{"id":6,"date":"2006-10-24T05:58:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-24T11:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=6"},"modified":"2006-10-24T05:58:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-24T11:58:00","slug":"mod-vs-itv-news-controlling-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2006\/10\/mod-vs-itv-news-controlling-access\/","title":{"rendered":"MoD vs. ITV News – controlling access"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>There is an interesting problem at the heart of the row between ITV News and the Ministry of Defence<\/a>. The row arose because the MoD granted ITV News access to see the treatment of wounded service personnel. Rather than giving this an unqualified hoorah, ITV produced some reporting that the MoD’s head of news, James Clark, judged “As bad a hatchet-job as I\u2019ve seen in years. Cheap shots all over the place, no context, no reasonable explanation.” In an email to ITV News, he asked “Why on earth would we spend time, resources and valuable places wanted by Sky, the BBC and others to facilitate journalism like this?”<\/p>\n

If the MoD has a problem with the accuracy and fairness of the report, it’s a matter for Ofcom. The MoD have complained about soldiers’ privacy being invaded. If invasion of privacy comes up, it’s a matter for individuals.<\/p>\n

Now the MoD might have quietly decided to put ITV News at the back of the ’embed’ queue without letting anyone know why. But, they were open about expressing their views – which at least has the virtue of being frank. <\/p>\n

And that’s the interesting problem. How do we manage limited resources, like ’embeds’, in a democracy? Because we’re not very democratic about access. Access is actually a powerful form of patronage, and perhaps it needs to be handled independently of the people on the receiving end.<\/p>\n

If seeing what British forces are up to, on our tax spend, is also a matter of accountability and transparency, rather than a matter of good PR, then it is a broader concern for all of us. And the issue of negotated access extends far, far wider than the MoD, to the very heart of government communications.<\/p>\n

By denying ITV News embeds the MoD will struggle to get the kind of reporting provided by ITN’s Bill Neely, one of the finest correspondents around, and Eugene Campbell, one of the best news cameramen. The pair did an embed with British forces in Afghanistan back in September.<\/p>\n

There is another picture that comes out of a conflict like the one in Afghanistan. It appears in medal citations and leaked emails. Platoon houses under constant fire. Co-ordination problems between ground troops and air support. And then there’s the other side. Is every dead body a Taliban fighter? Journalists like asking questions, making life more difficult for them may only make life more difficult for the MoD’s media relations teams. But that might not be a bad thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is an interesting problem at the heart of the row between ITV News and the Ministry of Defence. The row arose because the MoD granted ITV News access to see the treatment of wounded service personnel. Rather than giving this an unqualified hoorah, ITV produced some reporting that the MoD’s head of news, James […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[19,16],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-itn","tag-itv-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}