News Gathering and Sources 153

Unit 4: News Gathering and Sources

Notes
Structure
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Basic Tools for Information Gathering
4.3 Maintaining a Diary
4.4 Taking Notes
4.5 Use of Computer
4.6 Internet
4.7 Mobile and Other Gadgets
4.8 Using Maps
4.9 History and Archives
4.10 Right to Information
4.11 Concept
4.12 Provisions
4.13 How to Use It
4.14 Cultivating the Sources
4.15 Reliability
4.16 Checking Information from Various Sources
4.17 Pressures and Pulls
4.18 Summary
4.19 Check Your Progress
4.20 Questions and Exercises
4.21 Key Terms
4.22 Further Readings

Objectives
After studying this unit, you should be able to:
 Understand the Basic Tools For Information Gathering.
 Discuss the Mobile And Other Gadgets.
 Explain the Right To Information.

4.1 Introduction
The four most commonly used methods in news gathering used by Navy journalists are
observation, telephone conversations, research and interviews.

Observation
Observation consists of your actually seeing an event take place and then reporting
what you have seen in the form of a news story. The difference between a good story
and a poor one is often in the skill of the observer. Skilled observers use their eyes,
ears, mind, notebooks and tape recorders. They make sure they get the concrete facts,
specific figures and accurate information. They look for the colorful, the dramatic or the
unusual in any situation.

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Skilled observers always try to get more information than they actually need. They
know it is easier to discard excess material than to retrace their steps after the story is
Notes cold. Developing your powers of observation can come only through experience. You
cannot become a skilled observer by simply reading a book. The key to becoming a
good observer is to look for more than you see on the surface.

Telephone Conversations
The telephone plays an important role in your daily work as a journalist. It saves you
time, legwork and it often enables you to reach people who are ordinarily too busy to
see you in person.
Telephone conversations may range from full-scale interviews to brief queries to
verify or amplify information. But regardless of how often you use this method of news
gathering, you should keep the following points in mind:
 Know what information you want before you dial. Keep your pencil and paper
handy. Do not call someone and then ask that person to wait while you look for
writing materials.
 Speak politely indistinct, well-modulated tones.
 Be cheerful and businesslike.
 Make sure you get your facts straight. Ask the other person to repeat figures or
spell out names.
 Avoid three-way conversations among yourself, the person on the telephone and
somebody else in your office.
 Recheck your information by reading it back to the person who has given it to you.
 Record the conversation using a "telephone pick-up" (a device that attaches to the
telephone receiver and plugs into the microphone jack of the cassette tap recorder).
Be sure to inform the person on the other end that you are recording the
conversation for note-taking purposes only.
 Do not discuss classified information.
Although a telephone is a very useful instrument, remember it is not the only, and
not necessarily the best, method of gathering news. It should supplement, but not
replace, all other methods. Whenever it is proper and convenient, use the telephone,
but do not be afraid to engage in a little legwork

Research
Research is nothing more than digging out information from files and reference works.
Research is used to verify or amplify facts in news stories and to give depth to feature
stories and magazine articles. Very few
Navy public affairs offices have adequate reference libraries. To do any extensive
research, learn to use the facilities of the nearest Navy, public or college library. Here
you can find the necessary books, encyclopedias, almanacs, magazines, atlases,
directories, indexes and similar References. The Naval Historical Center (OP-09BH),
Washington, D.C., is a good source of additional information about the Navy.

Interviews
About 90 percent of everything in a news story is based on some form of interviewing -
either in person, by telephone, or occasionally, by correspondence.
As a Navy journalist in search of information, you must learn who to get information
from and how to record facts. You must learn techniques for handling different kinds of
people - how to draw some out, how to keep others on the topic and how to evaluate
the motives or honesty of others. In short, you must learn how to get along with people
and how to treat them with tact and understanding while still accomplishing your
purpose.

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Types of Interviews
A distinction must be made between news stories that are merely based on interviews Notes
and actual interview stories. Very seldom is a journalist present at the scene of an
accident as it takes place - for example, at a collision between two automobiles. A story
of this type must be based entirely on interviews - either in person or by telephone - with
the police, with eyewitnesses, with the victims themselves, and depending upon the
gravity of the accident, with the garage mechanics, hospital attendants, relatives of the
victims and others.
In news stories of this kind, the journalist is concerned with a news event that
requires interviewing people to learn the facts. The interview story, on the other hand, is
essentially a feature built around the views, personality or exploits of an individual or
group of individuals. The difference, in most cases, is largely in the emphasis. In writing
the interview-based news story, you stress the news, whereas in the interview story,
you place the stress on the person being interviewed.
Interviews are as varied as the people who grant them, the journalists who conduct
them and the news that suggests them. Rarely are interviews so mechanical that they
can be reduced to standard formulas or categories. Several types, however, deserve
special attention because they are the ones that occur most frequently. They are as
follows:
 News Interview: The news interview is based on "hard news," some event or
development of current and immediate interest. Suppose you are a journalist
assigned to the staff of Commander, Naval Air Force, U.S. Atlantic Fleet
(COMNAVAIRLANT), and a new super carrier has been launched for the Navy.
Later, you learn the earner will be assigned to the Atlantic Fleet, and you are
assigned to write the story. The original news announcement released by the
shipyard or naval authorities would most likely contain only the broad, straight
facts - cost, size and construction details.
A story of this scope is of major interest to the local community of the super carrier’s
home port. Media want more information than is offered in the initial report. By
interviewing competent news sources, such as key officers on COMNAVAIRLANT's
staff, and asking well-defined, carefully considered questions, you can localize,
illuminate, expand and add depth to the original story. When will the ship be
commissioned? How will the ship's presence affect the local economy? What will its
mission be? When is it expected to join the fleet? To which carrier division will it be
assigned? Will there be a flag officer embarked? Has a prospective CO been
selected? How will this new carrier strengthen our national defense effort?
In any interview, try to speak to the best authority available. Do not settle for the
supply clerk if the information you need should come from the CO.
 Telephone Interview: The telephone interview, a modified version of the news
interview, has a number of obvious advantages, and at the same time, it has
several limitations that challenge a resourceful journalist. Ingenuity and clear
thinking are sometimes needed to locate a news source when a big story breaks;
the power of persuasion is often necessary to elicit information from a reluctant
person who can easily hang up the receiver, and a sympathetic telephone voice is
important when you are talking to a family where tragedy has struck
 Casual Interview: An accidental encounter between a journalist and a news source
on the street or at a social gathering can often result in a tip that arouses the
curiosity of a writer. A major news story may be the result after you do some
digging.
 Personality Interview: In the personality interview an effort is made to let the
reader see the appearance, mannerisms, background and even the character of the
subject. Magazines like the New Yorker have developed this type of interview,
called "a profile," into a high art not easily attained by daily newspapers under the
pressure of deadlines. However, with preliminary research on an interviewee's
background, intelligent planning of questions and skillful interviewing, a good

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journalist can let a person's words and mannerisms bring that individual vividly to
life in an interesting newspaper feature story.
Notes  Symposium Interview: From time to time, news developments of current interest
require a journalist or a team of journalists to seek information not from one or two
sources but from a dozen, or perhaps a hundred or more. For example, which of the
two presidential candidates in the television debate made the best impression on
the public? How do the residents of a city feel about their football team winning the
Super Bowl? For some stories - as in a pre-election poll - all of the techniques of a
scientific opinion sampling may be required. In other instances, reactions and
comments may result in a lively feature story. Depending on the subject, the
symposium (or group) interview may bring out opinions of importance,
entertainment or merely the views of the "man on the street" on some subject of
general interest.
 News Conference: In recent years, an increasingly popular phenomenon of
journalism has developed -the news conference. By presenting news conferences
"live" on television, President Kennedy raised them to one of the most potent forces
in the public exchange of opinion between the people and their government. For
close to 70 years, in a different format, the news conference has been an important
source of news. The person interviewed at a news conference may be the
President of the United States, the Chief of Naval Operations, a senior government
official, the manager of a big league team, a movie star plugging a new motion
picture or any other person promoting what is believed to be a news story of interest
to the public. As in every interview story, preliminary groundwork pays off;
knowledge of the interviewee's background is indispensable. During the interview,
an alertness to story possibilities often leads to unexpected results.

4.2 Basic Tools for Information Gathering

Information gathering helps the individual and the organization to undertake
complicated tasks that would otherwise be extremely hard to accomplish if not outrightly
impossible without the benefit of gathered information. As defined in the dictionary,
information gathering is the act of collecting information from various sources through
various means.
In the literal sense, information gathering is a basic human skill necessary for
undertaking basic human activities such as eating, sleeping, working etc. For in order to
eat, one must know if the food is edible or not; and in order to sleep, one must know if
the sleeping place is comfortable or not.
As applied in the fields of business and other specialized organizations (scientific,
military, academic) however, information gathering is an advanced skill which requires
the training and education of personnel in the procedures and methods of gathering
information from sources that are of higher level than ordinary sources. In the case of
interviewing personalities for example, a researcher usually gets to interview authorities
and proper officials, and thus, he must know the proper ways to address distinguished
personalities of the community and the society in general.
In general practice, information gathering is the collection of data for dealing with
the individual’s or the organization’s current situation. More data means more and better
ways of dealing with the current situation. More data broadens the minds of those who
will use the data to solve current organizational problems. New ideas come more easily
if there are lots of facts to be used as bases.
There are two main types of sources in the field of information gathering, namely:
 Existing sources – existing sources are those sources of information that can be
found in the printed, in video, in audio and other materials that are available to the
public or upon request to proper bureaucracy.

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 Natural sources – natural sources are first hand sources such as those who have
tried products, services and methods, and expressing their experience and opinions
to the researcher. Notes
Who Undertakes Information Gathering and Why
Information gathering is an assignment of the research specialist within the
organization’s intelligence department. They are the personnel properly trained and
equipped to carry out the research tasks in the most efficient manner. The proper
handling of data requires methods and procedures unique to the field of information
gathering. Research personnel do this task unequivocally thru skills like data sifting,
intelligent questioning, and other research skills. Other company personnel can also do
their own information gathering on the personal level to improve their job performances
and as a self-help tool. Researchers undertake information gathering in order to:
 Broaden the scope of knowledge of the organization
 For the development of particular skills
 To reduce the apprehension caused by the unknown
 For a higher level of understanding of special subjects
 And obviously, for solving problems
Additionally, on the non-professional aspect of the research undertaking,
information can also give inspiration and entertainment.

How to undertake information gathering

In order to implement a good information gathering design, a step-by-step approach is
advisable for any researcher to follow:
 Analyzing the problem: The researcher needs to identify the purpose and the
process of the research he is doing. For whom is he doing it and why? These
questions and more needs to be answered right at the start of the research.
 Identifying the sections of the information gathering: Before going through with
the process of information gathering, a sectioning of the general outline of the task
can be helpful. Sections such as those classifying the recipients of the data, the
detailing of the specific questions that needs to be answered, and also the setting of
the knowledge levels of the team members involved facilitates an easier to follow
research program.
 After the outline of the research task, the researcher may then set the actual plan of
activities needed to carry out the information gathering tasks. Questions such as:
Where to go to for the research? What materials need to be invested in? What skills
are needed to be implemented? And the details of the research materials like the
availability, languages, location and accessibility needs some suasion.
 The gathering methods and tools: The tools that are involved in information
gathering such as data storage devices and publications have their own set of
required skills that the researcher must readily possess or is capable of having.
Languages contained in publications could pose a problem and data storage
devices could have proprietary names. And names, as we all know in the computer
industry means lots of adjustments.
 Begin the gathering: During the gathering of the data, the researcher encounters
various amounts of information that may or may not be relevant to the present
subject of the research. He must sift through all of these carefully.
 Review and record the data obtained – a recording that includes everything from
the start to the end of the gathering process must be set in writing to provide all the
information that the organization needs.

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Advantages and Some Weaknesses of Information Gathering

Notes Information gathering, per se, delivers a great deal of advantage to the organization
undertaking it. Due to its enlightening nature for example, the researcher and his
organization catches a better glimpse of other people’s situations. They are able to
empathize with other people if they knew better. Better alternatives in problem solving
are also in the offing upon learning of mistakes already committed by other parties.
On the down side, with the proliferation of massive amounts of data in the Internet,
any researcher who took up gathering of information in the Internet can suffer from
information overload. There’s just no absolute lead with information gathering in the
Internet and pursued leads might lead to the doldrums in information gathering.

Best Ways of Information Gathering

An organization reduces the stress on itself if it has an efficient means of information
gathering. And for that efficiency to take place, some key points in the practice of
information gathering needs to be stressed:
 Staff needs to be organized and distributed to take on specific assignments.
 They also must be trained in the different approaches to inquiring.
 Everyone involved must be constantly updated in the ongoing research project
 With interviews, the information gathering staff should have good questioning skills
 Creativity, inventiveness and adaptability are key qualities that bring progress to the
gathering of information.

Team Reporter Facilitates Information Gathering

Team reporter is a web based email application that updates everyone on the team
especially remote working teams about project status and the progress the team is
making on it. Each member of the remote working team submits a report on his
expertise via email that Team reporter automatically sends to each member. Members
can gather information about the whole project and the team with Team reporter. All
these Team reporters undertakes by means of the following procedures:
 Creating questions that the team members will answer.
 Tailoring the questions to be asked to fit project needs
 Scheduling the sending out of email queries.
 Team members replying with their status reports.
 Upon receiving individual team member reports, scheduling of overall status
updates to every team member.
 Adopting preset business scenarios.
 Prompting team members who forget their reports.
 Arranging an archive of team status reports
Team reporter has the following advantages:
 Ready in 5 minutes
 Free startup
 Accessible even to novice users and managers
 No IT software or hardware requirements
 Only email login required for Team members
Teamreporter provides an efficient means of information gathering with its
automatic and custom functions that project managers can easily set up.
There are a number of different kinds of tools for collecting information about the
thoughts and beliefs that different groups have about your organization. We focus on

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three: surveys, interviews and focus groups. You can use one or more, or a
combination, of the following tools for different groups. Review the descriptions of the
following tools, and keep them in mind as you work through this section. In Putting It All Notes
Together you will specify which tool(s) you will use for different stakeholder groups.
For example, you may decide to use a survey to obtain staff's perceptions of your
organization, a survey for a majority of your clients and individual interviews with
randomly selected clients, and focus groups with your board.

Surveys
Surveys can be widely disseminated and are the most time-efficient method of
collecting information from respondents.
People generally respond to surveys anonymously.
Most surveys include some yes/no questions, some questions on a Likert Scale (a
commonly used numerical rating scale) (e.g., rate on a scale of 1 to 5), and a few open-
ended questions.
The disadvantage of surveys is that you may need someone with fairly
sophisticated computer skills to compile the information.
If you have the resources, you may wish to use consultants to administer and
analyze surveys.
Online resources can help you to survey your staff, volunteers, clients, or board
members. We do not specifically endorse any particular product.
Other software programs and websites are also available; find them by entering
"survey tools" into a search engine.

Interviews
Interviews are useful tools for gathering in-depth information from your stakeholders.
Interviews are particularly valuable because they allow you to ask follow-up questions of
interviewees when you need clarification about a particular response.
However, it is easy to ask leading questions in an interview format. Therefore, it is
important that the interviewers be careful to ask value-neutral questions. (An example of
a leading question is, "Do you think people of color are disproportionately discriminated
against?" Another way to ask that question is, "Are people of color and white people
treated equally?")
It is also important that interviewers record the answers to questions carefully and
that the full meaning of a response is recorded.
A third party with experience conducting interviews is helpful for designing and
leading interviews.

