Courts in the 21st century: It's not just about tape recorders but laptops, live blogging and tweeting

A post by Siobhain Butterworth on guardian.co.uk takes the debate prompted by Heather Brooke today about whether tape recorders should be allowed in court a bit further.
What about laptops, live blogging and tweeting?
Butterworth writes: "There is something rather quaint about journalists in the 21st century using pens and notebooks to record what goes on in court hearings when the tools of the trade now include laptops, mobiles, BlackBerrys and other digital paraphernalia. Why not use them in court? In fact, why not report live from the courtroom? The obvious answer is that judges won't let you.
"In the US, lawyers have been fighting for the right of reporters and others to live-blog and tweet from court with some success. The Tribune, in Greeley, Colorado, is currently tweeting the trial of a man accused of killing his wife and last year, in Iowa, the Cedar Rapids Gazette live-blogged a tax and mail fraud case."
She quotes US lawyer Steven Zansberg of Denver law firm Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz :"The role the press plays is an important role and the question becomes why shouldn't they do it in the courtroom as opposed to stepping outside the courtroom at intervals."

Are churnalists swept way on a raft of webese?

Guardian readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth in her last Open Door column today includes an epistle she and the editor of the style guide were sent by one of the paper's writers last April. It was addressed to the "Custodians of the English" language:

"You may think I am making too much of this, but bear with me. I just started reading this story on our blessed website [about cricket] and of course, the first thing I read was the intro: 'Former England captain Michael Vaughan is among a raft of high-profile omissions from the first Test squad to take on West Indies at Lord's next week.'
"Now, I'm afraid at that point I gave up, such is my loathing of the word 'raft' when used out of context in this absurd way, but more generally because it signifies that the piece is not written in English but in a new language called webese which I fear will increasingly take over, as hard-pressed writers have to churn out stuff and use words like "raft" to ramp up (is that webese?) the significance of what they are writing about. I noticed someone wrote to the readers' editor yesterday criticising the rampant cliche levels in the Guardian and picking out "eye-watering" as swine flu-like in its contagiousness. This bleedin' raft is another example: four players who might have been thought to have a reasonable chance of being selected for the first Test have been omitted. Sink the raft and just give us the facts. Please be vigilant as we float, on our non-metaphorical raft, towards the linguistic rapids."
It was signed: "Your obedient servant, Sir Bufton Tufton KBE"
Sir Bufton returned to the fray in October,  writing: "I noticed a 'rushed to hospital' in an intro last week. I winced but let it pass. Two days later, it was in a front-page caption. Can you deal with it in the appropriate ­fashion? Surely only news if the ambulance carrying the grievously injured victim dawdles on the way to hospital, stopping at a drive-thru McDonald's, taking in a movie etc etc. What's to become of us all?"
Whose to succeed Butterworth? No decision yet, but my vote goes to Sir Bufton Tufton.

Credit agencies where credit is due

Agency journalists are used to seeing their stories appearing under other reporters' by-lines in the national press even if their copy has been unchanged.
They will welcome the view of Guardian readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth, who writes in her Open Door column today that the paper's journalists should follow its editorial code on attributing stories.

She says: "The editorial code seems workable and fair, and I see no reason to depart from it. A story that includes material from another publication should say so. If it contains a significant amount of agency copy, the journalist's name should be followed by "and agencies". Slightly rewritten wire copy should say "staff and agencies". Only if the story is nearly all the journalist's own work should he or she take credit."
Butterworth says she became aware that the Sport site of the Guardian "routinely publishes stories without attribution" when mistakes in stories needed to be corrected.

Guardian grovel to subs: 'You are journalists'

The Guardian readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth apologises to the paper's own subs today for not calling them journalists.
A piece in Butterworth's Open Door column on Monday referred to "journalists and sub editors". Today an item in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications column states: "Subeditors are journalists. In trying to distinguish between the roles the column should have referred to writers/reporters and subeditors."

