Archive for February, 2008

Nice find over at the MoJ disclosure log, showing exactly how many murder suspects have been bailed this year.

As of 31 January, 60 people charged with murder were released on bail, as were 35 manslaughter defendants. That’s 13 per cent of people charged with murder and 85 per cent of manslaughter defendants. The average percentage of defendants granted bail is about 68 per cent.

Now, the real bet is whether we get a headline of “95 suspected killers free to walk the streets last month” in one of the tabloids.

It’s almost a shame disclosure logs don’t reveal who asked for info, as I’m curious as to whether it was a journalist who made this ‘un. It’s clearly a story - but as the response was put online the day of release (Friday) it’s there for anyone to use.

Hat-tip to Martin Stabe for a great way to keep up with these disclosures. A site called “Dapper” (Data Mapper - cunning, eh?) lets you turn any regular web content into an RSS feed - or CSV files, map data, all sorts.

Once you’ve got it set up, it means other people’s FOI finds shoot straight to your desktop. It’s the web 2.0 version of anonymous brown envelopes arriving in the mail…

I now have a piece published under my byline (in the Press Gazette once again) including the quote: “Tony Blair is not even worth being called a cunt.” It’s the first piece of foul language ever published under my name - might as well start big, I suppose.
Link to follow when it’s online…

Apologies, posting’s been a bit sparse for the last week or so. I’ve got a job interview Thursday and I’ve been prepping with just about all of my spare time - it’s really quite a good job. Anyway, usual service will resume Friday, but I’ll try to get a real post up here later today.

Wish me luck…

Nice post over at Guido Fawkes yesterday, showing Labour’s 2005 election poster, which reads “I was only seven, but I’ll never forget repossession”, followed by a quote from Guido:

“Repossessions are up 94% since Labour ran this election advert…”

True - 27,000 houses were reposessed in 2007, and there’s every chance they’ll still go up. Bad, bad labour right?

Not necessarily: it’s also true that repossessions are still 65% lower than they were under the peak of the Tory housing collapse in 1991, when about 75,000 homes were repossessed.

Times are tough enough without making out they’re even worse than they are…

The row over “Flat Earth News”, Nick Davies’ polemic on the state of journalism rumbles on, and it’s been noted that I’ve been suspiciously quiet on the issue. The reason’s not all that sinister – it’s simply that I haven’t spent the last twenty years working in a newsroom, or the last year talking to people who have. As such, I haven’t got much to add, so kept schtum. Clearly, I’m a little new to this blogging business.

The furore the book’s caused in print is impressive – vitriolic and adoring reviews abound, extracts in the Eye and Press Gazette, and columns and blogposts all over the shop. One of the book’s subjects has even engaged his lawyers over his portrayal in the book. Fun times ahoy, and the debate looks set to trundle on for some while yet.

There’s much less evidence of outrage or scandal among the public at large. The reason, methinks, is that a sizable chunk of the UK’s population already though we were up to much worse.

Take the Sharia row as an example. My friends and I re in the habit of talking current affairs down at the pub. One guy had gone to the trouble of reading the full text of the speech made by the Archbishop of Canterbury (hence ABC). His view was that “The Media” has distorted the ABC’s meaning by picking out only the most sensational chunks.

Asked whether public discourse would be much improved were newspapers to print huge verbatim chunks of politicians’ speeches, which almost no-one would read, he responded: “I always wondered how journalists lose touch with reality. I think you’re showing me how.”

My anecdote is barely needed – other than to show I have cynical friends - the figures back up the lack of public faith and affection for journalists. Reuters reports that just 16 per cent of UK adults trust journalists to tell the truth - even fewer than trust politicians. Doctors are lucky enough to by trusted by 91 per cent, judges by 76 per cent and priests 73 per cent. Make of that what you will - assuming you trust Reuters enough to believe the figures, of course. Broadcasters no longer rise above this disdain, after last year’s string of “trust” scandals.

