We don’t have a list of things you can say about a person without intruding on their privacy.
There is no check list of what is acceptable and what is not.
Courts judge what is said, and why, on an individual basis, taking account of the character and behaviour of the complainant.
The courts' view of what is and is not acceptable has changed over recent years.
We hear a great deal about privacy cases now, and privacy is something that must concern every journalist, but how have we got to the point where it is such a burning legal issue?
Privacy law is new, says Duncan Lamont
In the clip he points to three key points in its development
1 Gorden Kaye
2 Human Rights Act
3 Naomi Campbell
One area the law is moving too fast for those textbooks is that of privacy.
This video introduces an essential update on this aspect of the law, and flags up the areas covered in the full masterclass, which is with media lawyer Duncan Lamont.
The full masterclass goes live from October 30 at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/masterclasses , with a new element added each day
Video: The best apps for live broadcasting, and recording It's here
Video and audio editing: How to use VeriCorder 1st Video, the first professional-standard in-phone editor for creating video packages, audio, and audio slide-shows. It's here
How to subscribeAll you need do is buy the textbook (Amazon has it for £25.05) With the book comes the code you need to access the full, complementary website.
You get not only an extensive site that fully complements the textbook, with a wealth of multimedia examples of the principles explained in the text, you also get full access to all the masterclasses, in which industry experts explain the latest developments in mobile, multimedia journalism.
Forthcoming masterclasses will cover: A non-coder's guide to creating apps and websites; The secrets of successful data-based journalism; Location-based content for local journalists, and Real-time reporting using social media.
You might decide that the phone's own lens is absolutely fine, and it is certainly good enough for snapping mug shots and other straightforward pics to illustrate your text articles or to drop into simple slideshows, or as still frames in your videos.
But you can add a gadget that hugely improves on things, and you'll fidn more on that here: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1064
The iPhone4 has built in flash, so it’s much better for low light conditions that the 3GS, which I have.
Some professional photographers are dismissive of the iPhone, saying it is just not up to the job. However, others enthuse about the phone's pic-tacking capabilities
Here is an example of what a professional photographer can do:
Most of us find it a nightmare, trying to type fast on the iPhone's virtual keyboard. But not all of us.
Take a look at this:
How to get faster
If you aren't as fast as that, here are some tips on speeding up
If you’re not that fast then to my mind the only solution is to get hold of a portable keyboard, ideally one that will fold up and slip in your bag, and hence makes sense for the mobile journalist.
Find our more here: http://www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk/node/1059
Where to broadcast to - Establishing publishing platforms
The basics: filing to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
Most apps offer you options to file to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. It's dead simple; when you have your material you just press the right button. That’s fine a lot of the time. But it can be disjointed.
You get bits of coverage, and if you are covering an event with stills, audio, video (some streamed live, some edited) it gets filed all over the place and you can’t create a coherent multimedia report.
So what you need is one place where all your material for a story appears together.
Various platforms allow you to post via email. The main blogging ones, such as Blogger, and other platforms such as Tumblr, do that.
I’ve tried them, and the one I find works best is called Posterous.
Posterous - all your content, in any medium, posted together in one place
I like Posterous because I can file everything to it, whatever the medium, via email.
In one email you can include various media: text and stills; text and video; text, stills and video. What you file appears together in one post. Find out more here
They will go live, one a day, from October 15. They'll each be outside the paywall for 24 hours, after which they will remain available for subscribers to Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide
iPhone for Journalism overview:This is a podcast / slideshow version of a talk I gave this week to journalism students at Kingston University. It's here
Gadgets: how to maximise the performance of the iPhone. It's here
Broadcasting platforms: Where, and how, to publish your multimedia content
Text: Overcoming the shortcomings of the iPhone’s qwerty keyboard
Audio: The best apps reviewed, explained and demonstrated
Stills: The iphone as a stills camera
Video: The best apps for live broadcasting, and recording
Video and audio editing: How to use Vericorder 1st Video, the first professional-standard in-phone editor for creating video packages, audio, and audio slide-shows
The context for multimedia journalism: the coming of smartphones, apps and Web 3.0.
This is the first part of a talk I gave to journalism students about using the iPhone for mobile, multimedia journalism. See part two for a practical guide to broadcasting with the iPhone.
This masterclass is about using the iPhone as a reporting tool.
It’ll be available from October 15 available as text, video or audio here
Video introduction
To demonstrate use of the iPhone on the move, I shot this in the car while travelling to a job. This was a live broadcast which I subsequently uploaded to YouTube for onward distribution to Facebook, Twitter and Posterous, and which is intended to illustrate how easy it is to create slightly rough-and-ready but serviceable video on the move.
