The annual Institute of Communications Ethics conference is fast approaching – it will take place on Friday the 29th of October. Students get free entry to this leading conference on journalistic ethics – so if you’d like a ticket, let me (Murray) know in advance.
I’ll be presenting a paper – here’s the précis:
Vanishing Point
As far back as 1662, the principal of legal deposit has ensured that publications be stored for posterity, so that researchers and historians might gain a detailed insight into our life and times. And yet fifteen years since UK newspapers started publishing online, there is still no collective, publicly held archive of online newspapers. This research demonstrates that the lack of a centralised, public archive for online news represents more than a theoretical loss to posterity . Drawing on several examples of online newspaper content which has been deleted, amended or otherwise altered, the author shows how our living history online rests on shifting sands. The author assesses the contribution of ‘crowdsourcing’ toward plugging the gaps made by removed and/or altered news copy, and suggests online sources and methods for re-discovering and re-visiting removed and/or altered content online. The author proposes a voluntary code on the removal of, and/or editing of online content for UK online media.
Here is the flyer for the event.
The conference will take place at the Foreign Press Association, Northumberland Avenue, London WC2N 5AP:
