What is the future of news? Will the public know more or less in the internet age? These questions were the focus of a panel discussion marking the launch of the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine at the Frontline Club on Wednesday 22 October.

Shrinking international news budgets, bureau closures, the rise of the freelancer and the citizen journalist all made for gloomy prognoses for the business-as-usual news model, agreed the panel chaired by The Times columnist, David Aaronovitch.

From left: David Aaronovitch, Amie Ferris-Rotman, Rachel Briggs and Richard Sambrook in conversation at the Frontline Club.

In the internet age, where journalists are no longer exclusive gate-keepers of publishing platforms, access to unprecedented amounts of information had not necessarily resulted in better informed audiences, said Richard Sambrook, director of Cardiff University’s journalism centre.

“One of the paradoxes is that we have more information out there than ever and less trust in it than ever,” he said.

Reuters correspondent Amie Ferris-Rotman said the days of traditional foreign correspondents and news agencies parachuting foreign reporters in to do “white saviour journalism” were numbered.

She urged news agencies to invest in training local staff who “often produce better stories simply because they know their countries better”. Above all, the industry must resist ‘deprofessionalisation’.

“Because of what’s happened with the internet people think [journalism is] a hobby, something you should get for free,” said Ferris-Rotman. “This is totally unacceptable. If we don’t change this the world will suffer enormously and get less of a full picture.”

South African freelance journalist and trainer Raymond Joseph then joined the discussion via Skype. He told of efforts to reach remote communities by building investigative tools to gather user generated content.

Joseph said the challenge for journalists was to cut through the “cacophony” of social media noise and empower audiences to become competent news gatherers:

“Increasingly we’re digging up those voices. But we’re going to have to do the journalism because with all those voices out there we have to sort the news from the noise.”

Yet another perspective was offered by Rachel Briggs, director of Hostage UK, an NGO working with hostages and their families.

Briggs said new platforms had empowered news subjects to publish their message directly, highlighting the example of Mike Haines, who turned to YouTube to address audiences after IS militants murdered his brother David Haines.

But Briggs warned these platforms were also available to “the bad guys” with IS now “effectively running its own news channel”. Access to such graphic content presented new challenges to editorial judgement, she said, not only in news rooms but also for users of social media.

In the discussion that followed, the panel agreed that the explosion of raw information online was both a blessing and a curse for journalists, whose skills of objective verification were now needed more than ever.

“We’ve got a whole world opened up to us but it’s a very dangerous world if we’re just going to dive into it,” said Joseph, and praised the rise of verification tools and agencies.

“The same rules apply that have always applied,” said Ferris-Rotman. “If you’re a good journalist you’ve live by certain principles, you’ve been trained a certain way to think objectively to have freedom of bias, to present a nuanced view of events.”

This was the enduring value of journalistic principles, said Sambrook, in an age where the lines were increasingly blurred for audiences between journalism, PR, propaganda, advertising and lobbying.

“In this new environment if [the public] don’t understand that difference there’s a problem. . . . they’re consuming junk food without realising it.”

You can watch the event and listen again here:

On Wednesday 22 October, the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine launched at the Frontline Club. The magazine’s editor, Rachael Jolley, introduced the issue and handed over to author and columnist, David Aaronovitch, who chaired the accompanying debate on the future of journalism.

Aaronovitch initiated the discussion by asking each panellist to speak individually on the future of journalism before inviting the audience to partake.

Rachael Jolly (right) gives an introduction and speaks briefly on the Index on Censorship magazine launch.

Richard Sambrook, professor and director of the Centre for Journalism at Cardiff University and former Director of BBC World Service, suggested that we will be better informed “if we want to be”. The panel and the audience returned repeated to this theme that we now have access to more information than ever before, but also have to be more discerning about the source of that news.

In our technology-led society, it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate journalists from citizen reporters. And Raymond Joseph, former editor of the South African Sunday Times, who joined the panel via Skype from South Africa, said that we must ask numerous questions before trusting a source: “How do you know? Who do you know? What do you know?”

“Today you need to be platform agnostic,” Joseph continued. “You need to separate news from the noise.”

While everyone agreed that Twitter was a powerful journalistic tool that journalists couldn’t afford not to use, Sambrook also took to task how we define journalism. He debated whether “any expression in the public space is journalism”, and concluded that “just because you heard something doesn’t make it journalism . . . it is raw information”. It is what you do with it that matters.

From left: David Aaronovitch, Amie Ferris-Rotman, Rachael Briggs and Richard Sambrook.

