Brave new media worlds: BBC News Online, the Drudge Report, and the birth of blogging

3 Brave new media worlds: BBC News Online, the Drudge Report, and the birth of blogging

Played out across the media around the world, the trial of 19-year-old British nanny Louise Woodward in Cambridge, Massachusetts was sensational by any measure. Matthew Eappen, an 8-month-old child in her care, had died on

10 February 1997. The prosecution alleged that Woodward had shaken him in

a fit of temper, causing a head wound and fatal brain injuries. Woodward protested her innocence, insisting that she had never used excessive force. The medical evidence was inconclusive, which meant that much of the en- suing trial revolved around perceptions of the relative credibility of her tes- timony. On 30 October of that year she was found guilty of second degree murder by the jury. During the sentencing hearing the next morning, Woodward – still maintaining her innocence – was told that she faced a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment (with the possibility of parole in 15 years). Attention then turned to Judge Hiller Zobel, who under Massachusetts law possessed the power to overturn the verdict, or to reduce the charge to manslaughter, in the event that he believed the conviction should not be upheld. What happened next astonished everyone. ‘The judge in the Louise Woodward trail stunned the world last night’, The Mirror newspaper declared, ‘by deciding to reveal her fate only on the Internet’ (The Mirror, 5 November 1997).

criminal judgement, Judge Zobel informed the trial’s participants that he

In what was widely proclaimed to be an unprecedented move for a

would post his ruling on the website of a law magazine titled Lawyers Weekly. Critics wasted little time in condemning the decision, branding it a cheap ploy to attract even greater publicity for the trial (one Labour MP called the move an ‘astonishing gimmick’). Some went even further, labelling the judge an ‘Internut’, and making much of the apparent fact that he did not own a television set. Comments from those close to Woodward similarly received widespread attention in the press. ‘This is a disgrace. I wanted to see his face as he announced his decision’, said one friend to reporters in the nanny’s hometown of Elton, England. ‘What kind of a legal system allows a judge to tap his verdict onto a computer screen and press the button?’ (cited in Daily

32 ONLINE NEWS News, 5 November 1997). Others, in sharp contrast, discerned in the decision

a desire to circulate the judgement to the world’s media in a manner that was both fair and inexpensive. ‘This makes perfect sense given that we have the kind of sophisticated technology we have today’, observed a technology co- lumnist for The New York Times. ‘Why shouldn’t he put the information di- rectly in the hands of people today?’ (cited in AP, 4 November 1997). Free speech advocates interpreted it as a step forward in democratizing the legal system, pointing out that anyone with internet access would be able to read the document for themselves, and thereby make up their own minds about its significance. In the meantime, Woodward faced an agonizing wait – possibly for as long as 60 days – to learn what the judge’s verdict would be.

Plans to restrict the release of Zobel’s ruling to the chosen website – Lawyers Weekly – were promptly abandoned when it experienced a ‘massive overload’ following the initial publication of its address. A further 25 sites were added to help cope with the anticipated demand. Moreover, in light of concerns about fakery, it was agreed that the Massachusetts Superior Court would contact legal organizations and news sites in advance of the verdict so as to alert them that a genuine email was about to be sent. Here it is sig- nificant to note the extent to which the internet had already figured in the case from the outset. As the proceedings got underway, the judge had ex- tended the customary instruction to the jury to avoid news reports of the trial (lest their impartiality be compromised) by forbidding them to surf the in- ternet as well. ‘May I stress that the Internet is now a medium of commu- nication’, he stated, ‘and that you may not draw information from there, either’ (cited in Daily News, 10 November 1997). Campaigners for the defence and, to a lesser extent, the prosecution had already mobilized to stake their claim in cyberspace, and to draw attention to what they considered to be the important issues. More than 200 ‘Free Louise’ pages were operated by sup- porters, several with email addresses to send messages, online petitions to sign, links to make financial donations, and details about where protests were being held, amongst other features. An electronic yellow ribbon picture was made available for people to download and distribute, as were clips from Court TV Online (the phenomenon of television cameras in the courtroom, then as now, all but unheard of in Britain). Message boards, chatrooms and discussion groups, provided by services such as Usenet, Prodigy and America Online, created forums for people to share their views – which they did in the thousands with remarkable passion and insight (see Senft 2000).

