Journalism, PR & Media

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John Hemming extras incomes

The MP from Yardley made a total of £378.915 of extra income between 2012 and 2014. According to the data from Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority Hemming made £195.661 from JHC (John Hemming & Co) in 2013-2014 and £183.254 also from JHC between 2012 and 2013. Also in 2013-2014 John Hemming Trading earned £20.025 from the taxable profit. While in 2012-2013 John trading earned £3.867 from taxable profit. From his work as an MP these work took him a total of 38 hours of the year 2012-2014. According to John Hemming’s website, he founded his first business – John Hemming & Co, now JHC plc, at the age of 23. The business has grown to become a multi-million pound company and the leading provider of settlement systems to stockbrokers in the UK. John founded the first e-commerce operation (MarketNet) outside the USA in 1994. He also launched the world's first, banking, insurance, legal and stock-broking services on the Internet in 1995. He founded Music Mercia International (MMI), a music company in 1997. In 2000, he founded The Purchasing Agency (also known as SafeSimple.Com) - which competes with Visa and MasterCard. When compared to other Birmingham MPs’ extra incomes, Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell follows up in line earning a total of £106.014 from different works he has done during the year of 2014. John Hemming is the leader of the Liberal Democrats on Birmingham City Council and has been Deputy Leader of the City Council. He was the party's candidate for Birmingham Yardley in 1992, 1997 and 2001. He won the Yardley seat from Labour in the 2005 Election with a majority of 2,672. He had been a Birmingham City Councillor since 1990 until standing down in 2007 to concentrate on serving his constituents as an MP, information from his website.

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Chris Kelly has the most PM Accommodation Rent in West Midlands

The Conservative MP for Dudley South had emerged as the top spending politicians on the region on accommodation expenses.

According to Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority data, Chris Kelly was the MP who spent the biggest amount of money in accommodation rent between 2014 and 2015 with atotal amount of £13395.82. On the previous year (period 2013-2014) the Dudley South MP spent an even bigger amount of money on accommodation, £18558.18. Although was not first on the list since Richard Burden (MP for Birmingham Northfield) spent £19159.98 and Ian Austin (MP for Dudley North) spent £19038.84.

Chris Kelly, born in 1978, is a Dudley South MP. He was selected as Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman for Dudley South in September 2007 and afterwards elected as the new Member of Parliament in May 2010.

He is the founder Chairman of both the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Family Business and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Combating Metal Theft. Kelly will be standing down at the 2015 general election.

In 2013-2014 the amount available to Chris Kelly to be spent on accommodation was £19.474.00 so at the end of the year he still had 915.82 on his remaining budget to be spent on accommodation. The reason for the set budget is standard budget for renting a property in London Area, reduced by £626.00 to offset an overspend in a previous year according to IPSA statistics.

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How much are you paying to travel to university?

Transportation costs at university arean issue of concern when going to university. Depending where you decide to gocosts of transports may vary which makes it a point to have in mind when choosing the university. Southampton students have the lowest transport costs, as a weekly bus pass costs £6.67 there while in London is almost £100 monthly.  

In interview with Professor Chris Nash, a researcher from the Institute of for Transport Studies from the University of Leeds, we got some questions answered about the costs for transportation while at university.  

Different prices within the UK

When asked him about the difference of costs from city to city within the UK he says that London is the most expensive where not only transports are expensive. However, grants should be adequate to cover these costs where there is a good reason to study in London rather than elsewhere.

Are you receiving enough help?

Professor was also asked if university students should receive more help with transportation costs to what he states “I would favor the state providing grants to cover fees and reasonable living expenses, including transport costs, and recouping the expenditure through the tax system when students earn enough to pay them back.”

Should university students have their own exclusive and free buses?

When asked about the existence of buses for student transportation to and from the university available to all students and with no costs the researcher said “I think this makes sense where public bus or train services are inadequate, but otherwise it is more cost effective for students to use regular public services.”

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6 Things You Need To Know About Planned Cuts To The Disabled Students Allowance

1.    Thedefinition of disability will be the same as that for the Equality Act 2010

The condition to receive DSA will be the same asbefore since the government is keeping the same definition of disability. Toapply for DSA and see what are the criteria to be considered a Disabled Studentyou only need to go into the website gov.uk

2.    Thecuts will restrict those eligible to receive laptops and computers

Computersand laptops will only be given to those students who need one solely by virtue. The government has already stated that will not pay for standard specification computers.