Focus Groups
Focus groups are useful if you want to gather a lot of information from a group of
stakeholders during a short period of time.
A typical focus group has 8 to 15 people in it and lasts for approximately 90
minutes.
Focus groups are generally conducted by a third party. The sponsoring agency is
usually not present for the focus group so that respondents will be more frank with their
responses.
If you have a large budget, firms that specialize in doing market research can help
you organize a focus group. If you have a small budget, someone in your organization
may be able to manage the logistics of organizing a focus group. Then you can hire an

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experienced consultant to facilitate or get a professional to donate his or her services.
Because of the importance of having an unbiased facilitator, avoid doing a focus group
Notes if you do not have money to hire an outside consultant to conduct the focus group -- or
the ability to work with a pro bono professional facilitator.

4.3 Maintaining a Diary

University of Delaware Professor Ben Yagoda defines journalism as, “uncovering timely
and previously not well-known information that, according to agreed-upon standards, is
important; and conveying it to the public clearly, accurately, concisely, disinterestedly,
and independently.” As a journalist, the stories you write are meant to provide true facts
to readers about issues or news going on in the world today. They are meant to be
truthful, unbiased, and informative. According to Peter Cole, writer for The Guardian
[Link] “journalists write
stories for their readers to tell them what is going on, to inform them, engage them,
entertain them, shock them, amuse them, disturb them, and uplift them.”
This web text is an overview of the necessary skill sets to be successful in
journalism, specifically, gathering information through interviews and asking the right
questions. Readers will also learn how to organize that information and turn it into
written work that includes unbiased writing, credible sources, and proper structure.

Gathering Information
The first step to writing a story involves gathering information about your topic. In order
to do so, you need people who witnessed the event first hand or have extensive
knowledge on said topic. In writing, especially in journalism, the information you use is
the heart of your writing. Perhaps without details, sources, evidence, one’s writing will
not have the intended impact of informing your audience.

Conducting an Interview
When interviewing someone related or involved with a story, you are receiving
information from primary sources. Before you begin interviewing someone, you need to
make sure you know what questions to ask and how to ask them. Plan your interview as
best you can and think carefully about the topics you want to cover. It would be helpful
to write your questions out beforehand if you have time.
 Questions to ask yourself before the interview:
 What do you know and what do you need to know?
 What are you trying to inform your audience about?
 What are some of the outcomes? Not everyone will like your story or the topic you
choose to write about so be prepared for negative feedback. Be aware of any
ethical issues pertaining to your topic as well.
Rich Martin author of the book, “Living Journalism”, who has more than 30 years of
reporting and teaching experience, offers his advice about interviewing. These are
some questions adopted from his list:
 What organizational policies or professional guidelines should you consider?
 How can you bring people with different perspectives and ideas into your decision
making?
 Who will be affected by your decision? Think about your topic and who will be
reading about it.
 How would you feel if roles were reversed and you were the subject of the story?
 Are there ways to minimize harm while remaining true to the facts of the story?
Once you have answered these questions and feel as though you know a lot about
the subject of matter then you can consider questions that you want to find out from the
person you are interviewing. It’s a given that you want to hear all sides of the story to

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prevent a biased opinion , but also keep in mind that there may not always be two sides
to a story, so do your research. University of Delaware Professor of Journalism Ben
Yagoda refers to this instance as False Equivalency. He refers to this example: The flu Notes
vaccine. The question parents are asking themselves should or shouldn’t my child get
the flu vaccine? Reporters may think there are two sides of this story and the truth lies
in the middle, but it doesn’t. “That would be saying that only a portion of children should
get the flu vaccine when medical reports prove that all children should,” says Yagoda.
With this in mind, think carefully about your topic to your story and whether it’s
apparent or not that there are two sides to look into. If so, plan for multiple interviews
because as a journalist you do not want to have a biased opinion. If there is only one
side of the story then do the research and interview accordingly.
Here are a few examples of types of questions you can use (adapted from Rich
Martin). We have further explained underneath each type.
Ask open-ended questions: This means questions that have no fixed limit or that
require your subject to provide details. Example: Do you like animals and why? As
opposed to a closed-ended question that only requires one word answers. Example Do
you like animals?
Avoid charged language or loaded words: This means questions that are not biased
or come across to the subject as trying to persuade them towards a particular viewpoint.
Your questions should not sound tough, but they should probe and issue.
Keep your questions short and focused: Don’t overload them with details that will
allow the subject to answer selectively.
Good questions illuminate issues and capture the personality and character of the
people you’re writing about. Also when interviewing someone, you need to be sure to
explain who you are and what your job is. Journalism is about directness, precision,
clarity, and not about confusing people. Questions are supposed to get answers.
Questions that fail to get answers are not tough enough.
Tips on questions to ask the interviewee according to Yagoda:
Ask follow-up questions-which are sometimes the most important: Example: Yagoda
read a story and in it the reporter quoted that his interviewee, “once drank a fine wine
that helped him remember a specific memory”. There was nothing further on the subject
and Yagoda wanted to know more about what was stated in the quotation. He says,
“This would be an example of an opportunity to ask a follow up question so the readers
aren’t left with questions. What was the type of wine he drank? What was the memory?
 Do not just read off all the questions you have prepared.
 If something the interviewee says is surprising or not clear then ask to explain
further.
 If another topic is brought up ask about that as well.
 Educate yourself on the general topic.
After the questions are prepared and you feel confident about them, remember
these final tips about conducting your interview:
 Be Yourself. Don’t act out of character.
 Choose the right setting. Offices and homes are both appropriate and convenient to
conduct interviews. Outdoors is also convenient if the story calls for it, but it can be
noisy.
 Tap into your subject’s ability to remember the details of the event or situation.
 Always ask why in order to fully understand what is being said.
 Take notes.

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 Don’t be late.
 Dress appropriately
Notes
Interviews can be a multifaceted tool not just restricted to Journalism. They can also
be used to help strengthen other forms of writing such as argumentative or research.
Using interviews in this form of writing may prove to be more difficult than in Journalism
due to the fact that Journalism is based on other people’s accounts of an event and
stories, while other forms of writing are based on other things such as data and
research. An interview adds multiple points of view to help inform the reader of the topic
and allow them to create their own opinion. If you are able to conduct an interview with
a reliable source, it is strongly advised to do so as this will help strengthen your writing.

Using Credible Sources

One of the most important things in any form of writing when using an outside source is
to make sure they are credible. A credible source is someone or a group of people
respected in their fields of study. A Harvard Law professor is going to be a more
credible source than a freshman at your local community college when looking for
information about law, for example. If even one of the sources that you cite in your work
is not credible, every single one of the other sources in that piece will be called into
question. Credible sources are not hard to come by, but you must take the extra time to
make absolutely sure that nothing your sources are saying could be called into question
for credibility.
According to Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab, there are a few questions you
can ask yourself to determine if your sources are credible. Below, we expanded on
some of these questions to better understand them.
1. Who is the author?
A credible author is going to be someone that has extensively studied the specific
field you are writing about or need information about. Not only that, but they also will
cite all of their sources in which you can check those as well for validity and backing
to what your original author has written. This is also a great chance to find more
possible sources to further your story.
2. How recent is the source?
The time in which a certain source was published will be important depending on
what your topic is. A perfect example for this is found in the Purdue OWL which
states that while information on the Civil War may be very old but still accurate,
more modern topics such as computers or engineering must have more recent
sources to stay relevant,
3. What is the author’s purpose?
A very important thing to keep in mind when deciding to use a source or not is what
the standpoint of that source is. Is it neutral or is it biased to one particular side?
This can be very detrimental to your writing if you only choose sources that limit
your information to one side of a debate.
4. What type of sources does your audience value?
What this question essentially means is that you need to write to your audience, so
you should use sources that could be respected by your audience. Peer-reviewed
journals and research logs would be a good source for academics and
professionals, but people in your hometown might not value that as much as a
mainstream source of information.

Writing a News Story

Now that you have asked the questions, checked the sources, and have all of your
information gathered, it is time to write the story. Peter Cole says that journalistic writing
is different than creative writing. A journalist’s goals are to inform readers about what’s
going and to adhere to just the facts. What sets journalism apart from other forms of

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writing are not only the eye-catching titles and lead sentences, but also the focus on
human interest that makes the reader feel close to the story. These are crucial tools to
incorporate into your writing for successful journalism. Notes
Structure of a Story
Before you begin writing your story you need make sure you organize your information.
This means picking out key points and quotes from interviews, investigative notes and
observation to support your story topic. Unlike an academic essay, the most important
information should be in the beginning of your story and supporting facts throughout the
rest of it. Matthew Speal, writer for Freelance Writing, and Jim Hall, author of “Beginning
Reporting,” highlight some key points to keep in mind when writing a news story:

The Lead
“The Lead” can be one to two sentences in the opening paragraph or a separate
introduction. It is used to grab the reader’s attention and persuade them to keep
reading, making it the most important part of the story. There are two main types of
leads-direct and delayed. A direct lead, also called a summary lead, immediately
reveals what the story is about. It answers the questions; who, what, where, why, and
how in a couple sentences. A delayed lead sets the mood of the story rather than
answering the what, where, why, and how questions right away. This lead can be used
to create anticipation and gives the reader a reason to keep reading.

Heart of the Story

When writing your story you need to be sure you’ve answered the following questions
previously mentioned. Using this structure will help you to avoid any conflict pertaining
to a lack of information. You also need to make sure your story flows together and is
easy for the subject to read. Using quotes, an active voice, and short sentences are
important as well.

Conclusion
Two ways to end a story are with a quote and a circle ending. A circle ending means
you return to a key point or idea mentioned in the lead. Find a quote that ties your story
together and draw a conclusion from it.

Non-Biased Writing
One of the single most difficult things for a journalist to do is write their story without
bias. Bias is the showing of favoritism towards a specific topic or view point. As a
journalist, you will be faced with a wide variety of topics to write about; some of these
topics you may have never heard of, while others may personally affect you or a loved
one. Writing a story without bias is difficult because if that topic personally affects you,
your first instinct will be to write to persuade the audience. This, however, is not the job
of the journalist. A journalist’s job is to truthfully inform the public about the facts of the
story.
We conducted an interview with advertising student Nikki Marini of West Virginia
University who also works at The Daily Athenaeum, West Virginia’s school newspaper.
During this interview, Marini was asked about her thoughts on non-biased journalism.
She advises the following:
1. Your first obligation is to the truth and your first loyalty is to the public. By this Marini
means that it is up to the journalist to bring the unbiased truth to the public.
2. Avoid making generalizations with potentially controversial subjects. Instead of
using the word “all” use “some,” or “often” instead of “always.”
3. As you work through the writing process, try to remind yourself of the assignment
you were given. With each sentence you add, ask yourself whether you are
including it to better the article or to better argue your personal opinion on the topic.

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4. Collaboration is key. When working on a story, you are sure to have some form of
copy editor that will look over your work when you are done writing. A copy editor is
Notes someone who checks spelling, grammar, punctuation, and overall appearance of
your story. Inform this person that you feel as though you may have been biased in
your writing and they will be able to take a neutral look at your writing.
Example of bias writing from The New York Times
(The example below was directly quoted from The New York Times):

Journalism can be an incredibly informative and useful form of writing as long as the
proper information gathering and writing techniques are employed. The most important
thing to remember when writing is that you are writing with a goal of informing the
public. Doing so requires that you include facts, not opinions, and provide as much
information from both sides of any given issue as possible.

4.4 Taking Notes

Even in an age of digital voice recorders, a reporter’s notebook and pen are still
necessary tools for print and online journalists. Voice recorders are great for capturing
every quote accurately, but transcribing interviews from them can often take too long,
especially when you’re on a tight deadline.
Still, many beginning reporters complain that with a notepad and pen they can
never take down everything a source says in an interview, and they worry about writing
fast enough in order to get quotes exactly right.
So here are five tips for taking good notes.
1. Be Thorough – But not Stenographic: You always want to take the most
thorough notes possible. But remember, you’re not a stenographer. You don’t have
to take down absolutely everything a source says. Keep in mind that you’re
probably not going to use everything they say in your story. So don’t worry if you
miss a few things here and there.
2. Jot Down the ‘Good’ Quotes: Watch an experienced reporter doing an interview,
and you’ll probably notice that she isn’t constantly scribbling notes. That’s because
seasoned reporters learn to listen for the “good quotes” – the ones they’re likely to
use - and not worry about the rest. The more interviews you do, the better you’ll get
at writing down the best quotes, and at filtering out the rest.

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3. Be Accurate - But Don’t Sweat Every Word: You always want to be as accurate
as possible when taking notes. But don’t worry if you miss a “the,” “and,” “but” or
“also” here and there. Notes
No one expects you to get every quote exactly right, word-for-word, especially when
you’re on a tight deadline, doing interviews at the scene of a breaking news event.
It IS important to be accurate get the meaning of what someone says. So if they
say, “I hate the new law,” you certainly don’t want to quote them as saying they love
it.
Also, when writing your story, don’t be afraid to paraphrase (put in your own words)
something a source says if you’re not sure you got the quote exactly right.
4. Repeat That, Please: If an interview subject talks fast or if you think you misheard
something they said, don’t be afraid to ask them to repeat it. This can also be a
good rule of thumb if a source says something especially provocative or
controversial. “Let me get this straight – are you saying that…” is something
reporters are often heard to say during interviews.
Asking a source to repeat something is also a good idea if you're not sure you
understand what they've said, or if they've said something in a really jargony, overly
complicated way.
For instance, if a police officer tells you a suspect "made egress from the domicile
and was apprehended following a foot chase," ask him to put that into plain English,
which will probably be something to the effect of, "the suspect ran out of the house.
We ran after him and caught him." That's a better quote for your story, and one
that's easier to take down in your notes.
5. Highlight the Good Stuff: Once the interview is done, go back over your notes and
use a checkmark to highlight the main points and quotes that you’re most likely to
use.

4.5 Use of Computer

By Bob Steele and Wendell Cochran
Bob Steele is director of journalism ethics programs at The Poynter Institute. Wendell
Cochran is assistant professor of journalism in the School of Communication at
American University in Washington, D.C. They prepared this report for the ASNE Ethics
Committee, and it appeared in the January 1995 edition of the ASNE Bulletin
 "Scientist makes up data for prize-winning research."
 "Politician's e-mail opened, read by opponent."
 "Agency keeps secret database of private information on citizens.
If these imaginary headlines were in your paper tomorrow, you probably would say:
"Great stories." But you might be more troubled if the same headlines read:
 "Journalist makes up data for prize-winning story."
 "Politician's e-mail opened, read by reporters."
 "Newspaper keeps secret database of private information on citizens."
Luckily, few of those headlines have been written so far.
But if you think they aren't possibilities, you haven't looked lately at the way
computers are changing the news-gathering process. Turning to online sources for
information or using computers to analyze information has become almost as
commonplace as dropping in on city hall. And, with the increased use of different
newsgathering methodology, editors might face new ethical challenges, or at least, new
twists on old problems.
"I would hope that we don't let technology change principle," says Ron Meador,
assistant managing editor for special projects at the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

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In other words, using the computer does not alter traditional concerns about
accuracy, fairness, privacy, plagiarism or other ethical issues. But using the computer to
Notes gather and analyze information can put reporters and editors on unfamiliar ground. That
means everyone in the newsroom should understand the nature of computer-assisted
journalism techniques and be aware of the kinds of difficulties that can arise.
So far, there have been relatively few reported instances of ethical problems
associated with computer-assisted journalism. Perhaps the most publicized was last
winter's Olympics episode, in which a group of sports reporters snooped around in
skater Tonya Harding's electronic mail account.
There have been a few cases in which journalists have used quotes taken from an
electronic message board only to discover that the person quoted did not write the
message.
Others have taken raw data from government files and learned, after publication,
that the information was inaccurate.
One of the most common forms of technology misuse has been in the arena of
photojournalism. Several publications have been caught in computer photo
manipulations, including the infamous Time magazine cover art of O. J. Simpson.
There are potential legal problems as well. At least one journalist has been sued,
unsuccessfully, for libel, based on his supposed misuse of materials he took from the
Internet. But it's probably just a matter of time before something really serious happens
to call into question the integrity of our business and give the public yet another reason
to doubt our credibility.
Editors say the way to avoid problems in stories developed electronically is to follow
the same kinds of procedures newspapers have always used to make certain stories
are accurate and fair and to ensure that news-gathering practices can pass ethical
scrutiny.
William Woo, editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, says, "I don't see journalists as
having a special tool kit (for computer-assisted reporting) any more than they would
have a special tool kit to cover the city council or the O. J. Simpson case."