Rachel Briggs, Director of Hostage UK, said that the public is also beginning to lose trust in the media and this is somewhat due to people being “fed up with the way . . . the media is so mediated”.

Media sources are also unwilling to invest in hiring local reporters in other countries. “Foreign reporting still relies unfortunately on the . . . model of the white saviour, often male,” said Amie Ferris-Rotman, former correspondent for Reuters in Afghanistan and Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. But she also revealed the startling statistic that the “British media has 40% less international coverage than it did 30 years ago.”

Aaronovitch said that “[news] organisations become almost completely disconnected from abroad” as they do not know or understand information to the same extent as local journalists.

A panel of young and future journalists joined the experts with fresh ideas. Priyanka Mogul, Journalism and Human Rights student at Kingston University, said that with the huge amount of information available, at least it is “becoming impossible to be someone who doesn’t know what is going on”.

Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship, commented on the youth panel:

The @Index_Magazine launch youth panel on #futurejournalism has been fabulous – insightful, optimistic and challenging

— Jodie Ginsberg (@jodieginsberg) October 22, 2014

You can watch the event and listen again here:

The online publication of the Innocence of Muslims video was the catalyst for violent and at times deadly protests in some countries. In the UK the series of events has pushed debates on freedom of expression and cultural sensitivity into the mainstream. For October’s First Wednesday an expert panel took to the Frontline Club stage to grapple with the big issues raised by the video and the violence.

Chaired by the delightfully dynamic Paddy O’Connell, the debate opened with each panelist outlining their stance. Whilst their views were varied, the speakers agreed that the British media had placed too great an emphasis on reporting extreme views rather than the reaction of moderates. The role of moderate thinkers and academics would come up later in the discussion.

In an examination of the root causes of the violent protests, long term American foreign policy was mooted as a cause by writer and academic Myriam Francois-Cerrah:

"It’s people in the third world who’ve been bombed, who’ve lived under dictatorships who for years have regarded the West and in particular the US as having played an important part in holding them down and they view the film…you’ve got to remember that for people in the Middle East it wasn’t clear that the American government had nothing to do with it. I know that’s absurd but preachers were coming in telling people that Hollywood had made this movie and that the government approved it."

This view was hotly contested by a number of the panel including The Times columnist David Aaronovitch:

"There is a perception that’s created by people who are on the right of political Islam which creates a sense of total victimhood and plays upon grievance at moments like this in order to get a reaction."

Maajid Nawaz who’s previously spent 13 years inside an Islamist organisation suggested that the causes lie somewhere between the two:

"We used to look at occurring geopolitical events and discuss how we could use those events to further our narrative that there’s a global war going on against Islam and Muslims… There’s a vested interest in two extremes. The anti-Islam extremists and Islamist extremists. Foreign policy is only half the truth."

Award winning author Tom Holland stressed the importance of belief that led to the protests:

"The reason we’ve had this response is that Mohammed is regarded by Muslims as the model of human behaviour. The ferocity of the response maybe reflects an over emphasis on certain elements in global Islam on the life of the Prophet and not on the divine."

The debate shifted to questions on censorship as a result of the deadly protests. Index on Censorship chief executive Kirsty Hughes expressed concern that self-censorship has already crept in when discussing religions like Islam:

"People in this country feel inhibited about whether they can analyse and challenge through our politics and our documentaries. Especially Islam. So there’s self-censorship going on."

Whilst the biggest cheer of the night was reserved for Aaronovitch‘s call for everyone to learn to get offended less readily, the panel agreed that in the globalised digital age these types of protests are likely to repeat.

Watch the event here:

In the chair was the ever cheery Jonathan Dimbleby, who mapped out the key areas for debate. The panelists began with a feisty exchange over newspaper funding. The Times columnist David Aaronovitch argued that tabloids form a crucial part of a sustainable economic model.<

“The only parts of British journalism that make any money and aren’t subsidised are the tabloid papers, which created the sorts of abuses that we’re talking about…The only one (online) that looks likely to make some money is the Mail online. The model of the Mail Online has nothing to do with quality journalism. It’s essentially sex, tits and murder.”

Academic Angela Phillips replied that public interest journalism was actually subsidised in other parts of Europe, suggesting that this model could actually benefit journalism in the UK.

New Statesman deputy editor Helen Lewis stated that Leveson should take the global reach of internet publications into account.