3.     Non-medical support will no longer be covered under DSA

Non-medical supports, such as note-taking, will no longer be covered under DSA which will pass a bigger responsibility into the institutions, many of which may not have the resources to sufficiently support their students.

4.     Students with considered complex diseases will continue to receive support

Students who are considered to have a more critical condition will continue to receive the same support as before. In order for this to happen, just like any other DSA application, it is mandatory a letter from your doctor or a ‘diagnostic assessment’ from a psychologist or suitably qualified specialist teacher

5.     DSA will not fund the additional costs of specialist accommodation

HEIs are expected to provide accommodation suitable for disabled students as part of their duties. Institutions should be able to meet the needs of the vast majority of students with disabilities. In exceptional circumstances DSA will meet the additional costs of specialist accommodation.

6.     DSA study need assessments will need to register

According to the new changes providers offering DSA study needs assessments and also DSA assistive technology service providers will need to register.

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Week 8, Reading 7

On this week's reading it comes to discussion how to successful research within the culture industries. When discussing this topic it is important to give attention to the fact that the media sector tends to focus on the practical side leaving sometimes the theory part a bit behind. Although to fully understand the practice part it is important to dominate the theory until this one becomes natural which will make the practice looks natural as well.

In order to research the culture industries, and by culture industries as I conclude from the reading it means media and culture producers, it is important to understand some points that I found important in the reading. First of all the fact that market forces and economics are the most significant forces determining what is done helps us understand some decisions are made in the culture industries. Many countries especially in the West such as the USA and Britain have their media strongly influenced by the governments. They know how powerful culture industries can be to influence the public and therefore they are very active on it.

Looking at the way media power is approached two different angles come to discussion. One is the Marxist approach. Karl Marx did not investigate much into this field but scholars such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer used Marx theories and applied them to culture industry. They concluded that big businesses control a lot of the end of media messages and that they are operating towards ideological ends, From a Marxist view media is studied by materialist methods to show the power of the ruling class economically and ideologically.

To do our own research in the culture industries it is important that first we focus on our object of analysis and narrow our research as much as possible. It is also important to think about a range of questions that could be investigated. Once this is established the next step is have access to evidence which is not always easy and check what is available is important. There are documentary evidence which includes historical (it comes in archive research) and people (through interview). Combining these methods is a good way to execute a consist research within culture industries.     

It would be of interest to investigate "How does the government power in the Guardian influence its news content." and ethnography and rhetoric analyses would be used.

References

Stokes, J. 2003. How to do media & cultural studies. London: Sage Publications.

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Week 7, Reading 6

This week readings bring us to think about what is happening in the world of news due the growth of the internet and how close are we to a possible end of the news as we know it.

Internet has been gaining its power very quickly, it is fast, low cost and a place where it is easy to target specific audiences, specially younger audiences and this makes it hard for magazines or newspapers to compete with. Internet is changing the news environment.

Over the past few years there has been a local and national decline of the readers of newspapers and also of the viewers of TV news. This is related to the fact that competition is now more numerous than ever before. From 24 hour television news to mobile platforms there are now available all kind of news sources and this leads to a quite unstable environment for news organisations. Adding to this there is also the fact that internet has becomes in 2010 the biggest source of advertising in the UK which takes away power from the traditional news sources. 

In order to respond to this threat in its industry "traditional" forms of media have adopted some strategies. Being BBC and The Guardian exceptions, most news organizations are cautions when it comes to invest in the online world. They rather try defensive or evolutionary saving methods rather than revolutionary. Cost-cutting is one of their methods used. It saves money and increases productivity. Although because there cutting costs means less journalists, more hours and more deadlines it also ends up leading the news world to the reality of 'churnalism', a reality where press releases of pre-packaged material are used to create the articles.

Although we can not link this situation directly with the internet it is still possible to conclude that all these changes are happening because of the pressure that internet if putting on 'traditional' forms of news. Internet great advantages are low costs, interactivity and abundant capacity which allows a wider interaction of voices which has becoming a threat for 'traditional' news organizations.    

Having read and studied the two readings, I would be interested to investigate “In what ways does New York Times work in order to avoid the threat of online growth”. To analyse this  I would use an ethnography to research related primary sources.

References

Das Freedman. 2010. The Political Economy of ‘New’ News Environment in Natalie Fenton New Media, Old News. London: Sage Publications.

Long, P., Wall, T., Bakir, V. and Mcstay, A. 2012. Media Studies Texts, Production, Context. 2nd ed. Harlow: PEARSON.

