There’s a view amongst Liverpool fans that you can’t trust any journalists. I’m not sure I can change anyone’s mind but in my research, I’d like to discover whether there are some journalists that can be trusted.

Others have a particular those that work for the Sun and some of those, by extension, with other News International titles. I have some sympathy with that – particularly when those fans are Liverpool born and bred. The Sun’s coverage of Hillsborough is at the root cause of this, but there’s also a perception that many journalists (think Boris Johnson) have consistently denigrated the city.

Some fans critise journalists that they don’t like (eg. participants on Jimmy Hill’s Sunday Supplement) - or those with which they disagree by attacking their motives (bitter blue, closet Manc). I hope to bust some of these myths but also highlight when particular journalists have a clear track record which makes their work biased or untrustworthy.

So how can you assess which journalists to trust? It’s not simple, but I’m going to use Journalisted - an index of every journalists’ output – and look at the articles that they’ve written over the last couple of seasons in order to find out:

1. Are there themes that they write about consistently? eg. zonal marking, Rafa being defensive
2. Do they repeat statements which aren’t borne out by the facts? eg. conceding from setpieces in 2006/07 and 2007/08 or Rafa rotates more than other managers
3. Do they speculate about things that haven’t come to pass? eg. transfer speculation
4. When they criticise, are such criticisms put in context? eg. Rafa’s net spend

This is the list of journalists I will analyse, so do suggest others I should look at:

1. Henry Winter
2. Patrick Barclay
3. Richard Williams
4. Chris Bascombe
5. Steve Wilson
6. Rory Smith
7. James Ducker
8. Oliver Kay
9. Matt Dickinson
10. Ian Ladyman

Related posts:

1. Henry Winter: Should Liverpool fans trust him?
2. Victims of Crime Trust mystery

It used to be a high profile campaigning organisation which aimed to “raise awareness of the issues that are faced by victims of crime in the aftermath of the crime”. Vince Cable (before spotting the credit crunch) had a moment to support of the charity: “Victims of Crime Trust is an excellent organisation that gives support and hope to the families of victims of terrible crimes”. It was set up in 1994 and was particularly prominent between 2003 and 2006 “promoting the crudest possible line in punitive criminal justice policy” according to Nick Davies of the Guardian.

Norman Brennan, its director, was quoted in the Daily Mail more than 300 times between 2001 and 2007 and more than 250 times in The Sun over a similar period. According to Media Guardian, PC Brennan (he is/was a British Transport Police officer) conducted 7,000 media interviews in the nine years to 2005.

Norman Brennan's media profile

And he was eminently quotable, saying things like:

• “Granting of asylum to a murderous asylum-seeker: “It just goes to show Britain is a soft touch when it come to immigration matters.” 27 July 2003: The Mail on Sunday
• On arming the police: “We must arm them before more are killed.” 16 March 2003: Sunday Mirror
• As far as I’m concerned, the criminal justice system is in crisis and in freefall at the moment. You have got gun crime, knife crime, violent crime and the fear of crime the worst I have ever known it in 27 years of policing.”
• He accused Lord Woolf of “putting the offenders first“

And then . . . . nothing. Not a word.

So what’s happened to the Victims of Crime Trust?

Its website isn’t even on Google. The website is unavailable, and has been for some time. I contacted the person who registered the domain name but they did not return my emails.

The Victims of Crime Trust has not filed anything with the Charity Commission since December 2005. It is over 1200 days late filing its accounts.

The most recent accounts (dated July 2004) revealed that the Trust had an income of £80,000, up slightly on the previous year. Unusually, 96% of its expenditure was on salaries, up from 66% the previous year. The Trust still owed Norman Brennan more than £24,000.  When I spoke to the Charity Commission, it confirmed that they were in the process of stripping the organisation of its registered charitable status.

Why does this matter?

The Victims of Crime Trust was, briefly, a very effective organisation at getting its views heard in the media. But it didn’t provide any services, formally represent any victims of crime (or speak on their behalf) and appears to have lacked sufficient support to sustain itself financially. But that didn’t stop it from getting a signficant media profile.

The Trust, like the Taxpayers Alliance, went for quite a while without any real media scrutiny. Nick Davies’ book exposing PR and a failure to fact-check in the newspaper industry was published in 2008. It appears that no journalists asked who it represented, where its money came from or how it spent its cash. And as the people behind Starsuckers have demonstrated today, it is not alone in finding it easy to get stories into the media without scrutiny.

It really matters for those charities and campaigners who really do represent people, conduct research and have ensured that they can stand up to scrutiny. There is a constant reminder that, in the eyes of the media, all of that doesn’t really count for anything as long as you are available for comment and the comment fits the editorial line of the media outlet.

* If you work for the Victims of Crime Trust and it is actually still a thriving operation, please do reveal yourself and I will gladly set the record straight.