“I’m surprised to find myself agreeing with Martin Clark, editor of the Mail online. We can regulate the British press all that we want but the American press could still publish very intrusive pictures, they will still follow Pippa Middleton around because there’s a market for that there. I’d like to see an acknowledgement that we’re competing in a global market place.”

Dimbleby moved on to the question of how to protect so-called victims of shoddy journalism. Academic and founder of Hacked Off Brian Catchcart expressed his frustration that when bad journalism has sold newspapers, it’s gone unpunished.<

“The journalists who wrote the stuff about Christopher Jefferies are all still in employment. At the lowest levels you need journalists to feel that there will be consequences when things go wrong… There should be statutory underpinned self-regulation. Self-regulation, but you would have certain criteria that the press would have to meet which would be subject to audit by an external body like Ofcom. Editors and proprietors shouldn’t be left to run the show themselves.”

Aaronovitch offered support for this view but struck a gloomy note in his assessment of Leveson’s impact.

“It feels to me that we’re locking the stable door after the horse has died… This is not where the great abuses are going to come from. These are the kind of epiphenomena of the last twenty years coming back to us in a form of belated accountability, just as the system changes irrevocably.”

In summing up, the panel reached a consensus that the Leveson report will hold very little weight and is almost irrelevant. It will remain up to Whitehall whether they choose to implement the Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations.

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Watch the event here. 

By Will Spens

The Frontline Club’s first ‘On The Media’ event of 2011 was a fascinating discussion focusing on the changing and sometimes wrought relationship between the worlds media and WikiLeaks. The controversial whistle-blowing website has attracted intense worldwide interest following the massive releases of leaked US military and diplomatic files and the controversy surrounding its enigmatic founder, Julian Assange. In this event, chaired by presenter of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera English, Richard Gizbert, this thoroughly modern relationship was dissected and argued over passionately by an expert panel.

On the nature of the relationship between WikiLeaks and its media partners during publication of the leaked US embassy files around the world, Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian – the only UK paper working with WikiLeaks – was clear in his assessment:

“There was really a rather remarkable collaboration that held for several months and produced some really remarkable journalism. People may not quite understand the sheer scale of the journalistic effort that went into the publication of the cables”

As to the shift in focus by the media from WikiLeaks to Julian Assange, author and columnist David Aaronovitch acknowledged that this was almost inevitable and is more than just media appetite for personality stories:

“Julian Assange is an absolute phenomenon of the modern era. He represents what we think of as the uncertain coming world.”

Mark Stephens, a media lawyer who is Julian Assange’s solicitor, thought that WikiLeaks is itself holding a mirror up to journalism:

“The public see a very crisp image, but what they don’t see is how journalists get that information. They don’t like the way WikiLeaks or journalists get their material and this is an interesting area for concern.”

Gavin MacFayden, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism, agreed with this but suggested that some media organisations have acted more reprehensibly than others, adding: ‘a lot of media responded to the worlds greatest power saying to them “you must not publish this”. I think we’ve seen that [in the New York Times] and it’s disgraceful’.

When the question of whether news organisations were equipped to deal with such massive quantities of data to investigate was raised, Ian Katz asserted that “we are nowhere near ready to deal with this kind of data. We need a whole new breed of data journalists’. David Aaronovitch however took a more acerbic view that these releases were “creating a sort of analyst caste of journalists… but the real question is this: do existing media organisations have the economic ability to deal with it?”

One fascinating hypothetical scenario was raised at the end of the extended talk: the question of whether, assuming WikiLeaks had been operational before the war in Iraq, would the US and the UK populations have had access to material which may have prevented the invasion of Iraq from occurring?

Watch the video here:

This event was in association with the BBC College of Journalism.

Throughout 2010 whistleblower website WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange were making headlines with the release of classified documents. Both the leaks and the controversy surrounding Assange have been covered extensively by the media.

For the first On the Media discussion of the year we are going to be putting the spotlight on the media and asking what the WikiLeaks operation and the media coverage of it tells us about the press.

How have journalists responded to this new kid on the block? The future will no doubt see the emergence of similar organisations, but what impact will this have on the culture of journalism? How will the media adapt and how will this currently uncomfortable relationship develop?

Chaired by Richard Gizbert, presenter of The Listening Post on Al Jazeera English.

David Aaronovitch, writer, broadcaster, commentator and regular columnist for The Times;

Mark Stephens, media lawyer with Finers Stephens Innocent and Julian Assange’s solicitor;

Ian Katz, deputy editor of the Guardian;

Gavin MacFayden, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism.

In association with the BBC College of Journalism.