Die Weltkonferenz der ONO in Hamburg im Mai 2014 hat ein reges Echo in den Medien gefunden – rund um den Erdball, in Deutschland, UK bis Kanada und Indien… Hier einige Kolumnen der Kollegen:
ONO Annual Conference 2014
May 13 2014
By Kirk LaPointe (on the photo right, with Hamburg´s mayor Olaf Scholz and Stephen Pritchard)
Kirk LaPointe, Executive Director, ONO:
The surveillance leaks by Edward Snowden. The firing of an ombudsman for unfurling media corruption. The lingering scandal of phone-hacking. The controversy about unpublishing. Vulnerable sources and subjects. Do-it-yourself ethics. Transparency in government.
The annual conference of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO) tackled these contemporary issues May 4-7. The Hamburger Abendblatt and Axel Springer publishing group played host to about 60 delegates.
The role of the ombudsman is growing in Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. Even in North America, ONO has gained more than lost members in the last year. But the conference heard many concerns about media standards, the difficulty in enforcing them, and the declining public trust in journalism in many parts of the world.
The themes of the conference were secrecy, standards, corruption and cover-ups. These concepts are at the leading edge of work by media ombudsmen and public editors worldwide as they increasingly blend public complaints with broader issues of journalistic independence. Six ombudsmen from six continents (Sally Begbie of SBS, Michael Getler of PBS, George Claassen of Media24, AS Panneerselvan of The Hindu, Tarmu Tammerk of Estonian Broadcasting, and Cynthia Ottaviano of the Argentine defender’s office) outlined the common challenges and unique situations in their regions.
The conference heard from award-winning actor and comedian Steve Coogan on the invasion of privacy by British media and the need for regulation to curtail the excesses of the tabloids. Pulitzer-winning journalist Ewen McAskill of The Guardian spoke of the bravery of his news organization in publishing the revelations of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Yavuz Baydar, the European Prize-winning former ombudsman for Sabah in Turkey, chronicled the events that led to his firing for publishing details of media corruption in his country.
The mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz, discussed the need for independent but transparent media, just as he highlighted the importance of open government, to gain public trust. German panelists reinforced the valued role of ombudsmen in their country.
Cynthia Ottaviano, the Argentine public defender, and CBC ombudsman Esther Enkin explored the challenges of protecting vulnerable sources as they deal with and are reported on by media. Tom Naegels of de Standaard in Belgium examined the dilemmas of transparency for ombudsmen in handling sensitive cases.
David Jordan, the standards editor of the BBC, led a discussion on the wide-ranging and controversial perspectives about “unpublishing” online information. Tom Kent, the standards editor of the Associated Press, and Kirk LaPointe, ONO’s executive director and an adjunct professor at University of British Columbia, looked at the value and challenges of providing do-it-yourself ethical codes at fledgling organizations and with individual journalists.
Two ShopTalk sessions led by Sjoerd de Jong of NRC Handelsblad and Jeffrey Dvorkin of American Abroad delved into particular issues for the membership: sponsored content, pressure groups, standards amid speed, among others. There was local and national media coverage of the conference’s agenda.
The conference featured a boat cruise through the waterways of Hamburg and a gala dinner with what has become traditional regaling by some in our Dutch contingent.
At the ONO business meeting, a new board was elected. Tarmu Tammerk (Estonian Broadcasting) is the new ONO president. Esther Enkin (CBC) is the new vice president. The treasurer is Tom Kent (AP). Stephen Pritchard (Observer) is past-president, and he and Yavuz Baydar are ex-officio board members. Board members include: Gerardo Albarrán de Alba (Noticias MVS), Sally Begbie (SBS), George Claassen (Media24), David Jordan (BBC), Kirk LaPointe (ONO executive director), Ralf Nehmzow (Hamburger Abendblatt), Cynthia Ottaviano (Argentine defender’s office), AS Panneerselvan (The Hindu), Ignaz Staub (Tamedia AG), and Sylvia Stead (The Globe and Mail).
13 May 2014
The readers‘ editor on… Steve Coogan’s defence of Leveson
‚We are all champions of press freedom and public interest journalism,‘ declares Steve Coogan (on the photo with Ralf Nehmzow (r.)
Stephen Pritchard
The Observer, Sunday 11 May 2014
Jump to comments (12)
Steve Coogan addresses the ONO conference in Hamburg. Photograph: Michael Rauhe
The great port of Hamburg is a musical city. The birthplace of Brahms and once home to Telemann, CPE Bach, Gustav Mahler and briefly, of course, the Beatles, it seems to live and breathe music. Last week, for example, about 300 amateur brass players turned up in the main square and played their hearts out, all under the direction of a conductor who had to stand on a table to be seen across a glittering sea of trumpets, trombones, horns and tubas.