This lack of trust in journalists is corrosive, and leaves us wide open for manipulation. A politician (and I count the ABC in this group) can make a hugely controversial point in extremely guarded, academic language, with stacks of qualification, in the knowledge that the media will pick up on his key point. It’s the job of journalists to simplify dense, dry data and text into ’stories’ people will engage with – so much of the qualification is lost. This is not going to come as a shock to anyone.

The result? If an idea goes down well, the politician has the credit. If not, he can blame the media for distorting an academic speech at an obscure function, knowing a good chunk of the population will at least partially accept this.

The lack of trust erodes the media’s position in other ways – the media is easier to manipulate if they have a weak hand. If a paper has a negative story about the Government, the Government can more confidently slam it (even if true) knowing that it will at least weaken the story.

At the face of things, Nick Davies’ book is only going to make things worse, by showing up all the flaws and faults of journalists and journalism. I don’t think that would be a fair reading. We were lucky enough at City to have Davies come and speak to us last week. He was interesting, engaging and enthusiastic (and very patient in the face of a torrent of questions).

While I may not agree with all of his conclusions, he seemed to be a committed journalist hoping to improve the quality of journalism – and the esteem in which it’s held (I also suspect on one level he’s rather enjoying his sudden notoriety in some sectors of the media). Alas, he admitted he had few ideas about how to manage this.

Davies has started a debate and a period of slightly indignant introspection in certain corners of the media, and that can only be a good thing. Most journalists want to produce decent news stories that are honest and accurate (yes, yes, call me naive, if you must). Numerous factors make this bloody difficult, but until we look at how to do this – and why we’re so reviled, it won’t change.

Part of the theory of, and reason for, journalism is that scrutiny of people in power is essential to keep ’society’ honest and fair. To condemn anyone for occasionally turning that scrutiny onto journalism itself risks hypocrisy. We’re taught not let cliche into our copy, so trotting out “dog does not eat dog” doesn’t really pass muster.

Still, lest we get ahead of ourselves here, we must remember the other reason for journalism: to fill those annoying spaces between the adverts. And hey, someone’s gotta do it.

Yet another cabinet office google search here - this time “ball james foi”. If you like the site enough to visit regularly, guys, you can subscribe to my feed here

Everyone can be a pundit - I’m proving myself right by joining in right here. The trouble is, there’s hundreds of indicators and you can pick and choose to suit. The UK stock market (the FTSE) always nosedives when the Dow Jones does - so if the US plummets we do. No, wait. The UK’s stock market fell less (proportionately) during the dotcom crash than the Dow. We’re losing our dependence! No, wait. The US is our biggest trade partner after the EU, so if they stop buying, our exports will suffer. No, wait….

The easiest was is to pick your argument then your data. But there’s actually a statistical trick or two that can help guide the way. One of the simplest is below. It’s called regression, and is a bit like the scatter graphs and lines of best fit you learn for GCSE on steroids. Regression is a way to examine a relationship between two things, or variables. It tells you if there’s a relationship between the two and if so, how strong it is.

It doesn’t tell you anything about why there’s a relationship, which variable is causing the change in the other, or even whether some outside factor is the source. It is, though, quite a handy way to see what’s going on, even if it can’t tell us why.

So, what happens if we run a regression on FTSE and Dow levels for the last five years? The chart below (click it to enlarge) tells the story:

The line is pretty clear - as one index rises, the other does the same. If one falls, the other joins in. The chart says more than that, though: the r-squared value shown on the chart (0.8667) shows how much of the variance (difference) between the two variables is explained by the model, as a percentage. So over 86% of the variation is covered.

There’s one more figure of interest, not on the chart. The p-value. This, roughly speaking, measures how likely you’d be to get this result if there was no relationship between the two variables. It’s sometimes explained as “the probability the result is a fluke”, though is frowned on in the statistical community. But the statistical community is small and has no mafia connections, so it’s safe enough to think of it in those terms.

A p-value of less than 0.05 is generally held to be pretty strong. The p-value on this data is <0.0001 - a phenomenally strong result.

