[Estimated reading time 6 minutes, 10 seconds]
So, what´s the goal and what´s the problem?
The problem to solve is to give the audience a tool to easily source and determine what it is they are reading. The reporting itself is what it is – good or bad. But who wrote it? And who is that journalist? Is she the origin of the information? If not, who or were can that be found?
The problem to solve is to give the audience a tool to easily source and determine what it is they are reading. The reporting itself is what it is – good or bad. But who wrote it? Who is that person? And is she the origin of the information? If not, who or where is that?
This is vital information if the audience is going to bother with what they are being confronted with. They all crave for information – but only information that is useful to them.
Defining origin of information is not an easy thing for the average news consumer following f. ex #metoo reporting on Reddit, Facebook and even in traditional media itself.
# The case of Josefin Nilsson
In the 1990s the singer Josefin Nilsson formed the immensely popular music group Ainbusk singers and quickly became highly appreciated by both the public and people like Benny Andersson of Abba who wrote songs for the group.
In a tumultuous relationship with one of Sweden’s most renowned actors she was beaten and threatened. He was sentenced to probation for his crimes in 1997 and then continued his acting at Dramaten, one of the most prestigious theaters in Sweden.
She died of natural causes in 2016 and this spring a documentary of Nilsson’s life was aired by Swedish Television (SVT). It immediately caught enormous attention and has so far been seen by more than 1,5 million people (1.5 M online and 0.5 M in broadcast), huge numbers in a country of 10 million. It painted a gruesome picture of the hard life of a beloved actress.
The ensuing debate online and in traditional media was intense and had several focuses like domestic violence, #metoo, famous men taking liberties and getting away with it. But in the center was Nilsson’s fate after being harassed by her then boyfriend. After the documentary candles were lit during vigils for Nilsson outside the Dramaten theater and demands to fire the actor were published on social and traditional media.
But like in Malik Bendjellouls very successful portrait of Sixto Diaz Rodriguez “Searching for Sugarman” vital information, years of her life that was missing.
A colleague wrote to me during the intense debate that followed the documentary in Sweden:
“A fair and balanced observation is that more or less 20 years of a pretty successful career are gone. After appeal (The actor) is sentenced in January of 1997, Nilsson dies 2016. Everybody watching the documentary are given the impression that his actions led to her death even if SVT is now pretending not to have given that picture.”
“In the documentary there are repeated accounts of how he had thrown her into the wall so hard that her body left impressions, that her vertebrae were damaged and with time had been replaced by titanium. That the physical and psychological beatings led to her death.
But there are many of these facts that do not fit with what’s in the police investigation. The most damning example is the damage to her spine, which is nowhere to be found in the investigation. But that is only one example. Another is how another famous actor, Hannes Holm, some 22 minutes into the documentary talks about how someone uses an axe to get through a door. No sign of that in the investigation.”
And indeed, in the report, easily accessed as part of public records in Svea Hovrätt, the appellate court of Stockholm, there is no sign of many of the issues that formed the debate.
We have no way of knowing today if her back was hurt during the battering, she possibly never reported all that happened. But we do know that the medical examinations after the assault indicated bruises on the thigh and that she herself referred to the back-problems as the result of whiplash from a traffic accident sometime 2002-2005.[1]
The Nilsson case is a good example of how one version of a story becomes the only sets of facts that the public reacts to and how they eventually take over the agenda in the volatile on-line discussion climate.
The Nilsson case brought a lot of important issues to the surface on what is considered acceptable in the cultural sphere where many have taken liberties over the years and in early April, some three weeks after the documentary was aired, the board of Dramaten caved in to the public outrage. The manager, Eirik Stubø, was fired for his handling of the crisis that emanated from the documentary.
To fire the manager might be a correct decision all things considered. In the aftermath of the documentary several cases of bad personnel management were confirmed. But one also need to remember that after the #metoo autumn of 2017 one of his colleagues, Benny Fredriksson, head of the Stockholm’s Theatre, committed suicide after having been caught in the firestorm for the wrong reasons.
Facts incorrectly reported became be a matter of life and death.
# Sourcing is taking hold.
One example of good governance in the new media landscape was how the case of the missing six-year-old Timmothy Pitzen was handled by the Swedish media aggregator Omni. Omni did its usual piggy backing on other original content and summarized what other media had reported when a young man surfaced in March 2019 and told Kentucky police he was the long-gone boy. The man insisted to the police that he was Pitzen and had escaped from a hotel room where two men had been holding him captive for years. He said that he had been physically and sexually abused.
