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Who’s Watching Media Watch?

ByLaurel Papworth

Media Watch is watching the Media. But we are monitoring Media Watch.On October 10th, I wrote this blog post: Facebook: A question Am I being paranoid or is there a hint here that this information and personal fotos were lifted directly from Facebook, without the express action/permission of the family involved?? Is this album available…

Media Watch is watching the Media. But we are monitoring Media Watch.
On October 10th, I wrote this blog post:

Facebook: A question

Am I being paranoid or is there a hint here that this information and personal fotos were lifted directly from Facebook, without the express action/permission of the family involved?? Is this album available to people who are not in the Australia network? Or not on Facebook?

It’s about David Pearce, the chap that died in Afganistan. I raised the concern that his photos had been ripped from Facebook without permission. There were 15 comments on that post. Some of the best came from Stilgherrian who worked his way through the Terms of Use and the Terms of Service to bring enlightenment to us all. Believe me, it seems obvious now, but not something that many people are thinking a lot about.

So I was a bit surprised last night when JodieM said that Mediawatch had done a piece on that very point called:

Filleting Facebook

For a start Facebook’s terms of use mean it owns all the material on Facebook pages. Those terms prohibit someone taking the material for commercial use. That’s called copyright law.

Then there’s the issue of privacy.

You can set your Facebook pages to limit who sees them, but many people don’t bother.

The Canberra Times which used trooper Pearce’s Facebook photos also recently published this…

I wish I had their contacts and resources. One area I guess where traditional media will always win.

Here’s an old post of mine on Mediawatch Quis custodiet custodes and another one where I was a tad critical of MediaWatch Forums. Do you think they were being snaky in not giving a hat tip? Do you think they genuinely came up with exactly the same approach that we (me, blogger, you commenters) came up with? It’s all a coincidence, right?

How cool would it be if the evening news and others started a hat tip bubble on items? Or is that overkill? I’d enjoy it. It would be funny to see JJProjects or DNWallace or Fang or FunkyCoda or DelicateGenius appear in the tickertape at the bottom. Even better if it said SilkCharm. (That’s spelt: Capital S, capital C please).


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8 Comments

  1. Yes that would be funny.

    Just as an aside:

    I find it interesting that there are some so called ‘old media’ journalists using Twitter on a daily basis (or are they also part of new media now?). It’s a very good place indeed to follow links to the latest news, opinions and blog posts, and to participate in various written conversations. It’s very immediate. Multiple conversations are happening on my Twitter feed as I write this.

    Sooner or later we are going to see articles in ‘old media’ that have originated from these kinds of new micro-blog conversations as well. I’d say it has probably happened already.

  2. … so NewsDesk gets a call that Mullody McWorth has gone postal in some way, or been a victim somewhwere.
    Straight to Farcebuk to search her name, them immediately gets onto all of Mullodys mates connections to access photos and stories.

    after the newsdesk thinks of doing this, the cops figure it out too …

    If somebody who has AddedMe As An Aquaintance then goes postal, how quick to I have to be to ‘Delete This Friend’ before the cops are bangin on my door.
    oh dear.

    and of course FB has my/our PassWord.

  3. @JJ
    In April last year, journalists infiltrated the forums of “doofers” (young people getting together to discuss doof music and events) to find out the ‘gossip’ on a missing girl who had gone to a doofer event and disappeared. How do you feel about journos that do that? After all, they are not part of the community, simply raping and pillaging content from those communities to sell newspapers.

    @helena I wonder if Facebook should initiate a way of hiding that we are friends? That way, I can still trade links and funny videos and stuff, without be raided online by the police.

  4. Thanks for the compliment, Laurel — and yes I know this is a few days late but we just returned from Bangkok.

    I find it interesting that people hold personal conversations in public — sometimes highly personal conversations! — and then get all shocked and surprised when other people choose to listen in.

    If you don’t want “other people” to listen in, don’t have the conversation in public. It’s that simple.

    (P.S. This new Blogger commenting system sucks. I want my name to link to my website, not a goddam Blogger profile which is then another thing I have to keep up to date.)

  5. *puzzled* Are you saying that TV stations don’t have to “shout out” or “hat tip” other tv stations that already covered the content/footage?

    I was actually making the point that if traditional media wants to continue sharing the stage with new media, they need to understand the “culture” including giving hat tips where they belong. Raiding blogs will just piss off readers – plus I have creative commons attribution – are you really saying it’s ok for anyone (blogger or MSM) to “listen in” to a conversation then claim it as their own? *surprised*

    And don’t yell at me cos you don’t like Blogger. You don’t care about attribution, remember? Heh. 😛

  6. Um, I’m not making any comment about attribution, one way or the other. Only “privacy”.

  7. oh silly me I misunderstood: you mean conversations amongst *friends* on Facebook are *open*. 🙂 I thought you meant that conversations on this *open* blog were NOT covered by creative commons. But they are. 😉

    btw, my Facebook account is not open to Australia network. Anyone posting my personal info from there, must’ve been let in by a friend. *glares* so don’t do it!

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