Welcome to the world of Drone Journalism

It had to happen sooner than later-Drone journalism has arrived.



As Robert Mackey reports

a Polish firm called RoboKopter scored something of a coup last week when it demonstrated that its miniature flying drone was capable of recording spectacular aerial views of a chaotic protest in Warsaw.

As the Warsaw daily Gazeta Wyborcza reported, the RoboKopter video provided strikingly cinematic images of what was, at ground level, a tense and confusing confrontation among far-right Polish nationalists celebrating the country’s independence day, left-wing anarchists from Germany and police officers.

Survey reveals a diminishing trust in UK newspapers

Do you trust the media?

Phone hacking events in the summer and the continuing story appear to have dented the British public's confidence in the industry.

A report out from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) UK Trust Report suggests that the phone-hacking scandal has resulted in a deep level of mistrust from the UK public.

58 per cent say that the recent scandal has reduced their level of trust in the newspaper industry, while over half (51 per cent) say it has reduced their trust in the UK media as a whole.

The poll, of 1,108 UK adults shows that we trust the TV far more than any other outlet.

64 per cent saw TV as the most trusted media outlet,whilst 58 per cent said the same about radio and just 38 per cent trusted newspapers.

Meanwhile the damage done to the press over the hacking scandal is shown in the fact that Three in four people think media outlets sometimes, or frequently, lie to their audiences and over half say that content has been dumbed down in recent years

The survey comes as the American TV channel has launched in the UK.

Their General Manager UK,Richard Kingsbury said: ‘We wanted to understand the issue of trust in the media given that we are launching America’s most trusted broadcaster in the UK*. It is salutary how public trust has been corroded across all media and yet encouraging that television still enjoys a high level of trust.’

On my journalism reading list for today

There are two most read journalism articles this morning which I recommend.

On his excellent blog Out with a bang,Addiply's Rick Waghorn argues against the proposition that moves should be made to help the three PLCs, Johnston Press and Trinity Mirror in this country,and Gannett(parent company of Newsquest) in the US,to have an orderly default on their debts.

According to Rick,

I think RBS will bleed JP to death cash-wise, before picking over the dead carcass of a once-great newspaper group in the hope of find anything of worth left to flog. The impact on the lives of anyone still left in the bowels of those buildings will be of no concern whatsoever to those that call the shots from on high.

Meanwhile at the New York Times,David Carr writes that last week, John Paton,of MediaNews met with executives of the MediaNews Group, the second-largest newspaper chain by circulation in the country and told them that they should be outsourcing most operations other than sales and editorial, focusing on the cost side that might include further layoffs, stressing digital sales over print sales with incentives, and using relationships with the community to provide some of the content in their newspapers.

Mr. Paton has heard all about how choosing digital revenue over print revenue is like choosing dimes over dollars. He points out that the print dollars have dropped by more than half in the last five years and perhaps it is time to start “stacking the dimes.” He also notoriously proposed that real transformation would happen only if the industry were willing to “stop listening to newspaper people.

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Former Times editor on the case for public interest journalism

Former Times editor Harold Evans asks how far the press should go in persuit of public interest in a piece in this morning's Times.

His simple test is will this scoop advance human wellbeing whilst arguing quite rightly that what interests the public is not necessarily in the public interest.

The article unfortunately sits behind the paywall but if you get a chance all you aspiring journalists,then it is worth a read

Here is a taster though:

So what kind of wrongdoing justifies investigation? Article 8 concedes that intrusion might be permitted when in the interests of national security (a concealed jihadist, say) or the economic wellbeing of the country (a speculative scheme to weaken sterling) or for “the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others”.
These would seem to justify a breach of private trust if the press were revealing negligence in, say, the manufacture of a dangerous drug. But look at the history of the thalidomide disaster. Two laws were invoked to justify suppression: the law of contempt and the law of confidence to keep the manufacturers’ documents secret.

Pendle's residents in music festival uproar-or more angry local people

Don't you just love the local newspapers?

This is a brilliant piece from the Lancashire Telgraph's Jon Livesy on how Pendle locals were kept awake by the sounds blaring from a music festival over the weekend.

The Small Trees Festival, which featured a number of DJs, was held in a field opposite Trawden Recreation Ground, on Friday and Saturday nights.
Adrian Lord was granted a Temporary Event Notice for the event from Pendle Council after he suggested it would be a ticketed private party for less than 490 people.
So people who live nearby were shocked when a handful of large tents were pitched on Friday, with music blaring out until 1am on both nights.
Jacqui King, who lives half a mile away in Leyland Close, said she could hear the noise from inside her home, which is double-glazed.