Omni referred to AFP,
the Swedish News Agency TT and Sky News reporting on the case, but also interestingly, included a link to Document Cloud, a document sharing platform initiated by Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) in America.
There, Omni’s readers with one click could read the original police report from the named Kentucky Police officers.
Doubts quickly rose and within weeks DNA proved that “Pitzen” was 23-year old Brian Rini.
Omni’s simple example is a good one. Making journalism’s sources traceable and thus building credibility for the output.
# Leaving Neverland
That’s something British Channel 4 and HBO missed when they in January 2019 released the documentary “Leaving Neverland “by filmmaker Dan Reed.
The film created an outrage, first because it alleged that Michael Jackson sexually abused two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, on his farm Neverland.
But then the pendulum swung. Jacksons fans and family protested at what they saw as slander. Jackson had been accused of molesting before, but always acquitted or settled out of court.
The filmmaker Dan Reed stated in the Guardian[2]that he was “shocked by those who still won’t accept Michael Jackson as abuser”. He described his film as “a detailed, four-hour study of the psychology of child sexual abuse, told through two ordinary families who were groomed for 20 years by a paedophile masquerading as a trusted friend.”
But there was a problem. One of the men giving witness, James Safechuck was wrong on at least one important point. Jackson´s Biographer Mike Smallcombe dug out and published Santa Barbara County construction permits showing approval for the building in 1995 where Safechuck said the abuse happened in September 1993.
The filmmaker Dan Reed is now spending his time on Twitter and in talk shows trying to diminish the error that puts severe doubt into the core of a story built on the accusations of Robson and Safechuck.[3]
//Updated 20190426//
-
https://www.expressen.se/noje/melodifestivalen/hon-kampar-mot-smartorna/ Publicerad 19 feb 2005 kl 12.18 accessed 20190409 ↑
-
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/michael-jackson-biographers-claim-neverland-14253571 accessed 20190408 ↑
# 2 DEFINING THE PROBLEM (reading time 6 m)
[Estimated reading time 6 minutes, 10 seconds]
So, what´s the goal and what´s the problem?
The problem to solve is to give the audience a tool to easily source and determine what it is they are reading. The reporting itself is what it is – good or bad. But who wrote it? And who is that journalist? Is she the origin of the information? If not, who or were can that be found?
The problem to solve is to give the audience a tool to easily source and determine what it is they are reading. The reporting itself is what it is – good or bad. But who wrote it? Who is that person? And is she the origin of the information? If not, who or where is that?
This is vital information if the audience is going to bother with what they are being confronted with. They all crave for information – but only information that is useful to them.
Defining origin of information is not an easy thing for the average news consumer following f. ex #metoo reporting on Reddit, Facebook and even in traditional media itself.
# The case of Josefin Nilsson
In the 1990s the singer Josefin Nilsson formed the immensely popular music group Ainbusk singers and quickly became highly appreciated by both the public and people like Benny Andersson of Abba who wrote songs for the group.
In a tumultuous relationship with one of Sweden’s most renowned actors she was beaten and threatened. He was sentenced to probation for his crimes in 1997 and then continued his acting at Dramaten, one of the most prestigious theaters in Sweden.
She died of natural causes in 2016 and this spring a documentary of Nilsson’s life was aired by Swedish Television (SVT). It immediately caught enormous attention and has so far been seen by more than 1,5 million people (1.5 M online and 0.5 M in broadcast), huge numbers in a country of 10 million. It painted a gruesome picture of the hard life of a beloved actress.
The ensuing debate online and in traditional media was intense and had several focuses like domestic violence, #metoo, famous men taking liberties and getting away with it. But in the center was Nilsson’s fate after being harassed by her then boyfriend. After the documentary candles were lit during vigils for Nilsson outside the Dramaten theater and demands to fire the actor were published on social and traditional media.
But like in Malik Bendjellouls very successful portrait of Sixto Diaz Rodriguez “Searching for Sugarman” vital information, years of her life that was missing.