I was reminded of that sight and sound a couple of days later in a rather different context: a discussion on the British press at the annual conference of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (my last as president) held at the headquarters of Hamburg’s main newspaper, Hamburger Abendblatt.
At the conference, entitled „Secrets, standards, corruption and cover-ups: staying transparent in a murky world“, readers‘ editors and broadcasting standards editors from six continents tackled all manner of ethical issues, including, inevitably, the tortured progress of press regulation in the UK.
Those ranks of blaring brass came to mind when award-winning actor, writer, comedian and producer Steve Coogan described how a major section of the British press had drowned out mature debate on where the UK goes after the Leveson report. He travelled to Hamburg to deliver a counterblast to those newspapers that maintain that a system of regulation underpinned by a royal charter is an attack on press freedom and should be resisted.
Despite finding „the prospect of celebrities taking part in this slightly irksome“, he became involved in Hacked Off, the group that campaigns for victims of press intrusion, after he spent nearly £400,000 taking action against News International once he discovered his phone had been hacked.
„This has been characterised as me having a score to settle but I became involved principally because I saw a debate that wasn’t happening. I saw people who were victims of press intrusion not being given a platform,“ he said. Many people were scared of speaking out against intrusion because they feared the press would then seek to destroy them but he felt able to make a stand because his personal life had been raked over to such an extent that „they had emptied my closet of skeletons“.
He said the incentives to join a Leveson-compliant regulator (immunity to exemplary damages and full cost protection in court actions) were a benefit to journalism, particularly to smaller newspapers that might be financially crippled in the courts. He railed against those who cite false dangers to press freedom („a disingenuous cloak they wrap around themselves“) while ignoring the fact that only a few powerful people own the papers in Britain – a threat to press freedom in itself and a lack of plurality that puts the UK way down European freedom rankings, irrespective of press regulatory systems.
And he exposed what he called the myth of the foreign despot. „Some papers are saying foreign dictators – unnamed – are using the Leveson report as an excuse to impose state control on their press, but if a foreign dictator imposed Leveson he would be imposing voluntary, incentivised, independent self-regulation. In every case this would be a massive rolling back of state control. The Daily Mail and others should be campaigning for Leveson in China, Cuba and Zimbabwe.
„Even the wholly false notion of state control would not have come about if the tabloid press had not behaved so unethically. None of us want state control. We are all champions of press freedom and public interest journalism.“
So where does Hacked Off go, now that most of the industry has joined the Independent Press Standards Organisation, due to start work next month? Describing Ipso as a cosmetic exercise, Coogan remained optimistic that those papers that are currently outside either system would eventually sign up to a self-regulator recognised by the royal charter. „I don’t believe remaining newspapers will sign up to Ipso in its current form,“ he said. And if the impasse isn’t broken he had this warning for politicians: „There is an election on the horizon. Those people who made promises will be held to account on all sides of the political divide and the victims of press intrusion will remind people what this is all about.“
reader@observer.co.uk
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The Hindu A.S. Panneerselvan. Photo: S.R. Raghunathan
TOPICS
economy, business and finance
media
interior policy
data protection
Last week, news ombudsmen from across the world met at Hamburg in Germany for our annual deliberations and the topic was of both professional and general interest: “Secrets, standards, corruption and cover-ups: staying transparent in a murky world.” I am going to skip the details of three interesting subjects that were discussed at the conference as I have touched upon them in my earlier columns: the fallout of The Guardian’s decision to take up the Edward Snowden revelations, press intrusion and abuse leading to the Leveson Inquiry, and the state of the media in Turkey today.
The inevitability of digital platforms is that a problem arising in one part of the world becomes a global problem within a short span of time. The request to “unpublish” from the web archive is one of the new issues in front of news ombudsmen across the world. I have been receiving at least a couple of requests a month. There are arguments both for and against the takedown. Technology is not purely a boon but comes with its own attendant problems.
Recognising this complex reality, The Guardian has a dedicated section called “Internet privacy — the right to be forgotten” to discuss the issues involved in a dispassionate manner. The primary argument here is: “The internet has a long memory. But what if the pictures, data and personal information that it can pull up about you appear unfair, one-sided or just plain wrong? More and more people are claiming they have a “right to be forgotten” and are even trying to delete themselves from the web. The issue appears poised to generate legal, technological and moral wranglings for years to come.”
The session on unpublishing led by David Jordan, Director, Editorial Policy and Standards, British Broadcasting Corporation, managed to capture some of the real challenges in dealing with the request for removing content from the web archive. The principles for web archiving of media organisations, according to David Jordan, are: material published online will be part of a permanently accessible archive; the archive of online content is a matter of public record and its existence is in the public interest; material will not normally be removed or we risk erasing the past and altering history, and online content — whether part of a catch-up service or a permanent archive — should only be removed or amended in exceptional circumstances.
