Tweet in the name of the law – social network training for police is better late than never

A few weeks ago a detective knocked on my door.  They thought a neighbour had been badly attacked on a street late at night but couldn’t identify him.

He was in a coma, his family abroad and his wallet gone – they had a clue he lived next door but had no pictures with which to identify him and no way to contact his next of kin.

Within minutes of logging on to his Facebook page another woman in his block of flats had established contact with the family and provided a library of photographs the detective could use. Except, despite our encouragement and the exceptional circumstances, he wouldn’t.

Raising his eyebrows, as if to say ‘silly old me’ he told us that he wasn’t very good with computers and had never really ‘got round to’ Facebook. So, he smiled hopelessly, if it was all alright with us, he would wait for the girlfriend to arrive at Gatwick.

My neighbour and I were astounded. There was a man was lying in a hospital bed unconscious, a family half way around the world worried sick and no proof positive of his identity.

And on a computer in the next room was a library of photos showing him from every possible angle, a list of contacts at our fingertips and even, conceivably, information about his last movements.

As a journalist and regular facebook and twitter user all I know the power these social networks can provide. It just seemed like such a waste.

So it as a relief that it has been announced that police officers will finally receive training on social networking sites.

Considering Facebook launched in Februrary 2004 (Twitter in 2006) it is outrageous this training has taken over six-year become part of standard training procedure.

As a journalist, feigning ignorance wouldn’t get you very far with your news editor if a rival scooped you with a story from a social network – and why should this be any different in other professions that rely on information?

Officers will now be taught about evidence-gathering on these sites as part of detectives training at the National Policing Improvement Agency. 3,500 detectives pass through the agency’s training courses each year so this is a good start, but in all likelihood my polite but social-network-ly inept detective is likely remain just as bemused as ever.

Do real people use Twitter?

© Twitter

Twitter is a social network dominated by people with something to promote. Whether they are journalists – using the network to crowd source content and promote themselves – or politicians – attempting to engage with ‘the public’ – Twitter is in danger of being deviod of ‘real’ people communicating on it.

To find out whether Twitter is a tool used by the masses and not just the mass media, we took to the streets of Islington, north London, to find out what people thought about the social tool and the media’s growing fascination with it.

Hugo, 35, of the Moro restaurant on Exmouth Market, said he found social networking sites such as Facebook “scary”, though did consider Twitter as a useful tool for professionals:

http://abhn841.portfolios.cutlines.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/hugo.mp3

Moya Sarner, 23, a journalism student at City University said she thought that Twitter was mostly used by journalists and politicians, though she did use it:

http://abhn841.portfolios.cutlines.org/wp-content/audio/moya.mp3

Mandy, 20, a student said she used Twitter to ‘stalk’ celebrities and that the tool was good for people in positions of importance:

http://abhn841.portfolios.cutlines.org/wp-content/audio/mandy.mp3

Debbie Arno, 48, a nursery nurse said her children used Twitter and Facebook, though she personally thinks the “whole world has gone crazy” and that life is not private anymore :
http://abhn841.portfolios.cutlines.org/wp-content/audio/debby.mp3

By Richard Partington and Georgia Graham

Tweet or get off the pot

Social media is going to be mandatory at the BBC. Peter Horrocks new director of BBC Global News told the Guardian: “This isn’t just a kind of fad… I’m afraid you’re not doing your job if you can’t do those things. It’s not discretionary”

And he’s right of course. Social media tools are whimsical self congratulatory models no more – if indeed they ever were. They are the tools that most journalists should be using for their trade. Personally, I could not have survived my recent weeks of regional work experience without them. They meant I could turn up in Edinburgh, Bristol or somewhat less alien Highgate and Hampstead and still provide an insight into local issues  – not to mention an entire social network of local contacts just an @ sign away.

image: Matt Hamm

At the Edinburgh Evening News they gave me a page three story on my first day, about renewable Christmas trees. In Bristol at the Evening Post Facebook came to my rescue with a comment thread of people discussing the best place to source a sledge after stocks had diminished due to extended West Country snow.

At the Ham and High twitterers came up tops again with probably my best spot – a fire was happening there and then in Highgate, and I got there in time to snap the fire engines as they extinguished the last of the flames.

And still such draconian implementation of social media worries me. Often the immediacy of the breaking news story on twitter is fantastic and as close to the horses mouth a modern journalist is likely to get, but the wonderful world of twitter also misses a hell of a lot.

I noticed this particularly while at the Bristol Evening Post. It was snowing heavily outside and it seemed the twitterverse could think of nothing else. Every post mentioning Bristol or from a person based in the Bristol area contained the white stuff, and very little else. The real stories that week came from in depth journalism on drinking statistics, court reporting and Freedom of Information act requests. The pages were peppered with snowmen and sledges sure, but the newsroom would have been doing the city a disservice if they had not had their traditional news values and reporting to fall back on

Horrocks continued: ‘If you don’t like it, if you think that level of change or that different way of working isn’t right for me, then go and do something else, because it’s going to happen. You’re not going to be able to stop it.’

It’s important to keep refreshing that blue bird, hoping for a scoop to fall into your lap, but reporters who are skeptical of the new social media deserve to have a voice too. If they provide innovative and relevant stories that haven’t already graced an RSS feed then more the better. Horrocks’ my way or the highway approach may be a fresh approach for the BBC but it will be a dangerous day if every social media skeptic leaves to ‘do something else.’ Newspapers and news organizations would likely lose a lot of older talent that no twitter search or facebook group will be able to replace.

Gatelygate sweeps the web after the Mail's Moir writes homophobic slander

I’m trying to develop more of an open mind about Britain’s newspapers but sometimes learning to love the Daily Mail is really hard work.

The press complaints commissions website has just gone down due to the sheer number of complaints it is currently receiving about Jan Moir’s article today: Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death.

On a personal note, my 9-year-old self, who had a slightly obsessive crush on this particular Boyzone member (and with those dashing curtains who didn’t?) is outraged. What angers the grown up in me more is the ridiculous levels of conjecture and cruel speculation that makes up the meat of the article.

Moir makes completely nonsensical links and jumps between Gately’s sexuality and the nature of his death.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered. 

And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy.

After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards.

What’s worse, for some completely unexplained reason, Moir goes on suggests that Gately’s tragic death would serve as a blow to the ‘happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.’ Moir continued:

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately’s last night raise troubling questions about what happened.

Just for good measure she finishes with straight down-the-line homophobic statement that has nothing to do with the situation or Stephen Gately.

On Tuesday Twitterers were indespensible in the promotion of the Guardian’s right to report on Paul Farrelly’s parliamentary question about the oil traders Trafigura. Within hours these tweets essentially made the Carter-Ruck ‘super’ injunction null and void.

Today the tide turned, these same people made it clear that Moir’s irrelevant comments were, in contrast, absolutely not in the public interest and just as they had with Carter-Ruck and Trafigura a couple of days previously, the twitosphere held The Mail to account in real time.

Charlie Brooker has already tweeted he will be posting a piece on the controversy on The Guardian this afternoon while Steven Fry and Derren Brown have been encouraging their many thousands of followers to lodge their official complaints. It’s been an interesting week for social media.

After online publication the story received dozens of negative, angry comments The Mail is obviously getting a little worried about the furore their thoughtless commentator has caused. You can see their (failed) attempt at changing the provocative headline here. They have sorted it now.

Even a Carter-Ruck gag is redundant in the twittosphere

The Guardian gagging by libel firm Carter-Ruck is a perfect example of the power mass dissemination, democratisation and consumption of news. It is also an unfortunate example of how ‘traditional’ news organisations are failing to embrace the revolution this represents.

The guardian said this in the Monday’s Media Guardian:

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations

By the next morning Trafigura was the number 1 trending topic on Twitter – literally the entire ‘twitosphere’ was discussing it. 

And who do you think Trafigura is? Have a look at this afternoon’s guardian.co.uk post by David Leigh:

The existence of a previously secret injunction against the media by oil traders Trafigura can now be revealed.

Within the past hour Trafigura’s legal firm, Carter-Ruck, has withdrawn its opposition to the Guardian reporting proceedings in parliament that revealed its existence.

Labour MP Paul Farrelly put down a question yesterday to the justice secretary, Jack Straw. It asked about the injunction obtained by “Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton Report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura”.

It was both the power that the appetite for the truth behind the gagged headline and the immunity from the notorious British Libel that the sheer numbers on twitter provided that enabled those who wanted to read and discuss the news to, well, read the news.

But they also created the news by commenting on and developing it as they tweeted, blogged and facebooked the story across the world. As Paul Canning has shown, even google maps are not immune from the information revolution: 

I was particularly tickled by this someone proporting to be ‘Trafigura’s board of the directors’ posted on the google map listing for Carter Ruck:

I retained carter ruck to serve an injunction on the british press to hide a certain indescretion with a boat, some africans and toxic waste. While initially they seemed competent, the resulting fallout (pardon the pun) has been nothing short of toxic. (there I go, punning again). We would have been better off with the “Where there is blame there is a claim” merchants they show during the ads on Jeremy Kyles show. In summary, not at all happy with the service

And yet, despite the internet being a-buzz with speculation, it took the BBC over 14 hours to begin their coverage of the story. It smacked not just of caution over libel risk but also of arrogance. ‘The people’ had decided the story and set the agenda and the traditional institutions were required to play catch-up. Channel four barely alludes to the issue on its main page news webpage

More 4 News (who, to be fair to them did cover the twitter angle quite interestingly) said it all:

(Twitter users) who, unfettered by legal constraints were able to score a victory over traditional media by publishing every last detail. It’s no wonder the bloggers are cock-a-hoop because although newspapers and TV are no longer banned from reporting on the parliamentary question, we still can’t talk about the contents of a confidential report by chemicals expert John Minton which is at the heart of the controversy.

Most traditional media outlets haven’t figured out how to work with new media in a remotely effective and, crucially, financially fruitful way and so it seems, they are jealous. The image presented of social networkers ‘cock-a-hoop,’ delighting in their victory just proves how complete their misunderstanding is. The people were engaging not attacking and a good journalist would seize on the interest not deride it.

Twitter is growing at a rate of 1382% a year (from Feb. 08 to Feb. 09) while More 4 News and Channel Four’s news at noon are no more as of the New Year.