Related posts:

1. Journalists Liverpool fans can trust
2. Taxpayers Alliance: a case study of poor journalism

The Guardian exposure is welcome and the scrutiny important. But this investigation would never have warranted a frontpage story if journalists had given the Taxpayers Alliance proper scrutiny to begin with.

I do not object to the fact that the Taxpayers Alliance exists. I think it had done a good job, in some circumstances, of exposing waste in the public sector. It has certainly sharpened the mind of some public servants; the exposure that the alliance brings mostly makes for better decision making. I even admire the way they have built such an incredible public profile.

But I do not agree with everything the Taxpayers Alliance does and I particularly enjoy the work of The Other Taxpayers Alliance in shedding light on some of its more wrong-headed reports.

The real scandal of the Taxpayers Alliance is just how much media coverage it has received – without proper investigation. The organisation’s research is reported frequently and prominently, the Daily Mail (517 articles) and The Sun (207 articles) have written about the alliance, on average, more than once a day over the last year. The Guardian admits to 29 different reports in the last year about the organisation.

Proper journalism would have asked some searching questions of the organisation:

• Who do you represent?
• How many taxpayers are members of your alliance?
• How did you conduct your research?
• Who are your funders?

And with the answers they received, journalists may have treated the work of the Taxpayers Alliance with the objectivity and scepticism that it often deserves.

There are no shortage of campaigning organisations like the Taxpayers Alliance. Norman Brennan’s Victims of Crime Trust is another that receives disproportionate, and unquestioning coverage. These organisations flourish because they peddle stories which go with the grain of journalism, provide quotes which are easily obtainable and strident headlines which fit with the editorial agenda.

But journalism was always meant to be about more than reporting the best press releases. Perhaps the Guardian’s report will lead to journalists thinking twice before running their reports without further scrutiny.

Related posts:

1. Journalism matters but so do big news organisations
2. Why Jan Moir’s apology shouldn’t be ‘case closed’
3. Victims of Crime Trust mystery

Both speakers pointed to innovations such as blogs, Twitter, Google docs and Wikileaks as the means by which so many more people can engage in – and with – journalism than ever before. The Guardian’s technology desk has 900,000 followers on Twitter – more than double the print circulation of the whole newspaper.

Neither were particularly gloomy about their newspaper’s prospects of survival although both predicted problems: a shrinking of the “mediocre middle” (Barber) and the shrinking of the regional press (Rusbridger). Neither had any viable solutions to the financial crisis facing big news organisations.

Lionel Barber predicted that “almost all” news organisations would be charging for online content in 12 months. Alan Rusbridger said that the commercial aspect of The Guardian was not really his job but speculated that they could monetise Twitter followers by charging for access to high profile people (which sounded dangerously like becoming a lobbyist).

The lack of clarity and innovation was also apparent at News Innovation, an unconference the MST hosted earlier this month. At a session on the future of news the audience discussed how newspapers could finding new revenue streams or apply their journalistic skills to more lucrative sources of income. As someone who has run a sometimes struggling business, such solutions were eerily familiar – and destined to fail.

But without big news organisations, journalism will not succeed. It’s the difference between busking on the street and being on the X Factor.

In some regards, news organisations have been truly radical. The Guardian’s open platform, the Daily Mail’s comment sections (with the up and down ratings) Sun Talk, Comment is Free et al. But the core product remains remarkably unchanged. Newspapers are still predicated on the notion that they need to give ‘a little bit of everything’ as if it were the only source of news for that reader. There isn’t much price differential. The USPs are unclear.

Big news organisations need more thought, more innovation and more focus. If some are to survive it will be because others have tried to be different and failed. That requires a courage apparently lacking. But big news organisations aren’t short of options. Of the 9 national daily newspapers why doesn’t anyone try:

• A cover price that reflects the cost (and value) of the content?
• Specialising in a particular aspect of journalism (investigation, celebrity, whatever)?
• Targetting a particular demographic (why no newspaper for older people?)

I’ve picked these examples because they aren’t radical and because newspapers are doing bits of all of them. But not enough and not to the logical conclusion. Tabloid editors are convinced that only the News of the World would have broken the Max Mosley story. But the others all reported it after it had broke. New outlets are succeeding (Heat magazine, Saga, Guido) but not sufficiently to fill the gap left by mass circulation daily newspapers.

I read Red and White Kop for Liverpool news (and make a small donation). I pay for LFC TV. I subscribe to The Economist because it’s delivered to my door and covers the world in more depth, and with more analysis, than I can get elsewhere. I would pay for the PoliticsHome top 100 feed. I don’t buy a national newspaper.

Big news organisations need to survive. But it appears they would rather hang together to hang together.

* declaration of interest: The Media Standards Trust pay my wages.

Related posts:

1. Taxpayers Alliance: a case study of poor journalism
2. Four challenges facing organisations online
3. What matters to trade unions?