Accuracy
Accuracy, of course, remains the paramount issue for journalists, whether they're
writing with quill pens or Powerbooks.
"We're on firm ground when we treat online information or bulletin board information
the same way we treat any information we gather as reporters, " says Michael J.
Connor, executive editor of the Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard. Information gathered
electronically needs to be verified the same way any other material is checked out, he
says.
Says Jeff Browne, special projects editor at the Milwaukee Journal: "The same rules
apply as if information comes over the police scanner, or comes to us by way of police
reports, or anybody calling us on the telephone. We check it out and make sure we're
confident about the information before we publish it."
But Connor recognizes the potential for problems. "When the gates open and we
have access to new approaches, there can be a temptation to stray from our basic
values of fact-checking."
One fact of online life is that it's possible to disguise one's identity. Before making
too much of this issue, don't forget that it's probably just as easy to be taken by a
source who calls on the telephone. And it's not unheard of for people to try to fool
reporters about their identity, even in face-to-face meetings. Nevertheless, reporters
have been burned by quoting from messages that were sent under one name, but
actually written by someone else. Tracking down the person who actually wrote the

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message can be tricky in some cases. But, says Connor, "We must verify authorship of
what is said."
Notes
The Norfolk (Va.) Virginian-Pilot has instituted a newsroom policy that addresses
this and other online reporting issues. The policy says, in part: "In quoting from
electronic communications, we will make certain the communication is genuine, as it is
easy to fake Internet return addresses or log on as someone else. The net is not
controlled like a wire service; hoaxes can come from anywhere."
The accuracy questions relating to computer-assisted journalism go far beyond
merely correct identification of sources. For example, Woo is concerned that journalists
find authoritative sources, not just ones who are convenient. And he worries that
reporters might selectively quote from documents or other material they find
electronically.
"It's very important that we be faithful to the context, that we read entire documents
in our searching so that the word or phrase or idea that we wish to develop is faithful to
the author's original context," he says.
The concern for context takes Ron Meador one step further.
"To me the risk is not that we will go and cherry-pick facts to support our story and
deliberately or carelessly skew reality. The risk to me is if we rely too much on cybertext
rather than personal human contact and connection, and we diminish subtext, which is
important to understanding the main text."
Meador says journalists should make certain that their Internet account isn't their
only connection to their sources. "You get so much more information in an interview
than by plain text."
In personal interviews, of course, reporters can see the person, look at his or her
office, see the pictures on the wall, notice the color of the paint in the kitchen and collect
scores of other clues about the person. All this helps understand the message. On the
phone, one can hear laughter, pick up on sarcasm and get some idea of when a source
is trying to tell you something between the lines. It's very difficult to put any of that in an
e-mail message.
The Virginian Pilot's online policy deals explicitly with this problem. It states: "If we
use e-mail in our reporting, we are aware that without voice inflections, it is more difficult
to interpret someone's tone, so clarification may be necessary."

Who checks our data?

Computer-assisted reporting techniques complicate the usual information verification
methods in other ways. Journalists who use sophisticated data analysis tools to study a
problem often become more knowledgeable about a subject than any other source. And
journalists can create information that didn't exist before.
For example, in the late 1980s, journalists at Gannett News Service and USA
TODAY designed new ways to measure the health of financial institutions. There were
no other sources for this information, no Federal Reserve Board or banking industry
studies to cite. Outside sources gave advice about how to construct the formulas, but in
the end, it was journalists who wrote the formulas, decided which variables to include,
analyzed the results and drew the conclusions.
To Mike Connor and other editors, that approaches waves red flags. "Nobody else
has access to test our data and to challenge us. We must be willing to explain our
methodology and how we arrived at our facts," he warns.
Connor also is concerned about the "aura of authoritativeness" imparted by
computerized data.
That is to say, in a computer, everything looks equally correct, though almost
everyone with a credit card knows how wrong computers can be at times. In general,

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data is dirty; it contains typos and outright mistakes that can throw off analytical results.
That's true whether the analysis is being done by a journalist or someone else. Many
Notes stories journalists publish that rely on government records quite likely are grounded, at
least to a certain extent, on databases that contain mistakes.
The Federal Election Commission individual contribution records are full of
typographical errors, as just one example. This should not be surprising. After all, a
large database might contain several million characters; the simple laws of probability
tell you there are likely to be some errors.
Among the things you might do to recognize these inherent problems: Consider
rounding off most numbers; create groupings that emphasize similarities, rather than
differences, between individual cases; make certain that ranked lists don't exaggerate
small differences.
University of North Carolina journalism professor Phil Meyer, who is the father of
computer-assisted journalism, says there are three rules for avoiding trouble with
statistics: Explain what you've done; apply your formulas consistently, and don't claim
too much for the results.

Privacy
Journalists who use computers also soon confront privacy issues. For example, what
should reporters do if they get access to hundreds of thousands of Social Security
numbers?
Privacy concerns have led some government agencies to deny news organizations
access to records, including those dealing with student loan defaults. In the 1994 crime
bill, Congress made driver's license records off limits to the press and the public. States
can set up special rules permitting access to driving records, but an important source of
computer-assisted stories now may be much harder to get.
"The ability of journalists to tap into databases and rummage through the lives and
records of citizens is certainly enhanced by the ability to go into the computer," says
William Woo. He believes that "a great wrong would take place if reporters went on
fishing expeditions into the lives of people with no greater purpose than to see what we
can find about them."
Woo says news organizations should "re-emphasize and specialize their privacy
guidelines to deal with the enormous capacity that online database searching permits."
Ron Meador doesn't discount concerns for the intrusion factor in computer-assisted
reporting, but he looks at them differently. He fears journalists might inhibit their
newsgathering ability if they worry too much about privacy.
"Privacy isn't a matter of what we dig up. It's a matter of what we print. I'm not
disturbed by the notion that computers will allow us to know things that allow us to
invade privacy. I'm concerned with what we do with that knowledge," he explains.

Original reporting?
Both Woo and Meador wonder whether the instant access to the work of others won't
lead to abuses. "A reporter has the morgue of virtually every other paper in the country
at his fingertips," Woo says. That makes him concerned about "outright piracy, where
journalists appropriate entire ideas from others."
Meador thinks reporters who rely heavily on online research might start to rely too
much on others for story ideas and even for the approaches they follow in writing the
story.
"I think it will erode original thinking, especially with all reporters and writers under
great pressure to produce. This is going to be a big shortcut--not to the text of your
story, but to the point and idea of it." Another issue to consider is the possibility that

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using online services to look at old stories will also mean that more stories will rely on
the same old sources.
Notes
Ethical safeguards
So how might journalists avoid the pitfalls of the new technology? One approach would
be to lay out guidelines such as those used by the Norolk Virginian-Pilot. Another is to
make certain that the newsroom culture encourages consideration of ethical decision-
making protocol.
Says Woo, "You need both culture and structure, or you only have water-cooler bull
sessions, which are not useful in guiding behavior."
Syracuse's Connor emphasizes training and the need to involve reporters and
editors in the decision-making process. He addresses ethical issues in his weekly staff
critiques. And he urges Post-Standard journalists to make computer-assisted reporting
part of their everyday life.
"We want reporters to use the tools, not make it sound like dynamite that could blow
up in their faces," he says. "We must make sense of that glut of information out there.
We have no value if we can't explain the 'why' of information."
Meador of Milwaukee argues that avoiding computer-assisted journalism would be
ethically problematic.
He says that the power of the technology "gives us enormous responsibility on the
green light of journalism ethics because it gives us a greatly expanded ability to do
important investigative and enterprise stories oriented to social change. To me, there is
an ethic saying 'The more and better you can do, the more and better you ought to do.'"

4.6 Internet
The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing
before. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer set the stage for
this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The Internet is at once a world-wide
broadcasting capability, a mechanism for information dissemination, and a medium for
collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for
geographic location. The Internet represents one of the most successful examples of
the benefits of sustained investment and commitment to research and development of
information infrastructure. Beginning with the early research in packet switching, the
government, industry and academia have been partners in evolving and deploying this
exciting new technology. Today, terms like "bleiner@[Link]" and
"[Link] trip lightly off the tongue of the random person on the street.
This is intended to be a brief, necessarily cursory and incomplete history. Much
material currently exists about the Internet, covering history, technology, and usage. A
trip to almost any bookstore will find shelves of material written about the Internet.
In this paper, several of us involved in the development and evolution of the Internet
share our views of its origins and history. This history revolves around four distinct
aspects. There is the technological evolution that began with early research on packet
switching and the ARPANET (and related technologies), and where current research
continues to expand the horizons of the infrastructure along several dimensions, such
as scale, performance, and higher-level functionality. There is the operations and
management aspect of a global and complex operational infrastructure. There is the
social aspect, which resulted in a broad community of Internauts working together to
create and evolve the technology. And there is the commercialization aspect, resulting
in an extremely effective transition of research results into a broadly deployed and
available information infrastructure.
The Internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of
what is often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure. Its
history is complex and involves many aspects - technological, organizational, and
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170 Reporting and Writing for Media
community. And its influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer
communications but throughout society as we move toward increasing use of online
Notes tools to accomplish electronic commerce, information acquisition, and community
operations.

Origins of the Internet

The first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through
networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962
discussing his "Galactic Network" concept. He envisioned a globally interconnected set
of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any
site. In spirit, the concept was very much like the Internet of today. Licklider was the first
head of the computer research program at DARPA, starting in October 1962. While at
DARPA he convinced his successors at DARPA, Ivan Sutherland, Bob Taylor, and MIT
researcher Lawrence G. Roberts, of the importance of this networking concept.
Leonard Kleinrock at MIT published the first paper on packet switching theory in
July 1961 and the first book on the subject in 1964. Kleinrock convinced Roberts of the
theoretical feasibility of communications using packets rather than circuits, which was a
major step along the path towards computer networking. The other key step was to
make the computers talk together. To explore this, in 1965 working with Thomas Merrill,
Roberts connected the TX-2 computer in Mass. to the Q-32 in California with a low
speed dial-up telephone line creating the first (however small) wide-area computer
network ever built. The result of this experiment was the realization that the time-shared
computers could work well together, running programs and retrieving data as necessary
on the remote machine, but that the circuit switched telephone system was totally
inadequate for the job. Kleinrock's conviction of the need for packet switching was
confirmed.
In late 1966 Roberts went to DARPA to develop the computer network concept and
quickly put together his plan for the "ARPANET", publishing it in 1967. At the
conference where he presented the paper, there was also a paper on a packet network
concept from the UK by Donald Davies and Roger Scantlebury of NPL. Scantlebury told
Roberts about the NPL work as well as that of Paul Baran and others at RAND. The
RAND group had written a paper on packet switching networks for secure voice in the
military in 1964. It happened that the work at MIT (1961-1967), at RAND (1962-1965),
and at NPL (1964-1967) had all proceeded in parallel without any of the researchers
knowing about the other work. The word "packet" was adopted from the work at NPL
and the proposed line speed to be used in the ARPANET design was upgraded from
2.4 kbps to 50 kbps.
In August 1968, after Roberts and the DARPA funded community had refined the
overall structure and specifications for the ARPANET, an RFQ was released by DARPA
for the development of one of the key components, the packet switches called Interface
Message Processors (IMP's). The RFQ was won in December 1968 by a group headed
by Frank Heart at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN). As the BBN team worked on the
IMP's with Bob Kahn playing a major role in the overall ARPANET architectural design,
the network topology and economics were designed and optimized by Roberts working
with Howard Frank and his team at Network Analysis Corporation, and the network
measurement system was prepared by Kleinrock's team at UCLA.
Due to Kleinrock's early development of packet switching theory and his focus on
analysis, design and measurement, his Network Measurement Center at UCLA was
selected to be the first node on the ARPANET. All this came together in September
1969 when BBN installed the first IMP at UCLA and the first host computer was
connected. Doug Engelbart's project on "Augmentation of Human Intellect" (which
included NLS, an early hypertext system) at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) provided
a second node. SRI supported the Network Information Center, led by Elizabeth (Jake)
Feinler and including functions such as maintaining tables of host name to address
mapping as well as a directory of the RFC's.

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One month later, when SRI was connected to the ARPANET, the first host-to-host
message was sent from Kleinrock's laboratory to SRI. Two more nodes were added at
UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah. These last two nodes incorporated Notes
application visualization projects, with Glen Culler and Burton Fried at UCSB
investigating methods for display of mathematical functions using storage displays to
deal with the problem of refresh over the net, and Robert Taylor and Ivan Sutherland at
Utah investigating methods of 3-D representations over the net. Thus, by the end of
1969, four host computers were connected together into the initial ARPANET, and the
budding Internet was off the ground. Even at this early stage, it should be noted that the
networking research incorporated both work on the underlying network and work on
how to utilize the network. This tradition continues to this day.
Computers were added quickly to the ARPANET during the following years, and
work proceeded on completing a functionally complete Host-to-Host protocol and other
network software. In December 1970 the Network Working Group (NWG) working under
S. Crocker finished the initial ARPANET Host-to-Host protocol, called the Network
Control Protocol (NCP). As the ARPANET sites completed implementing NCP during
the period 1971-1972, the network users finally could begin to develop applications.
In October 1972, Kahn organized a large, very successful demonstration of the
ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC). This was
the first public demonstration of this new network technology to the public. It was also in
1972 that the initial "hot" application, electronic mail, was introduced. In March Ray
Tomlinson at BBN wrote the basic email message send and read software, motivated
by the need of the ARPANET developers for an easy coordination mechanism. In July,
Roberts expanded its utility by writing the first email utility program to list, selectively
read, file, forward, and respond to messages. From there email took off as the largest
network application for over a decade. This was a harbinger of the kind of activity we
see on the World Wide Web today, namely, the enormous growth of all kinds of
"people-to-people" traffic.

The Initial Internet Concepts

The original ARPANET grew into the Internet. Internet was based on the idea that there
would be multiple independent networks of rather arbitrary design, beginning with the
ARPANET as the pioneering packet switching network, but soon to include packet
satellite networks, ground-based packet radio networks and other networks. The
Internet as we now know it embodies a key underlying technical idea, namely that of
open architecture networking. In this approach, the choice of any individual network
technology was not dictated by a particular network architecture but rather could be
selected freely by a provider and made to interwork with the other networks through a
meta-level "Internetworking Architecture". Up until that time there was only one general
method for federating networks. This was the traditional circuit switching method where
networks would interconnect at the circuit level, passing individual bits on a
synchronous basis along a portion of an end-to-end circuit between a pair of end
locations. Recall that Kleinrock had shown in 1961 that packet switching was a more
efficient switching method. Along with packet switching, special purpose interconnection
arrangements between networks were another possibility. While there were other
limited ways to interconnect different networks, they required that one be used as a
component of the other, rather than acting as a peer of the other in offering end-to-end
service.
In an open-architecture network, the individual networks may be separately
designed and developed and each may have its own unique interface which it may offer
to users and/or other providers including other Internet providers. Each network can be
designed in accordance with the specific environment and user requirements of that
network. There are generally no constraints on the types of network that can be
included or on their geographic scope, although certain pragmatic considerations will
dictate what makes sense to offer.

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172 Reporting and Writing for Media
The idea of open-architecture networking was first introduced by Kahn shortly after
having arrived at DARPA in 1972. This work was originally part of the packet radio
Notes program, but subsequently became a separate program in its own right. At the time, the
program was called "Internetting". Key to making the packet radio system work was a
reliable end-end protocol that could maintain effective communication in the face of
jamming and other radio interference, or withstand intermittent blackout such as caused
by being in a tunnel or blocked by the local terrain. Kahn first contemplated developing
a protocol local only to the packet radio network, since that would avoid having to deal
with the multitude of different operating systems, and continuing to use NCP.
However, NCP did not have the ability to address networks (and machines) further
downstream than a destination IMP on the ARPANET and thus some change to NCP
would also be required. (The assumption was that the ARPANET was not changeable
in this regard). NCP relied on ARPANET to provide end-to-end reliability. If any packets
were lost, the protocol (and presumably any applications it supported) would come to a
grinding halt. In this model NCP had no end-end host error control, since the ARPANET
was to be the only network in existence and it would be so reliable that no error control
would be required on the part of the hosts. Thus, Kahn decided to develop a new
version of the protocol which could meet the needs of an open-architecture network
environment. This protocol would eventually be called the Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). While NCP tended to act like a device driver, the
new protocol would be more like a communications protocol.
Four ground rules were critical to Kahn's early thinking:
Each distinct network would have to stand on its own and no internal changes could be
required to any such network to connect it to the Internet.
Communications would be on a best effort basis. If a packet didn't make it to the
final destination, it would shortly be retransmitted from the source.
Black boxes would be used to connect the networks; these would later be called
gateways and routers. There would be no information retained by the gateways about
the individual flows of packets passing through them, thereby keeping them simple and
avoiding complicated adaptation and recovery from various failure modes.
There would be no global control at the operations level.
Other key issues that needed to be addressed were:
Algorithms to prevent lost packets from permanently disabling communications and
enabling them to be successfully retransmitted from the source.
Providing for host-to-host "pipelining" so that multiple packets could be enroute from
source to destination at the discretion of the participating hosts, if the intermediate
networks allowed it.
Gateway functions to allow it to forward packets appropriately. This included
interpreting IP headers for routing, handling interfaces, breaking packets into smaller
pieces if necessary, etc.
The need for end-end checksums, reassembly of packets from fragments and
detection of duplicates, if any.
The need for global addressing
Techniques for host-to-host flow control.

Interfacing with the various operating systems

There were also other concerns, such as implementation efficiency, internetwork
performance, but these were secondary considerations at first.
Kahn began work on a communications-oriented set of operating system principles
while at BBN and documented some of his early thoughts in an internal BBN
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memorandum entitled "Communications Principles for Operating Systems". At this point
he realized it would be necessary to learn the implementation details of each operating
system to have a chance to embed any new protocols in an efficient way. Thus, in the Notes
spring of 1973, after starting the internetting effort, he asked Vint Cerf (then at Stanford)
to work with him on the detailed design of the protocol. Cerf had been intimately
involved in the original NCP design and development and already had the knowledge
about interfacing to existing operating systems. So armed with Kahn's architectural
approach to the communications side and with Cerf's NCP experience, they teamed up
to spell out the details of what became TCP/IP.
The give and take was highly productive and the first written version7 of the
resulting approach was distributed at a special meeting of the International Network
Working Group (INWG) which had been set up at a conference at Sussex University in
September 1973. Cerf had been invited to chair this group and used the occasion to
hold a meeting of INWG members who were heavily represented at the Sussex
Conference.
Some basic approaches emerged from this collaboration between Kahn and Cerf:
Communication between two processes would logically consist of a very long stream of
bytes (they called them octets). The position of any octet in the stream would be used to
identify it.
Flow control would be done by using sliding windows and acknowledgments (acks).
The destination could select when to acknowledge and each ack returned would be
cumulative for all packets received to that point.
It was left open as to exactly how the source and destination would agree on the
parameters of the windowing to be used. Defaults were used initially.
Although Ethernet was under development at Xerox PARC at that time, the
proliferation of LANs was not envisioned at the time, much less PCs and workstations.
The original model was national level networks like ARPANET of which only a relatively
small number were expected to exist. Thus a 32 bit IP address was used of which the
first 8 bits signified the network and the remaining 24 bits designated the host on that
network. This assumption, that 256 networks would be sufficient for the foreseeable
future, was clearly in need of reconsideration when LANs began to appear in the late
1970s.
The original Cerf/Kahn paper on the Internet described one protocol, called TCP,
which provided all the transport and forwarding services in the Internet. Kahn had
intended that the TCP protocol support a range of transport services, from the totally
reliable sequenced delivery of data (virtual circuit model) to a datagram service in which
the application made direct use of the underlying network service, which might imply
occasional lost, corrupted or reordered packets. However, the initial effort to implement
TCP resulted in a version that only allowed for virtual circuits. This model worked fine
for file transfer and remote login applications, but some of the early work on advanced
network applications, in particular packet voice in the 1970s, made clear that in some
cases packet losses should not be corrected by TCP, but should be left to the
application to deal with. This led to a reorganization of the original TCP into two
protocols, the simple IP which provided only for addressing and forwarding of individual
packets, and the separate TCP, which was concerned with service features such as
flow control and recovery from lost packets. For those applications that did not want the
services of TCP, an alternative called the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) was added in
order to provide direct access to the basic service of IP.
A major initial motivation for both the ARPANET and the Internet was resource
sharing - for example allowing users on the packet radio networks to access the time
sharing systems attached to the ARPANET. Connecting the two together was far more
economical that duplicating these very expensive computers. However, while file
transfer and remote login (Telnet) were very important applications, electronic mail has
probably had the most significant impact of the innovations from that era. Email

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provided a new model of how people could communicate with each other, and changed
the nature of collaboration, first in the building of the Internet itself (as is discussed
Notes below) and later for much of society.
There were other applications proposed in the early days of the Internet, including
packet based voice communication (the precursor of Internet telephony), various
models of file and disk sharing, and early "worm" programs that showed the concept of
agents (and, of course, viruses). A key concept of the Internet is that it was not
designed for just one application, but as a general infrastructure on which new
applications could be conceived, as illustrated later by the emergence of the World
Wide Web. It is the general purpose nature of the service provided by TCP and IP that
makes this possible.

Proving the Ideas

DARPA let three contracts to Stanford (Cerf), BBN (Ray Tomlinson) and UCL (Peter
Kirstein) to implement TCP/IP (it was simply called TCP in the Cerf/Kahn paper but
contained both components). The Stanford team, led by Cerf, produced the detailed
specification and within about a year there were three independent implementations of
TCP that could interoperate.
This was the beginning of long term experimentation and development to evolve
and mature the Internet concepts and technology. Beginning with the first three
networks (ARPANET, Packet Radio, and Packet Satellite) and their initial research
communities, the experimental environment has grown to incorporate essentially every
form of network and a very broad-based research and development community. With
each expansion has come new challenges.
The early implementations of TCP were done for large time sharing systems such
as Tenex and TOPS 20. When desktop computers first appeared, it was thought by
some that TCP was too big and complex to run on a personal computer. David Clark
and his research group at MIT set out to show that a compact and simple
implementation of TCP was possible. They produced an implementation, first for the
Xerox Alto (the early personal workstation developed at Xerox PARC) and then for the
IBM PC. That implementation was fully interoperable with other TCPs, but was tailored
to the application suite and performance objectives of the personal computer, and
showed that workstations, as well as large time-sharing systems, could be a part of the
Internet. In 1976, Kleinrock published the first book on the ARPANET. It included an
emphasis on the complexity of protocols and the pitfalls they often introduce. This book
was influential in spreading the lore of packet switching networks to a very wide
community.
Widespread development of LANS, PCs and workstations in the 1980s allowed the
nascent Internet to flourish. Ethernet technology, developed by Bob Metcalfe at Xerox
PARC in 1973, is now probably the dominant network technology in the Internet and
PCs and workstations the dominant computers. This change from having a few
networks with a modest number of time-shared hosts (the original ARPANET model) to
having many networks has resulted in a number of new concepts and changes to the
underlying technology. First, it resulted in the definition of three network classes (A, B,
and C) to accommodate the range of networks. Class A represented large national
scale networks (small number of networks with large numbers of hosts); Class B
represented regional scale networks; and Class C represented local area networks
(large number of networks with relatively few hosts).
A major shift occurred as a result of the increase in scale of the Internet and its
associated management issues. To make it easy for people to use the network, hosts
were assigned names, so that it was not necessary to remember the numeric
addresses. Originally, there were a fairly limited number of hosts, so it was feasible to
maintain a single table of all the hosts and their associated names and addresses. The
shift to having a large number of independently managed networks (e.g., LANs) meant
that having a single table of hosts was no longer feasible, and the Domain Name

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System (DNS) was invented by Paul Mockapetris of USC/ISI. The DNS permitted a
scalable distributed mechanism for resolving hierarchical host names (e.g.
[Link]) into an Internet address. Notes
The increase in the size of the Internet also challenged the capabilities of the
routers. Originally, there was a single distributed algorithm for routing that was
implemented uniformly by all the routers in the Internet. As the number of networks in
the Internet exploded, this initial design could not expand as necessary, so it was
replaced by a hierarchical model of routing, with an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP)
used inside each region of the Internet, and an Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) used
to tie the regions together. This design permitted different regions to use a different IGP,
so that different requirements for cost, rapid reconfiguration, robustness and scale could
be accommodated. Not only the routing algorithm, but the size of the addressing tables,
stressed the capacity of the routers. New approaches for address aggregation, in
particular classless inter-domain routing (CIDR), have recently been introduced to
control the size of router tables.
As the Internet evolved, one of the major challenges was how to propagate the
changes to the software, particularly the host software. DARPA supported UC Berkeley
to investigate modifications to the Unix operating system, including incorporating
TCP/IP developed at BBN. Although Berkeley later rewrote the BBN code to more
efficiently fit into the Unix system and kernel, the incorporation of TCP/IP into the Unix
BSD system releases proved to be a critical element in dispersion of the protocols to
the research community. Much of the CS research community began to use Unix BSD
for their day-to-day computing environment. Looking back, the strategy of incorporating
Internet protocols into a supported operating system for the research community was
one of the key elements in the successful widespread adoption of the Internet.
One of the more interesting challenges was the transition of the ARPANET host
protocol from NCP to TCP/IP as of January 1, 1983. This was a "flag-day" style
transition, requiring all hosts to convert simultaneously or be left having to communicate
via rather ad-hoc mechanisms. This transition was carefully planned within the
community over several years before it actually took place and went surprisingly
smoothly (but resulted in a distribution of buttons saying "I survived the TCP/IP
transition").
TCP/IP was adopted as a defense standard three years earlier in 1980. This
enabled defense to begin sharing in the DARPA Internet technology base and led
directly to the eventual partitioning of the military and non- military communities. By
1983, ARPANET was being used by a significant number of defense R&D and
operational organizations. The transition of ARPANET from NCP to TCP/IP permitted it
to be split into a MILNET supporting operational requirements and an ARPANET
supporting research needs.
Thus, by 1985, Internet was already well established as a technology supporting a
broad community of researchers and developers, and was beginning to be used by
other communities for daily computer communications. Electronic mail was being used
broadly across several communities, often with different systems, but interconnection
between different mail systems was demonstrating the utility of broad based electronic
communications between people.

Transition to Widespread Infrastructure

At the same time that the Internet technology was being experimentally validated and
widely used amongst a subset of computer science researchers, other networks and
networking technologies were being pursued. The usefulness of computer networking -
especially electronic mail - demonstrated by DARPA and Department of Defense
contractors on the ARPANET was not lost on other communities and disciplines, so that
by the mid-1970s computer networks had begun to spring up wherever funding could be
found for the purpose. The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) established MFENet for
its researchers in Magnetic Fusion Energy, whereupon DoE's High Energy Physicists

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responded by building HEPNet. NASA Space Physicists followed with SPAN, and Rick
Adrion, David Farber, and Larry Landweber established CSNET for the (academic and
Notes industrial) Computer Science community with an initial grant from the U.S. National
Science Foundation (NSF). AT&T's free-wheeling dissemination of the UNIX computer
operating system spawned USENET, based on UNIX' built-in UUCP communication
protocols, and in 1981 Ira Fuchs and Greydon Freeman devised BITNET, which linked
academic mainframe computers in an "email as card images" paradigm.
With the exception of BITNET and USENET, these early networks (including
ARPANET) were purpose-built - i.e., they were intended for, and largely restricted to,
closed communities of scholars; there was hence little pressure for the individual
networks to be compatible and, indeed, they largely were not. In addition, alternate
technologies were being pursued in the commercial sector, including XNS from Xerox,
DECNet, and IBM's SNA.8 It remained for the British JANET (1984) and U.S. NSFNET
(1985) programs to explicitly announce their intent to serve the entire higher education
community, regardless of discipline. Indeed, a condition for a U.S. university to receive
NSF funding for an Internet connection was that "... the connection must be made
available to ALL qualified users on campus."
In 1985, Dennis Jennings came from Ireland to spend a year at NSF leading the
NSFNET program. He worked with the community to help NSF make a critical decision
- that TCP/IP would be mandatory for the NSFNET program. When Steve Wolff took
over the NSFNET program in 1986, he recognized the need for a wide area networking
infrastructure to support the general academic and research community, along with the
need to develop a strategy for establishing such infrastructure on a basis ultimately
independent of direct federal funding. Policies and strategies were adopted (see below)
to achieve that end.
NSF also elected to support DARPA's existing Internet organizational infrastructure,
hierarchically arranged under the (then) Internet Activities Board (IAB). The public
declaration of this choice was the joint authorship by the IAB's Internet Engineering and
Architecture Task Forces and by NSF's Network Technical Advisory Group of RFC 985
(Requirements for Internet Gateways ), which formally ensured interoperability of
DARPA's and NSF's pieces of the Internet.
In addition to the selection of TCP/IP for the NSFNET program, Federal agencies
made and implemented several other policy decisions which shaped the Internet of
today.
Federal agencies shared the cost of common infrastructure, such as trans-oceanic
circuits. They also jointly supported "managed interconnection points" for interagency
traffic; the Federal Internet Exchanges (FIX-E and FIX-W) built for this purpose served
as models for the Network Access Points and "*IX" facilities that are prominent features
of today's Internet architecture.
To coordinate this sharing, the Federal Networking Council9 was formed. The FNC
also cooperated with other international organizations, such as RARE in Europe,
through the Coordinating Committee on Intercontinental Research Networking, CCIRN,
to coordinate Internet support of the research community worldwide.
This sharing and cooperation between agencies on Internet-related issues had a
long history. An unprecedented 1981 agreement between Farber, acting for CSNET
and the NSF, and DARPA's Kahn, permitted CSNET traffic to share ARPANET
infrastructure on a statistical and no-metered-settlements basis.
Subsequently, in a similar mode, the NSF encouraged its regional (initially
academic) networks of the NSFNET to seek commercial, non-academic customers,
expand their facilities to serve them, and exploit the resulting economies of scale to
lower subscription costs for all.
On the NSFNET Backbone - the national-scale segment of the NSFNET - NSF
enforced an "Acceptable Use Policy" (AUP) which prohibited Backbone usage for

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purposes "not in support of Research and Education." The predictable (and intended)
result of encouraging commercial network traffic at the local and regional level, while
denying its access to national-scale transport, was to stimulate the emergence and/or Notes
growth of "private", competitive, long-haul networks such as PSI, UUNET, ANS CO+RE,
and (later) others. This process of privately-financed augmentation for commercial uses
was thrashed out starting in 1988 in a series of NSF-initiated conferences at Harvard's
Kennedy School of Government on "The Commercialization and Privatization of the
Internet" - and on the "com-priv" list on the net itself.
In 1988, a National Research Council committee, chaired by Kleinrock and with
Kahn and Clark as members, produced a report commissioned by NSF titled "Towards
a National Research Network". This report was influential on then Senator Al Gore, and
ushered in high speed networks that laid the networking foundation for the future
information superhighway.
In 1994, a National Research Council report, again chaired by Kleinrock (and with
Kahn and Clark as members again), Entitled "Realizing The Information Future: The
Internet and Beyond" was released. This report, commissioned by NSF, was the
document in which a blueprint for the evolution of the information superhighway was
articulated and which has had a lasting effect on the way to think about its evolution. It
anticipated the critical issues of intellectual property rights, ethics, pricing, education,
architecture and regulation for the Internet.
NSF's privatization policy culminated in April, 1995, with the defunding of the
NSFNET Backbone. The funds thereby recovered were (competitively) redistributed to
regional networks to buy national-scale Internet connectivity from the now numerous,
private, long-haul networks.
The backbone had made the transition from a network built from routers out of the
research community (the "Fuzzball" routers from David Mills) to commercial equipment.
In its 8 1/2 year lifetime, the Backbone had grown from six nodes with 56 kbps links to
21 nodes with multiple 45 Mbps links. It had seen the Internet grow to over 50,000
networks on all seven continents and outer space, with approximately 29,000 networks
in the United States.
Such was the weight of the NSFNET program's ecumenism and funding ($200
million from 1986 to 1995) - and the quality of the protocols themselves - that by 1990
when the ARPANET itself was finally decommissioned, TCP/IP had supplanted or
marginalized most other wide-area computer network protocols worldwide, and IP was
well on its way to becoming THE bearer service for the Global Information
Infrastructure.

The Role of Documentation

A key to the rapid growth of the Internet has been the free and open access to the basic
documents, especially the specifications of the protocols.
The beginnings of the ARPANET and the Internet in the university research
community promoted the academic tradition of open publication of ideas and results.
However, the normal cycle of traditional academic publication was too formal and too
slow for the dynamic exchange of ideas essential to creating networks.
In 1969 a key step was taken by S. Crocker (then at UCLA) in establishing the
Request for Comments (or RFC) series of notes. These memos were intended to be an
informal fast distribution way to share ideas with other network researchers. At first the
RFCs were printed on paper and distributed via snail mail. As the File Transfer Protocol
(FTP) came into use, the RFCs were prepared as online files and accessed via FTP.
Now, of course, the RFCs are easily accessed via the World Wide Web at dozens of
sites around the world. SRI, in its role as Network Information Center, maintained the
online directories. Jon Postel acted as RFC Editor as well as managing the centralized
administration of required protocol number assignments, roles that he continued to play
until his death, October 16, 1998.

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The effect of the RFCs was to create a positive feedback loop, with ideas or
proposals presented in one RFC triggering another RFC with additional ideas, and so
Notes on. When some consensus (or at least a consistent set of ideas) had come together a
specification document would be prepared. Such a specification would then be used as
the base for implementations by the various research teams.
Over time, the RFCs have become more focused on protocol standards (the
"official" specifications), though there are still informational RFCs that describe alternate
approaches, or provide background information on protocols and engineering issues.
The RFCs are now viewed as the "documents of record" in the Internet engineering and
standards community.
The open access to the RFCs (for free, if you have any kind of a connection to the
Internet) promotes the growth of the Internet because it allows the actual specifications
to be used for examples in college classes and by entrepreneurs developing new
systems.
Email has been a significant factor in all areas of the Internet, and that is certainly
true in the development of protocol specifications, technical standards, and Internet
engineering. The very early RFCs often presented a set of ideas developed by the
researchers at one location to the rest of the community. After email came into use, the
authorship pattern changed - RFCs were presented by joint authors with common view
independent of their locations.
The use of specialized email mailing lists has been long used in the development of
protocol specifications, and continues to be an important tool. The IETF now has in
excess of 75 working groups, each working on a different aspect of Internet
engineering. Each of these working groups has a mailing list to discuss one or more
draft documents under development. When consensus is reached on a draft document
it may be distributed as an RFC.
As the current rapid expansion of the Internet is fueled by the realization of its
capability to promote information sharing, we should understand that the network's first
role in information sharing was sharing the information about its own design and
operation through the RFC documents. This unique method for evolving new
capabilities in the network will continue to be critical to future evolution of the Internet.

Formation of the Broad Community

The Internet is as much a collection of communities as a collection of technologies, and
its success is largely attributable to both satisfying basic community needs as well as
utilizing the community in an effective way to push the infrastructure forward. This
community spirit has a long history beginning with the early ARPANET. The early
ARPANET researchers worked as a close-knit community to accomplish the initial
demonstrations of packet switching technology described earlier. Likewise, the Packet
Satellite, Packet Radio and several other DARPA computer science research programs
were multi-contractor collaborative activities that heavily used whatever available
mechanisms there were to coordinate their efforts, starting with electronic mail and
adding file sharing, remote access, and eventually World Wide Web capabilities. Each
of these programs formed a working group, starting with the ARPANET Network
Working Group. Because of the unique role that ARPANET played as an infrastructure
supporting the various research programs, as the Internet started to evolve, the
Network Working Group evolved into Internet Working Group.
In the late 1970s, recognizing that the growth of the Internet was accompanied by a
growth in the size of the interested research community and therefore an increased
need for coordination mechanisms, Vint Cerf, then manager of the Internet Program at
DARPA, formed several coordination bodies - an International Cooperation Board (ICB),
chaired by Peter Kirstein of UCL, to coordinate activities with some cooperating
European countries centered on Packet Satellite research, an Internet Research Group
which was an inclusive group providing an environment for general exchange of
information, and an Internet Configuration Control Board (ICCB), chaired by Clark. The
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News Gathering and Sources 179
ICCB was an invitational body to assist Cerf in managing the burgeoning Internet
activity.
Notes
In 1983, when Barry Leiner took over management of the Internet research program
at DARPA, he and Clark recognized that the continuing growth of the Internet
community demanded a restructuring of the coordination mechanisms. The ICCB was
disbanded and in its place a structure of Task Forces was formed, each focused on a
particular area of the technology (e.g. routers, end-to-end protocols, etc.). The Internet
Activities Board (IAB) was formed from the chairs of the Task Forces.
It of course was only a coincidence that the chairs of the Task Forces were the
same people as the members of the old ICCB, and Dave Clark continued to act as
chair. After some changing membership on the IAB, Phill Gross became chair of a
revitalized Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), at the time merely one of the IAB
Task Forces. As we saw above, by 1985 there was a tremendous growth in the more
practical/engineering side of the Internet. This growth resulted in an explosion in the
attendance at the IETF meetings, and Gross was compelled to create substructure to
the IETF in the form of working groups.
This growth was complemented by a major expansion in the community. No longer
was DARPA the only major player in the funding of the Internet. In addition to NSFNet
and the various US and international government-funded activities, interest in the
commercial sector was beginning to grow. Also in 1985, both Kahn and Leiner left
DARPA and there was a significant decrease in Internet activity at DARPA. As a result,
the IAB was left without a primary sponsor and increasingly assumed the mantle of
leadership.
The growth continued, resulting in even further substructure within both the IAB and
IETF. The IETF combined Working Groups into Areas, and designated Area Directors.
An Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) was formed of the Area Directors. The
IAB recognized the increasing importance of the IETF, and restructured the standards
process to explicitly recognize the IESG as the major review body for standards. The
IAB also restructured so that the rest of the Task Forces (other than the IETF) were
combined into an Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) chaired by Postel, with the old
task forces renamed as research groups.
The growth in the commercial sector brought with it increased concern regarding
the standards process itself. Starting in the early 1980's and continuing to this day, the
Internet grew beyond its primarily research roots to include both a broad user
community and increased commercial activity. Increased attention was paid to making
the process open and fair. This coupled with a recognized need for community support
of the Internet eventually led to the formation of the Internet Society in 1991, under the
auspices of Kahn's Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) and the
leadership of Cerf, then with CNRI.
In 1992, yet another reorganization took place. In 1992, the Internet Activities Board
was re-organized and re-named the Internet Architecture Board operating under the
auspices of the Internet Society. A more "peer" relationship was defined between the
new IAB and IESG, with the IETF and IESG taking a larger responsibility for the
approval of standards. Ultimately, a cooperative and mutually supportive relationship
was formed between the IAB, IETF, and Internet Society, with the Internet Society
taking on as a goal the provision of service and other measures which would facilitate
the work of the IETF.
The recent development and widespread deployment of the World Wide Web has
brought with it a new community, as many of the people working on the WWW have not
thought of themselves as primarily network researchers and developers. A new
coordination organization was formed, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Initially
led from MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science by Tim Berners-Lee (the inventor of
the WWW) and Al Vezza, W3C has taken on the responsibility for evolving the various
protocols and standards associated with the Web.

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Thus, through the over two decades of Internet activity, we have seen a steady
evolution of organizational structures designed to support and facilitate an ever-
Notes increasing community working collaboratively on Internet issues.

Commercialization of the Technology

Commercialization of the Internet involved not only the development of competitive,
private network services, but also the development of commercial products
implementing the Internet technology. In the early 1980s, dozens of vendors were
incorporating TCP/IP into their products because they saw buyers for that approach to
networking. Unfortunately they lacked both real information about how the technology
was supposed to work and how the customers planned on using this approach to
networking. Many saw it as a nuisance add-on that had to be glued on to their own
proprietary networking solutions: SNA, DECNet, Netware, NetBios. The DoD had
mandated the use of TCP/IP in many of its purchases but gave little help to the vendors
regarding how to build useful TCP/IP products.
In 1985, recognizing this lack of information availability and appropriate training,
Dan Lynch in cooperation with the IAB arranged to hold a three day workshop for ALL
vendors to come learn about how TCP/IP worked and what it still could not do well. The
speakers came mostly from the DARPA research community who had both developed
these protocols and used them in day-to-day work. About 250 vendor personnel came
to listen to 50 inventors and experimenters. The results were surprises on both sides:
the vendors were amazed to find that the inventors were so open about the way things
worked (and what still did not work) and the inventors were pleased to listen to new
problems they had not considered, but were being discovered by the vendors in the
field. Thus a two-way discussion was formed that has lasted for over a decade.
After two years of conferences, tutorials, design meetings and workshops, a special
event was organized that invited those vendors whose products ran TCP/IP well
enough to come together in one room for three days to show off how well they all
worked together and also ran over the Internet. In September of 1988 the first Interop
trade show was born. 50 companies made the cut. 5,000 engineers from potential
customer organizations came to see if it all did work as was promised. It did. Why?
Because the vendors worked extremely hard to ensure that everyone's products
interoperated with all of the other products - even with those of their competitors. The
Interop trade show has grown immensely since then and today it is held in 7 locations
around the world each year to an audience of over 250,000 people who come to learn
which products work with each other in a seamless manner, learn about the latest
products, and discuss the latest technology.
In parallel with the commercialization efforts that were highlighted by the Interop
activities, the vendors began to attend the IETF meetings that were held 3 or 4 times a
year to discuss new ideas for extensions of the TCP/IP protocol suite. Starting with a
few hundred attendees mostly from academia and paid for by the government, these
meetings now often exceed a thousand attendees, mostly from the vendor community
and paid for by the attendees themselves. This self-selected group evolves the TCP/IP
suite in a mutually cooperative manner. The reason it is so useful is that it is composed
of all stakeholders: researchers, end users and vendors.
Network management provides an example of the interplay between the research
and commercial communities. In the beginning of the Internet, the emphasis was on
defining and implementing protocols that achieved interoperation.
As the network grew larger, it became clear that the sometime ad hoc procedures
used to manage the network would not scale. Manual configuration of tables was
replaced by distributed automated algorithms, and better tools were devised to isolate
faults. In 1987 it became clear that a protocol was needed that would permit the
elements of the network, such as the routers, to be remotely managed in a uniform way.
Several protocols for this purpose were proposed, including Simple Network
Management Protocol or SNMP (designed, as its name would suggest, for simplicity,

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and derived from an earlier proposal called SGMP), HEMS (a more complex design
from the research community) and CMIP (from the OSI community). A series of meeting
led to the decisions that HEMS would be withdrawn as a candidate for standardization, Notes
in order to help resolve the contention, but that work on both SNMP and CMIP would go
forward, with the idea that the SNMP could be a more near-term solution and CMIP a
longer-term approach. The market could choose the one it found more suitable. SNMP
is now used almost universally for network-based management.
In the last few years, we have seen a new phase of commercialization. Originally,
commercial efforts mainly comprised vendors providing the basic networking products,
and service providers offering the connectivity and basic Internet services. The Internet
has now become almost a "commodity" service, and much of the latest attention has
been on the use of this global information infrastructure for support of other commercial
services. This has been tremendously accelerated by the widespread and rapid
adoption of browsers and the World Wide Web technology, allowing users easy access
to information linked throughout the globe. Products are available to facilitate the
provisioning of that information and many of the latest developments in technology have
been aimed at providing increasingly sophisticated information services on top of the
basic Internet data communications.