A colleague wrote to me during the intense debate that followed the documentary in Sweden:
“A fair and balanced observation is that more or less 20 years of a pretty successful career are gone. After appeal (The actor) is sentenced in January of 1997, Nilsson dies 2016. Everybody watching the documentary are given the impression that his actions led to her death even if SVT is now pretending not to have given that picture.”
“In the documentary there are repeated accounts of how he had thrown her into the wall so hard that her body left impressions, that her vertebrae were damaged and with time had been replaced by titanium. That the physical and psychological beatings led to her death.
But there are many of these facts that do not fit with what’s in the police investigation. The most damning example is the damage to her spine, which is nowhere to be found in the investigation. But that is only one example. Another is how another famous actor, Hannes Holm, some 22 minutes into the documentary talks about how someone uses an axe to get through a door. No sign of that in the investigation.”
And indeed, in the report, easily accessed as part of public records in Svea Hovrätt, the appellate court of Stockholm, there is no sign of many of the issues that formed the debate.
We have no way of knowing today if her back was hurt during the battering, she possibly never reported all that happened. But we do know that the medical examinations after the assault indicated bruises on the thigh and that she herself referred to the back-problems as the result of whiplash from a traffic accident sometime 2002-2005.[1]
The Nilsson case is a good example of how one version of a story becomes the only sets of facts that the public reacts to and how they eventually take over the agenda in the volatile on-line discussion climate.
The Nilsson case brought a lot of important issues to the surface on what is considered acceptable in the cultural sphere where many have taken liberties over the years and in early April, some three weeks after the documentary was aired, the board of Dramaten caved in to the public outrage. The manager, Eirik Stubø, was fired for his handling of the crisis that emanated from the documentary.
To fire the manager might be a correct decision all things considered. In the aftermath of the documentary several cases of bad personnel management were confirmed. But one also need to remember that after the #metoo autumn of 2017 one of his colleagues, Benny Fredriksson, head of the Stockholm’s Theatre, committed suicide after having been caught in the firestorm for the wrong reasons.
Facts incorrectly reported became be a matter of life and death.
# Sourcing is taking hold.
One example of good governance in the new media landscape was how the case of the missing six-year-old Timmothy Pitzen was handled by the Swedish media aggregator Omni. Omni did its usual piggy backing on other original content and summarized what other media had reported when a young man surfaced in March 2019 and told Kentucky police he was the long-gone boy. The man insisted to the police that he was Pitzen and had escaped from a hotel room where two men had been holding him captive for years. He said that he had been physically and sexually abused.
Omni referred to AFP,
the Swedish News Agency TT and Sky News reporting on the case, but also interestingly, included a link to Document Cloud, a document sharing platform initiated by Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) in America.
There, Omni’s readers with one click could read the original police report from the named Kentucky Police officers.
Doubts quickly rose and within weeks DNA proved that “Pitzen” was 23-year old Brian Rini.
Omni’s simple example is a good one. Making journalism’s sources traceable and thus building credibility for the output.
# Leaving Neverland
That’s something British Channel 4 and HBO missed when they in January 2019 released the documentary “Leaving Neverland “by filmmaker Dan Reed.
The film created an outrage, first because it alleged that Michael Jackson sexually abused two men, Wade Robson and James Safechuck, on his farm Neverland.
But then the pendulum swung. Jacksons fans and family protested at what they saw as slander. Jackson had been accused of molesting before, but always acquitted or settled out of court.
The filmmaker Dan Reed stated in the Guardian[2]that he was “shocked by those who still won’t accept Michael Jackson as abuser”. He described his film as “a detailed, four-hour study of the psychology of child sexual abuse, told through two ordinary families who were groomed for 20 years by a paedophile masquerading as a trusted friend.”
But there was a problem. One of the men giving witness, James Safechuck was wrong on at least one important point. Jackson´s Biographer Mike Smallcombe dug out and published Santa Barbara County construction permits showing approval for the building in 1995 where Safechuck said the abuse happened in September 1993.
The filmmaker Dan Reed is now spending his time on Twitter and in talk shows trying to diminish the error that puts severe doubt into the core of a story built on the accusations of Robson and Safechuck.[3]
//Updated 20190426//
-
https://www.expressen.se/noje/melodifestivalen/hon-kampar-mot-smartorna/ Publicerad 19 feb 2005 kl 12.18 accessed 20190409 ↑
-
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/michael-jackson-biographers-claim-neverland-14253571 accessed 20190408 ↑