Audio introduction
I’ve also done an audio version of the introduction to this masterclass as a further demonstration. This was recorded as on Audioboo, one of the apps we’ll take a look at later, and shared from there via iTunes and other distribution platforms
Text introduction
We will cover both:
the iPhone as a news gathering, editing and transmitting device, and
how to establish publishing platforms for the material you create
Why the iPhone is good for mobile multimedia reporting
First the basics. The device itself is good because it has built-in the things you need:
a camera for stills and video,
a Voice Memos app for recording audio,
a qwerty keyboard for writing text
GPS to pinpoint your location and enable you to link your reporting to place
But that’s only the foundation of what makes for a very good mobile, multimedia device. What to my mind makes the iPhone unbeatable are all the apps that have been built for it, and which transform its performance.
We’ll look at a range of apps for audio, video and text to see which of them are better than what you get built in.
Then there’s the phone’s broadcasting capabilities. Because gathering the news is one thing, having a place to publish it is another.
The apps make it simple to broadcast video, audio and the rest to social networks such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, but that’s very basic.
There is a danger that, in simply broadcasting snippets – a video clips to YouTube, a tweet to Twitter and a picture to Flickr – you end up with coverage that is highly fragmented.
Your users may catch some bits of your reporting of a particular story or event, but miss others.
What you really need is one platform on which your reporting – text, stills audio and video, can be gathered and presented as a coherent whole.
So we’ll look at the best ways of doing that, creating platforms that not only present your multimedia well, but which also autopost it on to the various social networks we need to have a strong presence on.
But the iPhone is by no means perfect. There are several significant things wrong with it that limit its potential as a reporting tool, unless we find ways to compensate for them.
Why the iPhone is not so great
Battery life is poor. Half a day at most if you are using it intensively.
The signal can be poor away from wi-fi hotspots.
The built-in mic is prone to wind noise in even the merest breeze
Trying to edit video on the built in app is a nightmare.
But we can sort most of that.
There are now apps available, some free, the rest dead cheap, that vastly improve things – particularly video and audio editing, which can now be done to professional standards with the right £5.99 app.
So, here’s what we will cover in this masterclass.
Gadgets: how to maximise the performance of the iPhone Broadcasting platforms: Where, and how, to publish your multimedia content Text: Overcoming the shortcomings of the iPhone’s qwerty keyboard Audio: The best apps reviewed, explained and demonstrated Stills: The iphone as a stills camera Video: The best apps for live broadcasting, and recording Video and audio editing: How to use Vericorder 1st Video, the first professional-standard in-phone editor for creating video packages, audio, and audio slide-shows
Here's a preview of mastercasses at Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide schedued for October and November. Find them at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk
October 2010
Masterclass 14: iPhone for Journalism
Smartphones are a highly convenient way for the multimedia journalist to publish instantly
We'll look at how to turn your iPhone into a fully-enabled multimedia reporting device, so you can file text, stills, video and audio instantly to a custom-made blog, to a mobile-enabled multimedia site, and any combination you like of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and a huge range of other platforms.
We're concentrating on the iPhone, but what we cover is also applicable to other smartphones.
Going live: October 16
Masterclass 15: Media law is changing fast, are you keeping up?
What do you know about the developing de facto law on privacy in the UK?
Puzzled about sports stars, data protection and super-injunctions?
Ever wondered why what your law textbook says on defamation and contempt seems out of step with how the media actually behaves?
Then this Masterclass is for you. Media law expert Duncan Lamont talks about how the law as it relates to the media is changing, and explains how the law is interpreted in real journalistic life.
Going live: October 30
November 2010
Masterclass 16: App-building for non-coders, website building for non-coders
How to build a iPhone and Android-compatible app, and a Drupal website without being a web-developer
We'll cover basic html in a later masterclass, for now, here's how to get your really professional mobile app up and running. Also, building on existing MMJ course and masterclass content, we'll look at how it is now possible to create a website on Drupal, on open-source web dvelopment platform that is the basis for many websites, including the one you are reading now.
Going live: November 13
Masterclass 17: Video storytelling
The latest on what works best in online video, and how to get it right
Our understanding of how best to deliver online is developing rapidly. We'll build on existing MMJ course content by looking at what the BBC has learned, and see how to put it into practice. We'll also take in the National Council for the Training of Journalist's requriements in its video storytelling option at Diploma in Journalism level.
Going live, November 27
