the PCC might some day be responsible for complaints relating to blogs by non-journalists. What do you think?

Incidentally, if you read Liddle’s original post at the end of last year and found it offensive, you’ll probably like The Daily Mail Song.

Facebook reveals private email addresses

Valleywag is reporting that Facebook’s had a little privacy problem overnight: a glitch led to members’ private email addresses being shown on their public profiles. It seems that the problem only lasted around half an hour, but it will have done nothing to help Facebook’s reputation on privacy. It was spotted by many users, of course, and the news was spread on Twitter and, presumably, on Facebook itself.

Facebook’s ongoing experimentation and occasional privacy issues, even when combined with usually unfair abject press coverage, seems to be doing little to restrict its popularity. Facebook will be around for some time to come, but there are people out there with genuinely serious reasons for keeping their details private and I doubt they’re pleased about this latest lapse in security.