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Week 5, Reading 5

Nowadays internet helps communication between the citizens and the power holders of society. Internet and politics in the modern world have become inseparable and thus gradually eliminating barriers to free flow of information between the political decision-makers and those in whose name the benefits they bring (the public). To improve my understanding on this matter I read Internet and political communication from E. Sali. This reading offers very interesting perspectives and understandings within the internet and political communication subject.  

As mentioned in the readings and according to Habermas democracy's communication spaces have three dimensions that are useful to examine the public sphere of any given society. These dimensions are structures, representation and interaction. The structural dimension has to do with the freedom of speech and the dynamic of inclusion and exclusion. It sets boundaries for the nature of information that goes public. The representational dimension deals with the output of the media. The dimension of interaction defends that the public should be seen as something other than just a media audience. They are atomized individuals and democracy on its own resides with citizens that engage in talking to each other.

Contemporary democracy is going through difficult times and at the same time the Internet was leading to a media revolution. The new information and communication technologies are affecting all spheres of life. First Internet became a significant political tool in offering one-way communication for political parties with the development of political parties’ websites. However, politics online is no longer as valued for its one-way communication but is now praised, and used for the opportunities it provides to conduct two way communications between political parties, their campaigns, and potential voters. There are thousands of websites having to do with political realm. The down side is that this way internet also promotes fragmentation of public spheres as they are much available to choose from.

In today’s political arena, websites and Internet resources are being shared as a means of consuming and disseminating information via the web. The internet is at the forefront of the evolving public sphere.

After reading these two texts, I will propose an academic research question of “What consequences bring the fact that politics are now online to the public decisions?” and to research it I will carry an audience orientated methodology through the use of ethnographies and rhetorical analysis

References

Dahlgren, P. 2005. The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation, in Political Communication.

Sali, E. 2011. Internet and political communication - Macedonian case. International journal of computer science issues.

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Week 4, Reading 4

On this week's reading it was analyzed the rise of the promotional culture within our society and more specifically within the media industry.

Nowadays there is a competition for media space and this makes the media agencies very powerful and influential. Being media a source of power and control Public Relations and promotional strategies have become a big concern for the rich groups such as government and business. 

The rise of a society where media has such power started to appear when the public itself started to gain power (when citizens earned the right to vote) and therefore people's opinion started to matter. This created the need to influence people's opinion to order to stay in the power. PR started to grow and some specialization such as lobbying appeared with it. Lobbying which is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government and the marketisation of the government has open more space for lobbying.

Government, business and pressure groups compete constantly for media space. The more budget they have the bigger chance they have on earning more space which means that only government, corporations and bigger interest groups can afford long-term support from PR consultancies.

The use of propaganda happens quite often as a weapon to initiate a certain action or idea. This question how much power of decision do journalists have on what they publish since the powerful ones can control such a big part of the media and are willing to put in lots of money in order to make it happen. Although journalists do have their own autonomy it changes because also their values change. Defence, Education, Agriculture and Health are the ones which usually have their own specialist journalist so most of the news is always covered. Although this doesn't mean that resource poor groups won't get covered as much as specialist journalists can get interested in their stories also. If a resource poor group can gain a specialist journalist attention is good for them because they get more spotlights and is also good for the journalist as they have a new research resource. 

I would be interested to research into the effect of promotional culture on the democratic process and for this I would perform an audience orientated methodology through the use of ethnographies and rhetorical analysis

References

Albertazzi, D. and Cobley, P. 2010. The Media. An Introduction. Harlow, Essex: Pearson.

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Week 3, Reading 3

These readings introduced me the reality that nowadays there are a enormous variety of journalism forms and the job itself is inevitable changing. More people are involved and the spreading of news is as easy as never before. Not only through text but also videos or photos, for example, are something that everyone has easy access to these days. Instead of thinking of Journalism as a profession in crisis it is possible to look at it as a profession that is receiving a lot of help (a lot of help for free) and the interest and search of the public for information is bigger than ever. People now have many way of getting information, other than newspaper, such as radio, online news or blogs and all these for free while a newspaper or magazine they need to pay for it. Journalism is suffering from a lot of pressure, competition and not very well paid but it is important to look at journalism as a profession that it is changing itself and its methods so therefore separate the crisis of media companies from the crisis of journalism.

From the public side journalism is not in crisis and they still seek for accurate and reliable information that comes from the journalists. In order to keep the profession, journalists need to adapt to the new reality and how easy and quick spreading news is now.

