Francis Shennan: Should the Scots ‘Leveson panel’ hold fire?
THIS is the 40th anniversary of Scotland starting the working year a day behind everyone else. For January 2 became an additional bank holiday in 1973. And Scotland may this year fall behind in Press...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: We need a more sophisticated approach to what is privacy
I USED to think I had intelligent friends, but that was before social media. At present, my Facebook page is cluttered with a video of a toddler laughing at a puppy chasing soap bubbles, an...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: Scotland ‘ahead of the game’ as debate continues about...
SO, the Scottish Mail on Sunday “can reveal” that “despite dozens of cases” of sex between 13 to 15-year-olds “none has resulted in prosecution”. This was the basis for its splash yesterday which,...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: Starmer’s draft social media guidelines
“THE first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilisation,” said Sigmund Freud. I have to own up. I didn’t know this quote until I looked it up on www.brainyquote.com....
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: The welcome Defamation Bill and the threat hanging over it
A COLD front is expected to move out across the country, emanating from the House of Lords tomorrow, Monday. It could extend the chilling effect of the repressive defamation laws we have laboured under...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: People who know the true value of journalism
DURING the last two weeks, thanks to Skype, I have been chatting to people from Bulgaria, China, Ecuador, Greece, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, Nigeria, Serbia, Thailand, Turkey and Uganda. What...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: Why not an Act of Parliament on Press regulation? But then...
IT is literally a right royal screw-up! We are to have a Royal Charter setting up a watchdog to oversee an independent regulator who will oversee the Press. Gilbert and Sullivan would have put that to...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: ‘McLeveson’ has overtaken Leveson
THE ‘son of Leveson’ has overtaken its parent. The report from the ‘Expert Group on the Leveson Report in Scotland’ – let’s dub it ‘McLeveson’ – is only 30 pages long. Yet it goes further than the...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: Never mind, there’s sure to be another regulator along in a...
YOU wait ages for a regulator to come along and then three come along at once. At least that’s what could well happen in the aftermath of what I believe to have been a right Royal Charter screw-up....
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: On the issue of taking risks in pursuit of a story
TOMORROW, the BBC is scheduled to screen a Panorama report by John Sweeney, on North Korea. It was made by the BBC team going undercover on a trip by students from the London School of Economics. It...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: What the… is going on?
BE warned: I am about to be officially offensive. For broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, has concluded that the word, ‘effing’, was not appropriate, when it was used emphatically by X Factor judge, Nicole...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: The media representation of fathers
ANDY Murray is to get a range of Royal Mail stamps to himself next month. It’s a tribute to what was achieved through the determined application of physical, emotional and mental effort over years....
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: Rumours of my demise… (I’ve been busy being shortlisted for...
MARK Twain countered the report of his demise with a statement to the New York Journal: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” It always reminds me of another, far less well-known story. While...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: Football Business & Media, here I come
BEING shortlisted for three university jobs in three months requires becoming practised in ordeal by presentation. Prospective employers set a subject. You research, you rehearse, you time the text,...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: The joys of freelancing
“Half an hour after getting to Intercourse I was in Paradise.” That’s my favourite of all the intros I wrote in my long time as a freelance. I had accompanied a trade mission to a conference and...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: Becoming an effective freelancer
SITCOM writer, John Sullivan, was spot on. When his creation, Del Boy, was asked his occupation, he said: “Self-Unemployed”. That is now the fate of large numbers of freelances. Advertising Age...
View ArticleFrancis Shennan: Leveson – what might we expect?
THIS time next week, we could all be on our way to being shackled by draconian Press legislation. That’s the picture that’s been recently painted by the Daily Mail and The Sun. Until yesterday, the...
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