History of the Future

On October 24, 1995, the FNC unanimously passed a resolution defining the term
Internet. This definition was developed in consultation with members of the internet and
intellectual property rights communities. RESOLUTION: The Federal Networking
Council (FNC) agrees that the following language reflects our definition of the term
"Internet". "Internet" refers to the global information system that -- (i) is logically linked
together by a globally unique address space based on the Internet Protocol (IP) or its
subsequent extensions/follow-ons; (ii) is able to support communications using the
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) suite or its subsequent
extensions/follow-ons, and/or other IP-compatible protocols; and (iii) provides, uses or
makes accessible, either publicly or privately, high level services layered on the
communications and related infrastructure described herein.
The Internet has changed much in the two decades since it came into existence. It
was conceived in the era of time-sharing, but has survived into the era of personal
computers, client-server and peer-to-peer computing, and the network computer. It was
designed before LANs existed, but has accommodated that new network technology, as
well as the more recent ATM and frame switched services. It was envisioned as
supporting a range of functions from file sharing and remote login to resource sharing
and collaboration, and has spawned electronic mail and more recently the World Wide
Web. But most important, it started as the creation of a small band of dedicated
researchers, and has grown to be a commercial success with billions of dollars of
annual investment.
One should not conclude that the Internet has now finished changing. The Internet,
although a network in name and geography, is a creature of the computer, not the
traditional network of the telephone or television industry. It will, indeed it must, continue
to change and evolve at the speed of the computer industry if it is to remain relevant. It
is now changing to provide new services such as real time transport, in order to support,
for example, audio and video streams.
The availability of pervasive networking (i.e., the Internet) along with powerful
affordable computing and communications in portable form (i.e., laptop computers, two-
way pagers, PDAs, cellular phones), is making possible a new paradigm of nomadic
computing and communications. This evolution will bring us new applications - Internet
telephone and, slightly further out, Internet television. It is evolving to permit more
sophisticated forms of pricing and cost recovery, a perhaps painful requirement in this
commercial world. It is changing to accommodate yet another generation of underlying
network technologies with different characteristics and requirements, e.g. broadband

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residential access and satellites. New modes of access and new forms of service will
spawn new applications, which in turn will drive further evolution of the net itself.
Notes
The most pressing question for the future of the Internet is not how the technology
will change, but how the process of change and evolution itself will be managed. As this
paper describes, the architecture of the Internet has always been driven by a core
group of designers, but the form of that group has changed as the number of interested
parties has grown. With the success of the Internet has come a proliferation of
stakeholders - stakeholders now with an economic as well as an intellectual investment
in the network.
We now see, in the debates over control of the domain name space and the form of
the next generation IP addresses, a struggle to find the next social structure that will
guide the Internet in the future. The form of that structure will be harder to find, given
the large number of concerned stakeholders. At the same time, the industry struggles to
find the economic rationale for the large investment needed for the future growth, for
example to upgrade residential access to a more suitable technology. If the Internet
stumbles, it will not be because we lack for technology, vision, or motivation. It will be
because we cannot set a direction and march collectively into the future.

4.7 Mobile and Other Gadgets

In its heyday, the news van was the way local television stations brought you live
reports from the field, helping to bring immediacy to breaking news as it happens.
These electronic news-gathering (ENG) vehicles contained the equipment necessary to
produce and transmit broadcasts remotely. But as technology evolved and budgets
were cut, television stations began relying less on ENG vans and trucks, which can be
expensive to purchase and maintain. With the ability to now shoot high-definition video
using DSLR cameras and transmit content over cellular networks, the roving reporter is
turning into a one-man band where he/she shoots, reports, produces, and transmits the
entire footage.
“It is the wave of the future,” says Lindsey Mastis, a Los Angeles-based video
correspondent with Feature Story News, whose work has been seen on a variety of
news outlets, from PBS to Channel News Asia and Jewish News One. “In today’s news
business, we have to be mobile to succeed.”
Mastis is among a new breed of field reporters who write and shoot their own video,
often transmitting live reports from their video cameras straight onto their laptops. The
devices Mastis uses are ones that can “bond” signals from major cellular carriers’ 3G
and 4G networks to transmit live video in high-definition. These gadgets basically act as
a digital encoder, and once it connects to a video camera, it breaks the signal into
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cellular frequency that is then sent back to a receiving facility at a news station. Some of
the most popular bonded cellular technology on the market include Dejero, LiveU, and
TVU. Using Skype is also popular. Notes
Since Americans are increasingly relying on the Internet to get their news –
especially through mobile devices – news reporters have had to respond to the demand
for instant news, which isn’t always conducive or practical to use a news van.
“We need devices that allow us to go live anytime, anywhere with just my camera
and my computer,” Mastis says. Case in point: During the major snowstorm in
Washington, D.C. in 2010, Mastis found herself as the only reporter at Reagan
International Airport, which had completely shut down.
Lindsey Mastis operates her own camera as she reports from the field.
Lindsey Mastis operates her own camera as she reports from the field.
“I was a one-man-band reporter for the local CBS affiliate there at the time and I
had to shoot and edit my own stories, without a photographer, and feed it back to the
station via my computer,” Mastis adds. “But that night I wanted to go live as well and I
did it by hooking up my video camera to my laptop to send out my reports via Skype. I
was the only TV reporter to deliver live reports from the airport all night long.”
Since then, Mastis has traveled around the country covering everything from the
presidential election to the deadly movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado and the
Boston Marathon bombing. Her recent overseas trip was to report on child survival in
India where she carried her own video and audio gear in one suitcase (shown above).
But the most compelling reason for a network to move to this one-man setup versus
a news team, besides speed and efficiency, is the cost factor. The bonded cellular
equipment, which can cost as little as less than $10,000, is a fraction of the $100,000-
plus price tag of a traditional ENG vehicle.
“This is especially true for independent news outlets that don’t always have the
budget and the access to ENG microwave or satellite trucks,” Mastis says. Plus, it gives
alternative news organizations like hers room to grow domestically and internationally
because the technology is so much more affordable.

Where goes that news van again?

KLAS-newsvan
Despite the versatility of bonded cellular, news networks aren’t ditching their fleet of
news vans. But instead of being the main source for news transmissions, they have
become an option. Rather than evolving, you can say the news van is devolving.
“Live trucks aren’t going away,” says Tom Jennings, president of Accelerated Media
Technologies based in Auburn, Massachusetts. “What’s changing is the technology
being used alongside these vehicles.” If anybody can talk about where the news van is
heading, it’s Jennings. His company manufactures live trucks for more than 65 percent
of TV news stations in the U.S.
 Equipment typically found inside an ENG vehicle.
 Equipment typically found inside an ENG vehicle.
Because technology is evolving, becoming smaller and mobile, stations no longer
need large vehicles to accommodate the equipment to handle field reporting. Jennings
says more and more of the vehicles he puts out in the market are equipped with bonded
cellular technology so reporters and photographers can use it to transmit live TV signals
from anywhere, anytime. To help reporters become more mobile, Jennings says news
vehicles at many stations around the country are actually getting smaller. He’s now
installing bonded cellular technology in everything from a small SUV like the Subaru
Forester to mini vans like the Ford Transit.

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Yet, as convenient as cellular technology is for the modern-day field reporter, it isn’t
100-percent reliable or always available
Notes
“Bonded cellular technology has a place in our changing media world, but in local
TV news, you can’t do away with ENG trucks,” says Jonathan Carerra, a TV
photographer at the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas. (Disclosure: This author is an employee
of the CBS affiliate.) Carrera, who has worked in a variety of news markets from Salinas
to San Jose, California, says cellular technology still can’t catch up to microwave or
satellite signal when it comes to picture quality. “In our business we need a reliable tool
to get our live shots out quickly and efficiently, and when you have to rely on cell or Wi-
Fi signals, especially in remote locations, we may lose out to the competition.”
At Carrera’s station, there are five to six live microwave/satellite trucks available to
reporters and photographers every day, meaning the news crew can go to that many
remote locations to deliver live reports at a moment’s notice. Carrera believes their
news vehicles may become compact in the near future, but for now cellular technology
won’t replace ENG vehicles, at least not yet anyway.
“I don’t think a traditional TV live truck is going away anytime soon,” Carrera says. “I
love seeing the evolution of both technology and it makes working in the media world so
exciting. I can’t wait to see what happens next.”
Mastis echoes a similar sentiment about the change in technology, but sees
reporters like her relying less and less on ENG trucks and vans. “It’s exciting to see how
TV technology is evolving and I look forward to seeing what happens next. But I do
believe you will see many more journalists like me in the future where we can carry
equipment to go live right in our backpack, who don’t need to rely on a live truck to go
live.”

4.8 Using Maps

The London Underground map, instantly recognisable across the globe, really is a thing
of beauty, so simple but yet so efficient.
The first track opened in 1863 as the Metropolitan Line and since then has evolved
into a complicated network consisting of 11 lines connected by 250 miles of track linked
to 270 stations and transports 3.23 million passengers daily.
If one was to map it geographically it would look like a bowl of spaghetti,
unintelligible and useless, certainly of no use to the busy commuter negotiating morning
and afternoon rush hour.
It was a London Underground employee back in 1931 that came up with the
concept of the map we now know and love.
Drawing on his job as an electrical draughtsman Harry Beck realised that instead of
using maps that plotted features geographically it was better to do it topologically, as he
did when drawing up circuit diagrams.
The map he devised was a simple diagrammatic map of the network with stations
connected by straight lines at vertical, horizontal or 45 degree angles.
Immediately this experimental map became popular and the London Underground
has used topological maps based on Beck’s design ever since, save for modifications
such as when changes are made to the network or the introduction of colour to
represent different lines.
Becks underground map has become the template for transport systems the world
over.
Nearly 80 years on Claire Wardle, working for BBC London would also produce her
own experimental map of the London Underground that was also intended to help
commuters on their travels.

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Claire Wardle is a journalist who specialises in user generated content.
In 2010 Claire created a crowd map of the London Tube strikes which encouraged Notes
users to upload their experiences of the event which was then inputted onto an online
map.
Besides being generative in that it provided the journalist with primary and current
sources of information, it also allowed the readers themselves to contribute to the news.
Travellers were expected to update the map as they went along so that other
commuters could see what effect the strikes were having on the London transport
system and to then be able to make an informed decision on how best to conduct their
travel across London.

Claire is now the Director of News Management at Storyful

“Storyful is the first news agency of the social media age. We help our clients discover,
verify and distribute the most valuable content on social media platforms [it is] Used by
Reuters, the New York Times, BBC, ABC, ITN, France 24 and many other leading
organisations, Storyful’s dashboard is an intelligence centre for newsrooms.”
([Link])
What Claire doesn’t know about user generated content in journalism would fit on
the back of a London Underground Oyster Card having specialised in it for most of her
journalist career and also in teaching academically on the subject for a number of years:
“I come to Storyful after three years of training, consultancy and public speaking in
newsrooms and at conferences around the globe, preaching and teaching the secrets of
social journalism to anyone who would listen to me.”
Claire believes that; “for news gathering maps have got an incredible opportunity”.

Explaining how she created the London Crowd Map Claire says:
“It was a month before the London Tube strikes and at that time we said there must be
a way that we can cover this story a little bit differently so I suggested a thing called
map using the Ushahidi platform I had been following for a long time and was very
impressed by it.
“Ushahidi is a not for profit; open source project which allows users to crowd source
crisis information to be sent via mobile.”
Up until then such technology was mainly being used in disaster and breaches of
human rights instances around the world. People on the ground could upload reports
that were then inserted into the map.
Claire says: “There are so many incredible examples of disaster mapping done by
the community and by the Emergency Task Force, all these volunteers when something
happens get up in the middle of the night and that’s the sort of stuff that I find really
authentic.”
“I had seen someone called Mandy Jenkins do one for Washington DC which was
basically mapping showing where the escalators were broken on the DC subway and I
thought that was interesting because where before Ushahidi had been about big cases,
tragedy and disaster I thought we can also do this with the tube strikes”
Mandy Jenkins was social media editor for Washington, D.C. local news startup
TBD, and has had a very successful career in social and local media, now being
Interactive Editor with Digital First Media’s Project:
On [Link] she says: “We invited and gathered Twitter reports from dozens of
riders who shared humor, anger and frustration in their tweets. Some told of escalators
stopping as they were riding.”

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Using this example as inspiration Claire decided to have a go herself:

Notes “So I said let’s just try it. It really was a just a practice, even if it doesn’t work we will
have used the platform and if there is a major terrorist incident in London or something
else that would be much more a Ushahidi type deployment at least we would have
practiced using it.
“The concept was brilliant, not totally original, but certainly the first serious attempt
in the UK by journalists to map what was happening by using content directly uploaded
by the users themselves on the ground.
Claire wrote that: “The bottom line was that lots of people saw it: 18,860 unique
visitors, and 39,306 page views from 55 countries. 13,808 were from the UK, 3,863
from the US, and I can’t get over the fact that we had 2 people from Bermuda, 1 person
from Uruguay, and 9 from Kenya”. (Claire’s blog)
“With Ushahidi you could choose which map to underlay, Google OSM etc. Google
Maps allow you to post content”.
In 2010 UCLoccupy created a crowd map of the UCL Student Protests around
Parliament Square London.
“There was a really interesting Google Map around the Student Protests at UCL,
some students did a map of the protests showing where the police are, here’s where
the hospitals are, it was a kind of live moving format, that’s a great example, it got
something like 88,000 hits, it got much more than any news organisations on the day.”
Many journalists and readers would believe a crowd map is a self-generating
organism with parallels of a bright camp fire with a large pot of stew boiling on it,
drawing inquisitive people in so that they too can add their own ingredients to the pot,
making the stew a lot more tasty and dished up neatly as a wholesome meal.

However the process is not quite as simple as that says Claire

“I think the biggest lesson was about ‘how do we get people to know about it?’. Even
though Ushahidi is always going to be a third party platform you need a big distributor to
talk about it.”
Anyone can set up a crowd map but it is getting people to be aware of it and to
contribute that’s the big issue.
Claire believes that there must be collaboration from the people on the ground
witnessing and uploading the reports and with media organisations who bring these
events to people’s consciousnesses:
“For a crowd map to be authentic information needs to come from volunteers on the
ground but you also need mainstream news organisations to talk about them.”
“UGC only works when it is supporting journalism so when it’s about audience
interactivity there was a huge scale of footage from the Woolwich attack, all of it has
value in different ways because they are collaboration between an audience and a
news organisation.”
Another issue Claire raises about crowd maps is the impact of social media which
has seen the amount of content sent to news organisations decreasing.
“The biggest trend over the last 5 years has been that the amount of people who
send content to a news organization is decreasing and instead they will just post on
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and expect journalists to find it, even in 2010 that was
happening with the crowd map, there were not very many people submitting directly to
the crowd map.”
Claire believes that there is a gap in the market, these crowd maps are not just
created automatically, journalists have to trawl through social media in order to find
content and place them manually on the map:
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News Gathering and Sources 187
“Most of the reports we got were because we were searching on Twitter and then
we would pull across these reports to the crowd map.”
Notes
“I think the person who comes up with the killer tool where people tweet and the
map gets created without having to say can I have this or that, at the moment it can be
to labour intensive for a news room so I think when someone comes up with this tool it
will be a winning tool for journalists.”
Another big issue is verifying where exactly the events had taken place.
Claire believes: “They only work when you can absolutely know the location so with
the crowd map and the tube strike it was relatively easy because people would take a
photo of Holburn Tube Station and you would know where it was… That’s why it worked
so well with the tube strikes because people were submitting pictures of the tube
stations.”
“When you are verifying content there are three things that you need to be looking
for: Source, dates, and location. [Location] is one of the trickiest to do.”
The issue of geographical verification was also highlighted by James Cridland is a
radio journalist, Managing Director of [Link] and social media blogger.
A year after the tube strikes London was once again brought to a standstill by the
London Riots 2012. He created a Google Map that tracked verified locations of rioting
and received 25,000 visitors.
Cridland invited people to submit reports via Twitter. On his blog (content now not
available) he recounts how he painstakingly verified each report before adding it to his
map one at a time:
“On the map, I asked people to get in contact with a verifiable source. It’s surprising
how many people think that a photograph or a video is verifiable: one compelling video
sent to me last night was captioned ‘riots in Liverpool’, but was actually from Woolwich
in London.”
“I lost count of the amount of times I was told that riots were occurring in Derby or
Manchester. They weren’t, yet on Twitter they were being reported as fact, despite the
Derbyshire Constabulary and Greater Manchester Police issuing denials on Twitter,
says Cridland.
He then: “Realised that, in order for this map to be useful, every entry needed to be
verified and verifiable for others too. For every report, I searched Google News, Twitter,
and major news sites to try and establish some sort of verification.”
“My criterion was that something had to be reported by an established news
organisation (BBC, Sky, local newspapers) or by multiple people on Twitter in different
ways.” (All comment sourced from Cridland’s blog)
Geofeedia is another piece of software that is interesting Claire and may offer a
solution to the geographic verification issue, though you do need to acquire a license at
a cost.
However there are open source alternatives such as iWitness.
Claire likes Geofeedia because it: “Is a news gathering tool so if you run the Boston
Marathon you can put a radius around the explosion site that show any social media
that has been posted up in the radius and when you look at what comes from that ,
tweets, pictures and Instragram.“

Sarah Marshall on the [Link] website believes it that:

“This tool offers potential for journalists faced with verifying a breaking news story.
Search for a postcode, country, school or sporting stadium and you can see geolocated
social media content posted on Twitter, Instagram, Picasa, Flickr and YouTube.”