First it is important to get used to new realities in Journalism such as new technologically enabled practices, new tools and practices, networked journalism, crowd-sourcing and user-generated content, data mining, data analysis, data visualization, mapping and also automated, visual and global journalism. All these are realities within the world of journalism these days. They make journalism a very competitive business. For example the use of robots that identify and release news of different sources (automated journalism) is something that is hard to compete with. Although in order to continue serving the public interest as a journalist working with this new methods and realities will allow them not only to have the chance to specialize but mainly to keep their independence and transparency with a clear perspective on the news

After reading the texts, I will propose an academic research question of “In what ways can Journalism continue to serve the public interest?“ For this, I will carry out an organisational study of a particular news organisation.  

References

Long, P., Wall, T., Bakir, V. and Mcstay, A. 2012. Media Studies Texts, Production, Context. 2nd ed. Harlow: PEARSON.

Van Der Haak, B., Parks, M. and Castells, M. 2012. The Future of Journalism: Networked Journalism in International Journal of Communication.

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Week 2, Reading 2

Reading the pages from “A Compromised Fourth State” it comes to discussion the strong presence of PR in the news and therefore its control on the public opinion which I believe to be something concerning as PR first interest is their clients and that does not necessarily matches the truth. 

When analysed the variety of charts with the percentage of PR information on it the numbers are very high as for example 80 per cent of any broadcast has PR on it. It is a fast way of getting information and therefore a high chosen way of getting news. When compared the information from the newspapers with what came from the PR and agencies it was very identical in half of all press stories.

Public Relations material play an agency-setting role as 41 per cent of press articles and 52 per cent of broadcast news items contain PR material. This shows not only that broadcast relays more on PR sources than press does but it also shows that a considerable percentage of the information we get from both can be a bit doubtful as PR aim is to protect their client interest and therefore what is written is not necessarily the truth but what they want the public to read.  

It also tells the percentages of what gets more PR information and it is visible that business/consumer, health and domestic policy are the ones who get more PR information. This demonstrates the need these sectors have to try that the information that comes out to the public is only what they want to and not what journalists may find. Therefore they give them plenty of information knowing that they will likely take it without confirm it due mainly the lack of time and money. This way they control not only the news but also people’s opinion giving them only what they want them to think.  

This reliance on public relations by news media has affected news quality and independence but at the same time because journalist work is under economic and institutional constraints it becomes harder for journalists to be independent from PR.  

The academic research question that I will propose is “How does the PR-isation on the news compromise its factuality?” For this, I would choose a specific new and analyze with rhetoric and semiotic the way it was delivered in different magazines.  

References

Long, P., Wall, T., Bakir, V. and Mcstay, A. 2012. Media Studies Texts, Production, Context. 2nd ed. Harlow: PEARSON.

Lewis, J. 2008. A Compromised Fourth Estate? UK News Journalism, Public Relations and News Sources.Journalism Studies, 9 (1), pp. 1-20.

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Week 1, Reading 1

This week text explored the relationship between journalists and PR. From the readings I realized that is hard to find a balance between PR and journalists because while PR seeks for favorable reporting, journalists aim for independent reporting and is not always easy to match them both.

The media industry is changing and PR industry continues to grow and gain power in this industry. “PR-isation”, the strong use of PR material by journalists, is starting to be considered a threat within the news.

Along with PR-isation something to concern is churnalism, which it is about how journalists are just “churning out” pre-packed material that reaches them. They no longer look for information and news, check it and then sit and write about it. News come to their table and without checking them or working on it, they simple send it straight to being published. This is very serious when we think about the future of journalism as a serious and reliable profession.  

Journalists are relying more on PR or agency material because it saves them time and time is very important within the news world. With media forms such as television and online magazines news come out to the world in an instant. This makes it very hard for journalists to keep up with the velocity that news come out. Not only becomes hard but it also increases the tendency of relaying on PR sources without checking them because this way news come faster. 

Apart from the time, also the costs are much smaller if they just wait for the PR to give them information. The problem here is that PR are representing their clients and aiming for their best interest. Therefore PR information will always be about what will look best for their clients. 

As if time and costs were not enough there is also the problem in journalism that is the fact that it is a competitive business. Journalists will want an exclusive and will try their best to get a story earlier from the PRs forgetting that news should be about the truth.

An academic research question which I would propose is “In what ways is the PR material present on news articles”. To study this I would choose a particular magazine such as The Guardian and use representational analysis.  

References

Moloney, K., Jackson, D. and Mcqueen, D. 2013. News Journalism and Public Relations: A Dangerous Relations hip’ inJournalism: New Challenges, Karen Fowler-Watt and Stuart Allan (eds) Centre for Journalism & Communication Research, Bournemouth University.