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The Editors

Editors in tray
Kevin Marsh

Maintaining standards


The College of Journalism website - CoJo online, in the office at least - was launched at midnight on Tuesday.

cojo203300.jpgAn odd launch in some respects because, initially anyway, it won't be visible outside the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ ... though we hope its effects will be. The aim is to add to every Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ journalist's skills, learning and judgement and through that improve the service of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ journalism to its paymasters, the licence fee payers.

The college and website came about as a direct result of the Gilligan affair, the Hutton inquiry and the report of a senior Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News executive, Ron Neil ... who, as it happens, recommended a residential college to reinforce Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ journalists' learning. Sadly, a cloistered, towered, Gothic pile somewhere deep in the countryside was not to be. They don't come cheap and the licence fee is, after all, the licence fee. So, a website in cyberspace and a college located above an Italian deli in W12 is what it is. There is no wisteria.

But there is learning in ethics, values, law, writing, broadcast and production skills - films, tutors, scenarios and hypotheticals, articles, podcasts and links. Five hundred pages at the moment and forty-plus films. And it will grow - partly because one of the other main functions of the college and its website is to generate intelligent critique and discussion about Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ journalism and editorial decisions. Did we get it right over the Ipswich murders? Saddam's execution? Pictures of Kate Middleton?

One of the questions that's inevitably asked is - why is it only for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ journalists? Why can't viewers and listeners see for themselves? Well, as the UK Press Gazette it's very likely that it will be an external site before very long - or more probably, parts of it will be.

And when it is, perhaps it'll scotch some of the dafter ideas about the college - like those in ... an excellent case study, incidentally, in journalistic tosh with its predictable and misleading 'back to school' image and the - ho, ho, ho - amusing picture of an inky-fingered J Paxman behind a desk (Is this the Beano?)

Our initial focus is - and has to be - on the skills and learning of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ journalists. It's what all major employers do - offer their staff the best possible learning in their trade. But the argument that, in time, we should share with our paymasters the thinking and learning behind our decision-making is a powerful one. As is the argument that the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ has a responsibility to play some role in raising and maintaining journalistic standards in the UK - standards which, for the written press at least, mean five out of six people don't trust what they read in the papers.

Before that can happen, though, there is an array of technical and practical hurdles to be overcome. For example, to be truly useful to Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ journalists, the site has to link extensively to internal Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ web pages - an external site would have to have all these links removed. There are also tricky questions about the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's place in the journalists' learning market; would a licence fee-funded learning site be fair competition? And so on.

My hunch is that we'll come up with answers to these questions before the end of the year and some part or parts of the site will be made public. Before then, though, I hope our audiences will already have noticed the value of the college and website.

Kevin Marsh is editor of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ College of Journalism

Peter Rippon

Interviewing the BNP


There is something very ritualistic about interviewing the British National Party on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ. We go through the same editorial debate every time, we do the interview, we get complaints. Our experience on Broadcasting House this weekend was no exception (listen to it here).

Broadcasting House logoThere is a body of opinion that says we should never interview the BNP. We should never give it the 'oxygen of publicity'. I profoundly disagree. It is a legitimate political party with a degree of political support. The debate we have is about whether the editorial grounds for doing an interview are strong enough, about how much coverage we should do, and about how the sequence should be constructed and the interview conducted.

This weekend the editorial grounds for doing it were strong. There was the in European Parliament, outside the English National Ballet, and as Labour MP John Cruddas conceded in the piece, a BNP emboldened by a sense that the debate about multi-culturalism in the UK has shifted. The fact that in the collective memory of the programme no one could remember ever having done a BNP interview meant we were not in danger of giving it more attention that it deserves.

The other issue to consider was how to do the interview. There are different schools of thought on this. Personally I think rigorous but polite, evidence-based, dissection is far more effective than putting on a cloak of indignation and just hectoring a lot on the assumption that everyone agrees with you.

For further debate about this kind of issue have a look here.

Peter Rippon is editor of World at One, PM and Broadcasting House

Host

Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ in the news, Tuesday

  • Host
  • 16 Jan 07, 10:29 AM

The Times: Reports the launch of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's College of Journalism website. ()

Daily Telegraph: Radio critic Gillian Reynolds asks whether the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ should "pay commercial going rates every time it advertises itself on its own networks". ()

The Guardian: Reviews the first edition of new Panorama series. ()

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