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188 Reporting and Writing for Media
“Imagine hearing reports of a fire. With Geofeedia you could enter the address and
see what images, videos and tweets are being shared on social media”
Notes
The rise of Smartphones with built-in GPS has helped the boom in the use of
Geofeedia and in helping journalists verify reports but Claire observes:
“Roughly about 4-6% of social comment is actually geolocated on your phone…
there is also a bit of backlash with peoples’ concerns about being identified by location.”
“You get very few You Tube videos because very few people put their location next
to a You Tube video, you get some Flickr photos if the Camera has GPS but people are
taking GPS off as they are increasingly wary of putting their locations to photos, but
Instagram you get a lot because a lot of people still have Instagram without realising it
still on.
“If people are taking off the GPS on their smartphones journalists are once again
faced with the verification issue.”

Claire also believes that:

“You have to choose your story for it to work well, so the tube story worked well
because it was geographically diverse.”
“We tried to use the crowd maps for the Cornwall floods, but it was such a small
location that actually geographically it wasn’t an important part of the story.”
Crowd maps are a great way of gathering news, acting as a focal point by which
people can upload reports. However issues remain surrounding its use and until
someone can find a way of being able to upload verified reports directly onto a map
interface then creating a crowd map can be as frustrating as a tourist trying to navigate
around London without a map.
A special thank you to Claire Wardle for her invaluable contribution.
Claire also provided a lot of other information including on hyperlocal news sites
which I hope to include in a blog in the near future.

4.9 History and Archives

Historians and other scholars classify sources as primary or secondary. This distinction
is important because it will affect how you understand these sources. In this first video
of a 2-part tutorial, we will discuss primary sources.
Primary sources are most often produced around the time of the events you are
studying. They reflect what their creator observed or believed about the event. These
sources serve as the raw material that you’ll analyze and synthesize in order to answer
your research question, and they will form key pieces of evidence in your paper’s
argument. Secondary sources, in contrast, provide an interpretation of the past based
on primary sources.
This newspaper article is an example of a primary source. It describes a visit Nixon
made to the Soviet Union in 1959. It was written the day after by a journalist who
witnessed the event, and it reflects what the journalist and his editors thought their
readers would care about at the time. Another example is this pamphlet, which compiles
legal testimony from a witch trial. It was published in 1646, the same year as the trial it
documents. But, given the nature of the topic, you would probably want to research the
pamphlet’s author, John Davenport, to determine the reliability of the transcription or
what might have motivated him to publish it.
However, you should be aware that there’s nothing inherent in a source that makes
it primary or secondary. Instead, its category depends on how you treat it, which in turn
depends on your research question. For example, Black Reconstruction in America,
written in 1935 by W.E.B. Du Bois, could be used as a secondary source for research
about 19th-century America, since Du Bois draws on a range of government reports,
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News Gathering and Sources 189
biographies, and existing historical narratives in order to make a claim about the past.
However, it could also be used as a primary source for research about Du Bois’s life or
black intellectual culture during the 1930s. Notes
One of the main challenges of dealing with primary sources is locating them. Many
historical documents have never been published, and they may only be available in
archives. For example, here is a page from the expense book of a student enrolled in
the University of Illinois in 1930. It is a unique document located in the Student Life and
Culture Archive here on campus, and it is only accessible to those who can come to the
archive in person. This, on the other hand, is a published primary source: a diary,
written in 1912, and first published several decades later. Our copy is in the Main
Stacks.
Some of these materials, like letters, were not published at the time of creation, but
have been subsequently published in a book, or digitized and made available online.
For some topics, historical documents might be difficult to find because they have been
lost or were never created in the first place. In other cases, the primary sources might
exist, but not in English. Therefore, when you begin to formulate a topic, you will want to
think about what kinds of evidence will be available to you.
When thinking about how to find or make sense of primary sources, you should ask
yourself three questions:
1. When and where was it created?
2. Who created it?
3. For what purpose or audience was it produced?
Depending on the topic and time period that you are studying, you’ll have to look for
different kinds of primary sources. For example, if you are interested in the issue of birth
control in 20th century America, you can expect to find many primary sources, including:
 court cases
 legislative documents
 newspaper articles
 and letters
If you are interested in a topic from a more distant historical time period, such as the
status of Jews during the Renaissance, you may have to look harder, but you can still
find documents such as:
 laws
 novels
 and pamphlets
If you’re interested in first-person accounts, you’ll want to take a look at sources
like:
 letters
 diaries
 autobiographies
 oral histories
 literary works
 or polemical writings
You’ll have to determine if the source is a reliable account, or created with the
intention of imposing a particular understanding of an event or situation. Were they
created at the time of the events they recount, or were they written many years later?
Some sources might make this point of view obvious, whereas others might pretend to
be authoritative.

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In other cases, you’ll want to think about what kinds of organizations might have
created records related to your topic. You might be able to find:
Notes  statistics
 government reports
 legislative documents
 court records
 transactions of an association
 annual reports and financial records
 or reports of non-governmental organizations.
Again, you’ll want to determine the circumstances of the document’s creation. Was
it an internal document, created to gather information, or was it intended to persuade
others inside or outside the group to take a certain course of action?
Visual material can also provide a powerful window onto the time period you are
studying. For instance, maps not only reveal contemporary political boundaries, but also
how people thought of them. Other visual sources include:
 photographs
 posters
 advertisements
 illustrations
 cartoons
 travel narratives
 and motion pictures
Keep in mind that primary sources can have multiple meanings. For example, this
1854 map provides evidence about the 1854 London cholera outbreak, but it also
reflects a new understanding of how disease spreads and a concern with illness as a
social problem.
You can find published primary sources by using the online catalog, or by searching
in a digital collection of historical documents, such as the Gerritsen Collection of
Women’s History, Chronicling America, and Empire Online. The History Library
maintains a list of these collections on its website.
Remember, though, that these databases will not explicitly categorize the items
they list as primary and secondary, and may even contain documents that you might
want to use as a secondary source, so you’ll have to use your own judgment. For
example, you might be interested in this Dictionary of Women’s Employment for the
information it contains about wages, or for the attitudes that it conveys about what kinds
of jobs are appropriate for women.
You can also find primary sources by consulting published bibliographies, and by
looking at the secondary literature on your topic to see what sources other scholars
have used in their research.

4.10 Right to Information

It comes into force on the 12th October, 2005 (120th day of its enactment on 15th June,
2005). Some provisions have come into force with immediate effect viz. obligations of
public authorities, designation of Public Information Officers and Assistant Public
Information Officers and constitution of Central Information Commission, constitution of
State Information Commission, non-applicability of the Act to Intelligence and Security
Organizations and power to make rules to carry out the provisions of the Act
The Act extends to the whole of India except the State of Jammu and Kashmir.

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Information means any material in any form including records, documents, memos,
e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts,
reports, papers, samples, models, data material held in any electronic form and Notes
information relating to any private body which can be accessed by a public authority
under any other law for the time being in force.
It includes the right to:
 inspect works, documents, records.
 take notes, extracts or certified copies of documents or records.
 take certified samples of material.
 obtain information in form of printouts, diskettes, floppies, tapes, video cassettes or
in any other electronic mode or through printouts.

4.11 Concept
The basic object of the Right to Information Act is to empower the citizens, promote
transparency and accountability in the working of the Government, contain corruption,
and make our democracy work for the people in real sense. It goes without saying that
an informed citizen is better equipped to keep necessary vigil on the instruments of
governance and make the government more accountable to the governed. The Act is a
big step towards making the citizens informed about the activities of the Government.
NIC as a Public Authority designated Public Information Officer (PIO) and Appellate
Authority (AA) for citizens to secure access to information and published the Proactive
Disclosures in accordance with the provisions of the Act in October 2005.

Information under Section 4(1)(b):

 The particulars of its organisation, functions and duties
 Organisational Functions and Duties
 List of Head of Groups and Head of Divisions
 List and address of all the State Units of NIC
 The powers and duties of its officers and employees
 The procedure followed in the decision making process, including channels of
supervision and accountability
 Delegation of Powers
 The norms set by it for the discharge of its functions
 Important Circular / Office Order related to allocation of work to different
divisions of NIC
 NIC Personnel Division
 Important Office Orders (upto Feb 2017)
 Transfer Policy of NIC
 A directory of its officers and employees
 Searchable Employees Directory
 Employee List
 The budget allocated to each of its agency, indicating the particulars of all plans,
proposed expenditures and reports on disbursements made
 The manner of execution of subsidy programmes, including the amounts allocated
and the details of beneficiaries of such programmes
 NIC(Hq.) -Not Applicable
 Particulars of concessions, permits or authorizations granted by it
 NIC(Hq.) -Not Applicable

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192 Reporting and Writing for Media
 Details in respect of the information, available to or held by it, reduced in an
electronic form, The following areas/applications have been computerized in NIC:
Notes  NIC Administration has reduced the following areas / applications into electronic
form : GPF, Children Education Allowance, Leave, Medical Reimbursement,
Car and computer advance, Leave Encashment, LTC programmes
 Electronic Forms
 Foreign Visit Details (01/12/2015 to 31/12/2016)
 The particulars of facilities available to citizens for obtaining information, including
the working hours of a library or reading room, if maintained for public use:
 The Office of CPIO (RTI) is located on 6th Floor, NIC HQ (Room No.627). The
information pertaining to NIC is also available on [Link] in detail.
 RTI application shall be accompanied by an application fee of Rs. 10/- by
demand draft or bankers cheque or IPO payable to the Accounts Officer, NIC or
DDO, NIC. Court Fees is not acceptable.
 Forms for RTI
 The names, designations and other particulars of the Public Information Officers
 List of Central Public Information Officers (CPIOs) and their Appellate
Authorities
 Such other information as may be prescribed
 Public Private partnership NIC(Hq.) -Not Applicable
 Publication of Tender Enquiries
 Information relating to Work Order / AMC and Empanelment from Infrastructure
(General and Data Centre) Section
 Information relating to Work Order / AMC and Empanelment from Tender Purchase
Section
 NIC information relating to RTI Applications (April to June 2015)
 NIC information relating to RTI Applications (July to Dec 2015)
 NIC information relating to RTI Applications (January to June 2016)
 NIC information relating to RTI Applications (July to December 2016)
 CAG and PAC Para NIC(Hq.) -Not Applicable
 Discretionary and non discretionary item NIC(Hq.) -Not Applicable
 National Informatics Centre Services Inc. (NICSI) a section-25 company under NIC

4.12 Provisions
Right to Information (RTI) (Official website [Link] is the foremost
administrative reform or we can say that it is a citizen gateway which creates new sets
of relationship between citizens & the State by promoting transparency and
accountability & responsiveness in the process of Governance. Thus RTI has the
potential to transform a representative democracy into participatory democracy.

RTI as a landmark legislation focuses on three fundamental shifts:

1. From a culture of secrecy to a culture of transparency.
2. From personalized despotism towards accountable government.
3. From unilateral decision making towards participation in governance.

Provisions of RTI Act, 2005

1. Every public authority has to provide to the citizen the right to information within a
prescribed time limit. Public Authorities has been ascertained by the Act itself,
which includes the office of the President, Vice-President, Prime Minister, Chief

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Justice of India, the Parliament, State Legislatures, the Supreme Court, High
Courts, constitutional bodies such as CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General),
Election Commission etc. It also includes all the departments, Ministries, Boards, Notes
PSUs (Public Sector Undertakings), Agencies of Central Government, State
Governments & Local Governments.
2. It is mandatory for a public authority to create a separate office called as PIO
(Public Information Officer), with an objective to provide information within a
prescribed time limit of 30 days. If the information is related to life and personal
liberty than the information should be provided within 48 hours.
3. If any citizen is not satisfied with the content, context or subject matter of any
information or the information is not provided within a prescribed time limit of 30
days than an appeal can be filled before 1st level Appellate Authority (i.e. the Joint
Secretary of the respective department) and against the adjudication of 1st level
Appellate Authority the appeal can be filed before the 2nd Appellate Authority (i.e.
CIC- Central Information Committee & SIC- State Information Committee).
4. This Act also prescribes/describes the term Information in a comprehensive
manner. Information means any material in any form including records, documents,
e-mails, opinions, advices, orders, law books, contracts, samples etc.
5. RTI Act also determines some exceptions under which the public authorities have
no obligation to give any official information to any citizen. These exceptions are as
follows:
(a) Information relating to integrity, security, sovereignty and strategic, economic &
scientific interest if the State.
(b) Information which has been expressly restricted by any court of law to be
published.
(c) If disclosure will cause a breach of privilege of Parliament or State Legislature.
(d) Information including IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) & trade secrets.
(e) Information received in confidence from any foreign government.
(f) Information the disclosure of which would endanger the life or physical safety of
any person.
(g) Information related to the process of investigation and prosecution.
(h) Cabinet papers including records of deliberation of Council of Ministers and
other high level officials.
(i) Personal information, disclosure of which has no relationship with nay public
activity or interest.
Recently a study was performed by PWC (PricewaterhouseCoopers - a multinational
professional services firm) to identify issues and constraints in the implementation of the
Act. According to the study main emphasis needed to be given to the Supply Side
Issues & the Demand Side Issues. The Supply Side Issues listed by PWC were as
follows:
1. Purpose Clause: Under RTI Act it is being provided that without any purpose,
qualification or objective a citizen can take any information from a public authority.
Apart from this free of cost information is provided to persons who are Below
Poverty Line. According to PWC survey because of both these clauses government
spend approximately Rs 10,000 in the disposal of one case and on an average Rs
25,000 petitions are filed in different PIOs working at different levels of government.
2. 30 Days Clause: This clause does not include administrative exceptions such as
public holidays, staff leave and administrative assignments like election, census,
disaster management etc. Situation becomes much more impractical when
information is as old as 20 years.

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3. Appeal & Complaint Clause: It has been observed that citizen groups & media are
directly filing complaints in spite of appeal, it leads to extraneous pressure on public
Notes functionaries and affect the motivation of public servant and motive of this Act.
4. Any PIO Clause: Under this clause a citizen can ask any information from any PIO
whether the PIO is possessor of that information or not. In the disposal of such
cases lots of time and energy is wasted due to administrative hierarchy. Situations
becomes much more difficult when 30 Days Clause is enforced with Any PIO
Clause.
The Demand Side Issues can be listed as follows:
1. Language Clause: Under this clause the PIO should provide information to the
appellant in administrative language. It should be noted that administrative
language has its own terminology, abbreviations and complexity which is not
possible for a citizen to understand.
2. Designation Clause: It has been observed that the designation of the PIO and
public authority of similar types of departments is different in different States. Apart
from this the process by which a petition can be filed and the procedure by which
adjudication is done also differ in different States.
3. Issues related to Legal & Political Rights: In our education system there is no
separate curriculum which makes people aware about their legal and political rights.
Awareness of rights such as Environment Protection Act, Forest Conservation Act,
Consumer Protection Act, Domestic Violence Act and RTI Act is required for every
citizen to make the administration or government more accountable and
responsible.
In India we don't have any academic framework to make people aware of the
government's initiatives.