Opinions about the news reporting of the unfolding trial were hotly contested, not surprisingly. A considerable number of websites (official and otherwise) had appeared in order to provide commentary on the daily cov- erage, as well as to make available various background resources – such as timelines, biographical details about the participants, overviews of the legal and medical issues (such as ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’) involved, and so forth.

33 Major news organizations were rapidly recognizing the significance of sus-

BRAVE NEW MEDIA WORLDS

taining an internet presence. A small number of television stations made video items accessible online, albeit more with an eye to principle than practice given that download speeds were likely to engender considerable frustration for most users. Some newspapers – such as the Boston Globe – posted stories and links to previous ones in its archive. At each turn, news organizations were answering questions such as: ‘What is the Internet?’ for their audiences, taking care to explain the attendant terminology to the uninitiated (still assumed to be the majority of readers at the time).

Brian MacArthur, writing in The Times, sought to consider the apparent implications for the press. National newspaper editors, he pointed out, had regarded the guilty verdict to be the most significant news story for over a week. ‘Viewed from an editor’s chair,’ he wrote, ‘it was a human interest story of sensational proportions.’ More than the back and forth of the murder case itself was the fact that it revolved around a ‘British woman at bay in an American courtroom and a suspicion that she was found guilty simply be- cause she was British’. The intense interest generated by the case could si- milarly be linked, in his view, to the anxieties nagging ‘the conscience of every working man and woman who places their children in the care of a nanny, au pair or childminder’. Nevertheless, of particular concern to Mac- Arthur was what coverage of the trial signalled for the future of newspapers:

[W]hat we have witnessed in the past week (as we did in the week after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales) is a global news story in which newspapers are not [. . .] the primary source of news.

The trial in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was broadcast live on British television, and the jury’s verdict was reported on radio, tele- vision and the Internet hours before it was published in the news- papers. The news itself is now happening on the Internet and on television, with newspapers following behind.

It is in this threatening environment – in which the villagers of Elton, Cheshire, speak directly to Cambridge, Massachusetts, without any intervention from Fleet Street, the Liverpool Echo or the Ellesmere Port Pioneer – that editors must now fight for the survival of news- papers into the next millennium. (The Times, 7 November 1997)

In MacArthur’s view, the viability of newspapers in ‘the new media world’ will

be threatened unless they can continue to attract and retain their readers in the face of the rising competition from broadcasting and the internet. In this way, the trial was throwing into sharp relief difficult questions about the ‘new role of newspapers within the emerging news environment’ deserving of close attention.

Woodward’s wait for the verdict ended on the morning of 10 November,

34 ONLINE NEWS when Judge Zobel ordered that her sentence be reduced to involuntary

manslaughter. In seeking a ‘compassionate conclusion’ to the case, he maintained that she had not acted in malice in his view. His ruling that she serve 279 days in prison – the same amount of time she had already spent in custody – meant that she was promptly set free (although forced to remain in the state pending a possible appeal). The keenly anticipated ‘Internet mile- stone’ was not to be, however, due to an electric power outage in Brookline, Massachusetts that brought the email server used by the court to a halt. US television newscasts, some of which were drawing on apparent leaks from court staff, broke the news before anything could be posted to the web. The ABC, CBS and NBC networks each interrupted their normal programming to report the verdict. Shortly thereafter, several of the major news sites were ‘gridlocked’ by demand – a less than auspicious moment for online news reporting. Meanwhile, others in the press were expressing their reservations about the growing influence of the internet on public perceptions of justice. ‘Now that the Internet has entered fully into judicial territory,’ Edward Rothstein wrote in The New York Times, ‘some will praise its virtues: helping to create a broadly informed public, eliminating privilege and secrecy, and opening up new forums for self-expression and influence – all of which are partly true.’ Nevertheless, he cautioned, ‘the Internet is also expanding an already enormous range of social institutions whose very purpose is to second guess, disagree, rant, express and dissent’. Alarmed by what he feared might happen to ‘reasoned argument’ in the face of the controversy and disagree- ment spread by the internet (‘the Internet abhors consensus’), he made ap- parent his concern that nothing short of the judicial system’s ‘controlled consensus based on fact’ was at risk (The New York Times, 24 November 1997).

From the vantage point of today, there can be little doubt that the Woodward case signalled a profound shift was underway with regard to the changing nature of journalism in a digital age. What consequences were being set in motion would soon become apparent.