- Amanda Farnsworth
- 31 Oct 06, 04:13 PM
The was indeed stern. Warnings of coastal flooding, mass migration and the worst depression since World War Two if we don't act now to save the planet.
What has struck me increasingly over the past month or two is that it looks like the politicians may be way out in front of the general public on climate change. All three main political parties now appear to agree that green taxes are the way to go - indeed they vie with each other about which can be most green.
But for many of our viewers, who e-mailed, phoned and wrote in their thousands, they are much more sceptical and they were concerned that green taxes were just another way of squeezing money out of them by the treasury. They also were worried that the UK may end up doing much more than other countries and therefore pay a disproportionate amount of the cost.
So when we came to discuss how to cover this report yesterday morning, we were very concerned to try and reflect the element of scepticism that many of our viewers felt, as well as giving the information about what was in the report and what major government figures, economists and scientists were saying about it. We wanted to try and test Stern's figures and also the willingness of the public to pay green taxes.
It was a difficult balance to strike - do you think we were successful?
Amanda Farnsworth is editor of Inside Sport.
- Steve Herrmann
- 31 Oct 06, 10:05 AM
We鈥檝e been looking recently at a site called . Its is "to monitor corporate news organisations to uncover bias" and it does this by tracking changes to stories on this website and . It also looks for the "censoring" of comments to our .
On news stories, it automatically detects and shows where they have been amended or updated, then visually highlights the relevant lines or passages.
Having looked at various stories treated in this way, what it mostly reveals is the minute-to-minute editorial processes of 24-hour online news, where stories are written, published, then updated and added to for as long as details continue to emerge. It also shows some of the workings of the writing and sub-editing process in which stories are subbed for length as new quotes are added in, paragraphs are rephrased to accommodate new material, and pictures, links and background are added.
It also, of course, shows up corrections. Our policy is to correct anything that鈥檚 wrong - spelling mistake, factual error or anything else - as soon as we become aware of it. News Sniffer highlights even the smallest of these changes in a way we don鈥檛. Should we do something similar?
When we make a major change or revision to a story we republish it with a new timestamp, indicating it鈥檚 a new version of the story. If there鈥檚 been a change to a key point in the story we will often point this out in the later version (saying something like "earlier reports had said...").
But lesser changes - including minor factual errors, corrected spellings and reworded paragraphs - go through with no new timestamp because in substance the story has not actually progressed any further. This has led to accusations we are "" - a sinister-sounding term that implies we are actively trying to hide what we are doing. We鈥檙e not. It鈥檚 just that continually updating the timestamp risks making it meaningless, and pages of notes about when and where minor revisions are made do not make for a riveting read - as News Sniffer, I would argue, tends to prove.
We are concentrating on providing the fullest, most accurate and most timely account we can and there鈥檚 a risk that adding a lot of detail about the process will get in the way of telling the story - affecting clarity for the reader and the speed of the journalists.
But if sites like this can help show more of the journalistic process and make it more transparent that is no bad thing.
I haven鈥檛 said anything about because, at the moment, we think their tracking is not working properly and is highlighting comments as 鈥渃ensored鈥 which are, in fact, published and live on the Have your Say pages. We are in touch with the architect of News Sniffer to see whether and how this can be fixed.
UPDATE, Friday lunchtime: I've responded to some of the comments raised below here and here.
Steve Herrmann is editor of the
Daily Mail: "The 大象传媒 has been accused of wasting money after it was revealed that plans to give its most famous building a lavish face-lift are over-budget and behind schedule." ()
The Guardian: "大象传媒 news could be hit by a 12-hour strike next week after the broadcasting union Bectu said it expected its members to vote for industrial action." ()