Risks after removal
Before removing any online content, Mr. Jordan alerted us that we must consider the potential harm such an action can do to the public interest, and the integrity of the archive or catch-up service. He said: “There is a risk, with removal, that we simply create suspicion about what else is missing and fuel conspiracy theories about its absence. We also need to consider the risk that information we remove may take on a life of its own and become distorted in the retelling. In the absence of the original content, it will be harder to refute inaccurate accounts of our content.”
Some of the participants also raised the question of the Internet cache that keeps some of the content widely in circulation and that in these cases, removal from one site may simply be ineffective. The questions that came up for discussion were: can things be done which fall short of removal? Should the public record always be sacrosanct? Do we have a duty to ensure that the public record is complete — e.g., an accurate report of arrest and charge/trial but no report of acquittal? Can steps short of removal solve the problem without compromising the record?
Two cases
Mr. Jordan, among other things, discussed two specific cases that may interest the readers of this newspaper. The first is a case of a law student charged in connection with a prank about a bomb threat in a public place. All charges against the law student were dropped well before the case went to trial. His lawyer said he was simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” A year later, the student requests that reports of the charges be removed from the online archive. He is job hunting and concerned that because searches of his name in Google pull up those articles he will be stigmatised.
The second, is a request from an Iranian political activist about his interview to the BBC. “I gave two interviews to the BBC website and my name is printed there. As you may know, political relations between Iran and the U.K. is tremendously worsening and the Iranian administration has passed a law that makes interviews with foreign media illegal and there could be severe consequences for any violation. Currently, I reside in the U.S. but I plan to visit Iran pretty soon and these interviews may be really troublesome. I would like to know if there is any possibility that my name and photo can be modified to anonymous due to security reasons.”
“The longtail of news: To unpublish or not to unpublish,” a paper by Kathy English, public editor of the Toronto Star, examines how news organisations throughout North America are responding to requests to unpublish news content. I propose to create a template for The Hindu in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief and the Editor over the next few months for unpublishing.
readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
Keywords: unpublishing news, online privacy debate, internet privacy, Snowden revelations, Editorial Policy and Standards, Turkey media, Reccip Tayip Erdogan, Leveson enquiry
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/Readers-Editor/to-unpublish-or-not-to-unpublish/article5998638.ece
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Auf ein Wort
Am Samstag war der internationale Tag der Pressefreiheit. „Geheimnisse, Standards, Korruption und Vertuschung: Transparent bleiben in einer trüben Welt“, lautet das aktuelle Motto des Weltkongresses der Organisation der Medien-Ombudsleute (ONO).
Von Kerstin Dolde, (auf dem Foto bei der ONO-Präsentation der deutschen Medienombudsleute), Leseranwältin
Seit Montag findet in Hamburg die internationale Tagung statt, zum ersten Mal treffen sich die Teilnehmer in Deutschland. Journalisten aus aller Welt diskutieren über Qualitätsstandards, Lesergewinnung und Themen wie NSA und Snowden-Enthüllungen.
Medien-Ombudsleute, Leseranwälte oder -botschafter, die Bezeichnung ist in den Häusern unterschiedlich. Die Gemeinsamkeit: Sie alle vermitteln bei Anliegen und Beschwerden zwischen Bürgern und Medien, gehen auf Leserkritik ein und üben selbst Kritik. Auch die Frankenpost ist als ONO-Mitglied in Hamburg dabei: Unsere Zeitung wurde gebeten, den Kollegen aus aller Welt ihr Leseranwalts-Konzept und die Erfahrungen aus drei Jahren vorzustellen.
Äußerst prominent besetzt ist dabei die Riege der Redner dieser ONO-Tagung: Ewan MacAskill vom Londoner Guardian, der kürzlich zusammen mit Kollegen den Pulitzer-Preis für seine Enthüllung der NSA-Sammlung von Telefon- und Internetdaten sowie die Gespräche mit Whistleblower Edward Snowden bekam. Mac-Askill hält genauso einen Vortrag wie Yavuz Baydar. Der Kolumnist bekam kürzlich den Europäischen Pressepreis für seinen Kampf für die Pressefreiheit. Dazu ist der Oscar nominierte Schauspieler Steve Coogan („Philomena“) dabei, der über seine schlechten Erfahrungen mit der britischen Boulevardpresse berichtet.
Noch bis einschließlich heute, Mittwoch, diskutieren die Teilnehmer über wichtige Fragen wie diese: „Wie kann man die Qualität von Zeitungen steigern? Welche Rolle haben Medien im Spannungsfeld zwischen NSA-Spionage, den Sicherheitsinteressen von Staaten und öffentlichen Informationsinteressen der Bürger? Wie weit dürfen Medien gehen?
Die ONO engagiert sich seit 1980 für Qualitätsjournalismus und Pressefreiheit sowie für den Erhalt von ethischen Standards in den Medien.
Ralfs Blog 