This is a really crude measure, and there’s lots of intricacies that could be factored in, but no-one’s producing a thesis here. The simple, if rough, conclusion is that if the US economy goes south, the UK will be phenomenally lucky not to do the same.

Now, no-one wants to have to go and grab a degree in statistics to read the business section - or work out their mortgage - but using some of this stuff can really clear up the picture, if it’s done right.

My latest Cif piece - my tenth! - is online today. It’s on MPs’ expenses and the campaign to get them released under FOI. You can read it here, if you so wish.

Greenslade today posts on “exploitation” of aspiring journalists on unpaid work experience. He’s entirely right, we all regard it as part and parcel of getting into the business - fashion magazines are particularly notorious, with the “job description” of work experience limited to sorting, receiving and sending clothes from the cupboard. Ouch. I’ve been much luckier with work exp - not wanting to go into fashion helps - but find generally the less formalised the work experience, and the fewer workies around the office, the better the work on offer.

Of much more interest were Greenslade’s thoughts on work experience acting as a barrier to those from lower-income backgrounds:
“Only the rich can afford to work for months without pay on magazines - and at newspapers, TV channels and radio stations.”

This is absolutely true as far as it goes, but the difficulties of getting into journalism if you’re not from a financially secure background goes much deeper. Most entrants into journalism are not just graduates, but also complete a postgraduate diploma. Increasingly postgraduate courses are changing to one-year MAs rather than shorter, cheaper, PgDips. Bursaries and financial support is not common, though City is trying to find sources of funding for scholarships in the future.

Just getting an undergraduate degree is a significant barrier to many on lower incomes, and research has suggested that bursaries are little use, as the earnings loss at A-level is the real barrier. Still fewer can afford to forgo an extra year’s earnings, not to mention finding £6300 (City) in fees plus living costs, to take a postgraduate course.

Journalism has even more issues if it’s trying to attract a more diverse pool of talent. Salaries in journalism are low, especially when compared to graduate averages. People who took my undergrad degree (PPE at Ox) at the same time as me are now enjoying £30,000 salaries within 6 months of graduation. I’ve gone an extra £10,000 into debt and can expect about £18,000 starting salary if I’m lucky. Those from lower income backgrounds tend to be more influenced by earnings than those with secure financial backgrounds (the paper is locked behind ATHENS, so I can’t link), and journalism - certainly its lower rungs - has little to offer financially.

The water is muddied yet more given journalism’s uncertain future: print circulations are falling and online revenues are far too small to make up the shortfall. It’s still not remotely clear how journalism will consolidate once the “online future” is the “online present”, but the consensus is that there’ll be far fewer jobs.

This need not be totally bleak - one journalist bluntly summarised the future as offering “fewer crappy jobs for fewer crappy journalists - but the good ones will always find work”. Harsh but fair, but the profession could branch out, too. Data projects (like everyblock in America or 192.com in the UK) start to hint at possibilities for journalism in the future. It’s a good time to be a specialist - knowing your way around data (or “computer-assisted”) reporting, online, or knowing any niche well, could help future prospects - and pay. This could bode well for a wider intake of journalists from other professions.

But in the meantime, is it really any wonder that the only people wanting to enter a profession that is undergoing its greatest upheaval in decades, costs a fortune to get into, doesn’t pay well once you do have a good parental safety net? Since this is the case, firms can get away with long unpaid work experience shifts - it doesn’t help matters, but is much more a result of more major issues than a cause of them.

The real shock is that there’s still so many of us battling to get into journalism, whether signing up to media studies courses, brushing up on shorthand, or sending out CVs to Marie Claire.

On a related note, I’m still looking for work experience at Easter. Should anyone be looking for interns (hey, I can dream), feel free to get in touch. I’ll be good, I promise…

There’ve been three stories about bad/calamitous days (or plunges) on the stock markets since my post on last month’s “crash” (technically not a crash, it was only a 5 per cent drop). Yet looking at the actual level of the market it’s at around 5875. Which is about the level of the market before the crash. We might have a lot of economic issues at the moment, but it’s not really showing in the markets just yet…