'Guardian corrections are rubbish'

A Guardian reader has complained that the paper's correction column isn't funny anymore, readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth, reveals in her Open Door column today.
The reader, Bill Edmead, complained: "Some while back, the corrections had a reputation for often being witty. The corrections we get these days are tediously dull and dry … is it that you have to fill the standard available space so have to put any old rubbish in? Please, get a grip."
Butterworth replies: "Any old rubbish? The paper's corrections may not always be a bundle of laughs, but some mistakes don't lend themselves to jokes. It's not exactly side-splitting that a birthday list included someone who died three years ago, or that a journalist didn't tell readers that one of the people he interviewed for a story on home-buying is related to him – to take two examples from last week."
She also reveals: "Traffic to the readers' editor's office has grown from 6,000 emails, letters and calls in 1999-2000, when the website was a fledgling, to around 22,500 in 2008-09. We're told about so many mistakes that we can't always find room for the sort of items that make journalists blush and readers smile, but are otherwise quite harmless, such as this correction from 1999: "Homophone corner, from a piece about Goole, page 11, Travel, August 28, in which we referred to "the original farming, fishing and fouling hamlet…"

Michael Jackson sells newspapers

Why did newspapers, even the posh ones, go so big on the death of Michael Jackson?
Siobhain Butterworth, readers' editor of the Guardian, has the answer in her Open Door column today.
She writes: "Although the coverage was too much for some of the paper's readers, the desire for information about Michael Jackson was evidently not restricted to the web; the Guardian's circulation increased by 9% on Friday 26 June, the day after the pop star died, and by 4% the following day."

NightJack: Guardian readers' editor says 'Journalists should protect bloggers'

Guardian readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth suggests in her Open Door column this week that journalists should protect the identity of bloggers and other "self publishers" to ensure a free flow of information.
She said the Guardian had decided to protect the identy of Twitterers from Iran to protect their safety and described The Times' outing of policeman blogger NightJack as "questionable."
Butterworth says:"The difficulties in reporting events in Iran show that journalists may sometimes need to treat self-publishers as they would their own confidential sources in relation to both verification and protecting identities.
"The ethical obligation journalists have to protect confidential sources is included in the UK Press Complaints Commission's code of practice. In addition, section 10 of the 1981 Contempt of Court Act provides a legal shield: a court cannot force authors and publishers to disclose confidential sources unless it is necessary in the interests of justice or national security or for the prevention of disorder or crime.
"We call the legal protection given to confidential sources "journalistic privilege", but what's really at stake is the free flow of information and to see it only in terms of the reporter's shield is to take too narrow a view. This brings me to last week's court ruling, which allowed the Times to "out" police officer Richard Horton as the author of the NightJack blog. Rejecting Horton's privacy claim, Mr Justice Eady said: "Blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity." Nevertheless, the Times' conduct looks questionable. In the absence of obvious wrongdoing, don't journalists have an interest in protecting, rather than pursuing, anonymous self-publishers? They are, after all, potential sources of information."

Jarre obit shows danger of Wikipedia hoaxes

The Guardian's readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth tells readers today that an obit in the paper on French composer Maurice Jarre included fake quotes which were added to his Wikipedia profile by a student.
Butterworth says: "The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn't use information they find there if it can't be traced back to a reliable primary source. "
The student, Shane Fitzgerald, of University College Dublin, says he is shocked by the results of his "experiment" with Jarre's Wikipedia page. "I expected the quote to get into the blogs, but I didn't expect it to get into mainstream newspapers."
Fitzgerald told Butterworth he came up with the idea while writing an essay on globalisation and the media: "My aim was to show that an undergraduate university student in Ireland can influence what newspapers are doing around the world and also that the reliance of newspapers on the internet can lead to some faults."
Butterworth writes: "Consider the job done Shane."

Moscow Times makes fool of Guardian

The Guardian is famous for its April Fools from its special report on the island of San Serriffe to its spoof last Wednesday claiming that The Guardian was the first newspaper to move to Twitter.
But it seems the biter has been bitten.
Readers' editor Siobhain Butterworth notes today: "A correction also needs to be published to an item headed "Wheels of Power" (4 April), which said that, according to reports in Russia, the ZiL limousine President Dmitry Medvedev was bringing to London is so tough it can survive a small nuclear attack "if the wind is blowing in a certain direction". The original story, in the Moscow Times, also said: "Officials at the factory where Medvedev's limousine was assembled were so confident in the level of safety provided by the vehicle that they placed the designers inside the car while soldiers shot rocket-propelled grenades at it - a tradition that dates back to the Stalin era." The Guardian journalist who wrote the story had failed to notice that the report in the Moscow Times was published on 1 April."