4.13 How to Use It

1. Apply in writing or through electronic means in English or Hindi or in the official
language of the area, to the PIO, specifying the particulars of the information sought
for.
2. Reason for seeking information is not required to be given;
3. Pay fees as may be prescribed (if not belonging to the below poverty line category).

What is the time limit to get the information?

1. 30 days from the date of application
2. 48 hours for information concerning the life and liberty of a person
3. 5 days shall be added to the above response time, in case the application for
information is given to Assistant Public Information Officer.
4. If the interests of a third party are involved then time limit will be 40 days (maximum
period + time given to the party to make representation).
5. Failure to provide information within the specified period is a deemed refusal.

What is the fee?

1. Application fees to be prescribed which must be reasonable.
2. If further fees are required, then the same must be intimated in writing with
calculation details of how the figure was arrived at;
3. Applicant can seek review of the decision on fees charged by the PIO by applying
to the appropriate Appellate Authority;
4. No fees will be charged from people living below the poverty line
5. Applicant must be provided information free of cost if the PIO fails to comply with
the prescribed time limit.

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What could be the ground for rejection?
1. If it is covered by exemption from disclosure.
Notes
2. If it infringes copyright of any person other than the State.

4.14 Cultivating the Sources

Sources are one of a reporter's biggest assets. If you cover a regular beat, you'll find
yourself talking to some of the same people pretty often. Over time, if you forge
relationships with the right sources, you'll find that they can become the gateway to
career-making scoops.
Sources that trust and respect you will come to you first when they hear news on
the down-low. But it takes time to earn that trust and respect. Here are five tips that will
put you on the right track.

Embrace the Small Talk

Many reporters aren't into schmoozing, but a few friendly words can set you apart from
reporters who treat sources like information-vending machines instead of human
beings. Think of small talk as the mayo in the tuna salad sandwich of your reporting.
When you reconnect with a source you've talked to before, ask how their day is
going. Genuinely listen when they respond. Pay attention to whether they're married or
have kids, and ask occasionally how their family (or even a pet) is doing. If you have
something in common with that source, take a moment to discuss the topic, whether it's
a sports team or an obscure favorite food.
Most people like it when you're interested in them, and when you take the time to
nurture that interest by finding out more. It's flattering, but it's not cheap flattery; it shows
you're paying attention to the details. That's a sign of a good reporter.

Don't be a stranger
If you find someone you think will be a goldmine of information, check in with them
regularly, even if you don't need to interview them. This is another good time for small
talk, and to ask if there have been any developments on a topic you've discussed
before. Look through your contacts and see if there's someone you haven't heard from
in a while. Give them a call; they might just have a scoop for you.
Email is a good way to touch base with sources, though they may be reluctant to
put anything hush-hush into writing. Phone calls are better. In person is often best,
whether you just drop by to see sources on your way to a City Hall meeting or you grab
coffee regularly with them. The key is making sure they don't forget you, and that they
remember you're interested in what they know.
Social networking sites have given reporters even more ways to keep up with their
sources. Many journalists use Facebook and Twitter to find sources, interact with them
informally, and find out what they're sharing with their audiences.

What happens “off the record” stays “off the record?”

We all know reporters who say there's no such thing as “off the record,” or who promise
to keep a source's information in confidence, and then quote them in the next day's
news. Don't be that reporter.
Many sources want to tell you more than their higher-ups will allow. Of course, such
information can be incredibly valuable, especially if you can use it to get on-the-record
sources to verify what you've heard. If someone says they want to go off the record with
you, say yes -- and mean it. (But don't be afraid to ask: "Is there anyone I should talk to
who may be more likely to speak on the record?")

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196 Reporting and Writing for Media
For many sources, going off the record is not only an opportunity to make a news
story more accurate; it's a test of the reporter. Sources want to know whether you'll
Notes honor their request not to be quoted. If you can report those details without revealing
your source, you're that much closer to gaining that source's trust. With time, this can
lead to bigger and bigger tips.

Ask your sources to recommend more sources

At the end of interviews, ask your source whether there's anyone else you should talk to
about the topic at hand. It's likely they'll have someone in mind.
Sources inside an administration, whether it's a government agency, a school, or a
business, will probably recommend colleagues, while citizens and rabble-rousers are
apt to connect you with birds of the same feather. Good sources of both stripes will
hook you up with sources “across the aisle,” so to speak. Take your source's advice, but
if they've got a bias to protect, make sure you round out their recommendations with
other voices.

Avoid getting too friendly with sources

In Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical film "Almost Famous," rock writer Lester
Bangs tells the fledgling journalist William Miller, “You CANNOT make friends with the
rock stars. They are not your friends.”
It's unclear whether the real Lester Bangs ever spoke these words, but they reflect
good advice. When you interview someone often, when you write about them regularly,
they can start to feel like a friend. That's especially true if you follow the rest of these
tips, because you'll wind up feeling closer to them than you would an average source.
Getting too close can jeopardize your objectivity. If you become friends, you may
find yourself telling that source's side of the story -- to the detriment of the other sides.
You may withhold important information to protect the source unnecessarily. You may
even avoid writing news articles because your source wants to suppress information.
Needless to say, this is bad news -- it's the opposite of what source cultivation is for.
There's a fine line between trusted source and confidante. Be careful to stay on the right
side of that line, and you'll be well on your way to scooping the competition.

4.15 Reliability
The right to information is defined as ‘the right to be informed about the quality, quantity,
potency, purity, standard and price of goods or services, as the case may be so as to
protect the consumer against unfair trade practices’ in the Consumer Protection Act of
1986. In the market place of India, consumers get information by two ways namely
advertising and word of mouth however these sources are considered to be unreliable
but still this word of mouth is quite common here. Because of this, the Indian consumers
hardly have precise and complete information for assessing the true value, safety,
suitability, reliability of any product. Usually the hidden costs can be found, lack of
suitability, quality problems and safety hazards only after the purchase of the product.
There is another right claimed by Indian government on paper, this right must
ideally make sure that all consumable products have been labeled in a standard
manner containing the cost, quantity, the ingredients and instructions given to use the
product safely. It is unfortunate that even the medicines in the country do not follow a
standardized labeling convention. There should be establishment of unit price
publishing standards for consumer market where costs are revealed in standard units
like per kg or per liter. The consumers, ought to be informed in an exact yet accurate
manner for the cost involved during time of availing a loan. For providing benefit to the
society through this right, advertisers must be held against the standards of products in
the advertisements. The pharmaceuticals require to disclose potential side effects
related to their drugs and manufacturers ought to be required to publish reports from
independent product testing laboratories for the purpose of comparing the quality of
their products from competitive products. There is a website: [Link], for

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the purpose of empowering the consumers with right to information. Without help of
these types of websites it is difficult to spread awareness among the consumers of
India. The right to information gives the power to the consumers to have an easy Notes
access to information which is necessary for the consumer.

4.16 Checking Information from Various Sources

The passing of the Right to Information Act, 2005 was seen as giving an empowering
tool in the hands of the citizens of India, six years post its implementation, loopholes
have surfaced with misuse of the many fundamental concepts, which have yet not been
defined to allow for a consistent pattern of decisions. Among many problems that
emerge with the Act, a major problem is defining the extent to which an individual has
access to other people’s information. While most of us tend to think that asking for other
people’s phone numbers, personal details like passport number or IT returns are private
and would be kept so, under the RTI Act and as seen in the Central Information
Commission (CIC) decisions, all of these details can be availed of by someone who
doesn’t know you at all!
According to section 2 (n) of the RTI Act, 2005, 'third party' means a person other
than the citizen making a request for information and includes a 'public authority'. This
implies that the term 'third party' includes anyone other than the appellant or the
respondent. In matters where an appellant is seeking information not regarding his or
her own activities, or is asking for details of shared records that list details of several
persons other than him or her, information cannot be provided until the ‘third party’
consents to disclosure and subsequently until the Central Public Information Office
(CPIO), after considering the implications of such disclosure allows it. Section 11 (1) the
Act provides the procedure to access third party information wherein the appellant
needs to request for the third party’s consent after which the CPIO will produce a written
request to the 'third party' and within a stipulated time period obtain their response.
However, it is not the information bearer (third party) who holds the key to disclosure.
The power, by the RTI Act, 2005, is vested in the public information officer who will
then, either see a 'larger public interest', or otherwise allow disclosure based on the
merits of the case.
In such a situation, it is interesting to see who the Central Information Commission
(CIC) regards as 'third party'. While going through the judgments delivered by the CIC,
one comes across several judgments that tell you who can and who cannot access your
information. While a son or daughter naturally inherits his/her father’s wealth, land or
other possessions, they do not inherit his position for obtaining information. This is just
one instance. Similar holds true for access to information of a deceased kin. Unless the
public information officer sees a ‘larger public interest’ in disclosure of such information,
it cannot be revealed even to the deceased’s wife, husband or children unless they hold
a power of attorney specifically to a right to access information.
This brings us to the question of ‘larger public interest’ and what information can be
delved to anyone for this cause. While the RTI Act, 2005, clearly states that the
appellant needs not a reason to ask for any information, it is largely based on the public
information officer’s inference as to what the appellant may do with the data and hence,
maybe deemed as acting in public interest or for personal gains. This also produces
positions of potential criminality and the need for State subjects to prove themselves as
ideal information seekers, void of malice in order for the public information officer to rule
in their favour.
Third party position is a problematic one as it only goes so far as to define the state-
mediated interaction between two subjects in relation to each other through legal
machinery that holds massive discretionary powers to disclose or withhold information.
Hence, while, in relation to ‘third party’, a subject may need to justify his larger
benevolent interests, the State finds no problems revealing or disclosing information for
its own good. In Shri Rajender Kumar Arya vs Dy. Commissioner of Police (DCP), (4
March 2009), the commission ruled that they now have the decision of the Madras High
Court in the context of right to privacy in light of the RTI Act. The Madras High Court
observed that with the advent of the Right to Information Act, section 3 of the Act
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198 Reporting and Writing for Media
entitles a citizen to the right of information. Section 4(2) of the said Act obliges a public
authority to disclose information to common people. Even personal information or
Notes information, which may otherwise amount to an invasion of privacy, may also be
disclosed if the larger public interest so warrants. The court in fact came to the
conclusion that the right to privacy virtually fades out in front of the 'Right to Information'
and 'larger public interest’. This tells us that ‘third party’ is a mere negotiating position
from which the State itself regulates information flow to citizens and can revoke these
privileges as and when needed.
Moreover, there is no clear definition to the ‘larger public interest’ or ‘invasion of
privacy’. In several judgments, the committee upholds principles of natural justice to
justify instance of public good but these cannot be upheld for all decisions. It is also
interesting to see what comes under the purview of ‘public information’. It’s a
misconception if you think that you hold the right to revealing your age, birth date, place
you belong to, your marks, the rank that you hold, the salary you get, the returns you file
or subsequently any of this information regarding your children. As upheld in Madhulika
Rastogi vs Regional Passport Office, New Delhi, on 4 February 2009, M. Rajamannar
vs PIO, AC Division, Indira Gandhi National Open University on 18 February 2009 and
A.V. Subrahmanyam vs BSNL, Hyderabad on 16 February 2009 — the judgments
illustrate that information submitted to public authorities at any point in time whether to
get admitted to school, to get a license, to pass a public services examination or even
file a divorce; all qualify for access to other people because they have been knowingly
submitted to the public domain. A lot of sensitive information like passport details,
telephone call records and medical records that can map intimate interactions of a
person’s daily life can also be obtained if larger public interest is proven.
Hence, it becomes important to revise and rethink the commonly accepted notions
of privacy, especially when information gains such strategic importance as well as
fluidity through fast expanding platforms as well as tools such as RTI. While one may
confidently think that information generated by the self, pertaining to one’s own
business and life rightfully belongs to the private domain, it is very important to realize
the constantly looming hold of the State to any information. In such a situation, what you
can claim as private data totally depends on how much common interest it garners.

4.17 Pressures and Pulls

The Government of India has enacted "The Right to Information Act 2005" to set out the
practical regime of Right to Information (RTI) for citizens to secure access to information
under the control of public authorities to promote transparency and accountability in the
working of any public authority.

What Is Right To Information?

The RTI provides access to the information which is held by or under the control of any
public authority and includes the right to inspect work, documents, records, taking
notes, extracts or certified copies of documents/records and certified samples of the
materials and obtaining information which is also stored in electronic form. RTI
application can be made online at [Link].

Who can ask for information?

Any citizen can request for information by making an application in writing or through
electronic means in English/Hindi /official language of the area in which the application
is being made, together with the prescribed fees.

Who will provide information?

Every public authority shall designate a Central Assistant Public Information Officer
(CAPIO) at various levels, who will receive the requests for information from the public.
The Central Public Information Officers (CPIO) in all administrative units/office will
arrange for providing necessary information to the public. The application/request for

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information must be disposed off either by providing the information or rejecting the
request, within a period of 30 days.
Notes
Exemption from Disclosure of Information (Section 8(1) (J) of RTI Act, 2005
This section states that "Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act, there shall be
no obligation to give any citizen" Information which relates to personal information the
disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would
cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the Central Public
Information officer or State Public Information officer or the appellate authority, as the
case may be, is satisfied that the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such
Information: Provided that the information which cannot be denied to the Parliament or
a state Legislature shall not be denied to any person.

Hence UIDAI Disclosure Norms States

As per section 8(I) (J) of RTI Act, 2005 and in view of the confidential nature of
demographic and biometric data (personal data of resident) only the resident to whom
the data relates can seek the information. No other applicant can seek this information.
No other applicant will be provided with any personal information related to a third party
or any other resident to protect privacy and maintain confidentiality of residents enrolled
under Aadhaar program. Applicant may also be required to provide additional validation
of identity in certain cases.
Resident seeking details of their enrolments like processing stages, Aadhaar
number or dispatch and delivery:
Resident can obtain status of Aadhaar generation/number from UIDAI Website
([Link]) by furnishing the EID number. The resident can also access the electronic
version of the Aadhaar letter i.e. E-Aadhaar from the Resident portal ([Link] ) by
furnishing the EID number along with demographic information. If all the information is
matched with the information available in the UIDAI database, a one-time password
(OTP) will be sent to the resident’s mobile number or e-mail address provided by the
resident at the time of enrolment. In the case, the resident who has not provided mobile
number and/or e-mail address at the time of enrolment or who has changed her/his
mobile number, the resident will be required to furnish a mobile number along with
name, EID and Pin Code to get the one-time password(OTP) after verification. The OTP
is required to download E-Aadhaar. The resident can also get E-Aadhaar through UIDAI
Regional offices and contact centres after due verification as per procedure by the
concerned Regional Offices and contact Centres.

RTI Application Fees

'RTI application fees under the Act through Cash/Demand Draft/IPO payable to Unique
Identification Authority of India'
# Obligatory Items Under Section 4(I)(B) Of Present Status Of Information
RTI ACT, 2005 To Publish

1. The particulars of its organization, Unique Identification Authority of India

functions and duties has been established as a Statutory
Authority w.e.f. 12.07.2016 under Sec 11
of "The Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of
Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits
and Services) Act, 2016". The functions
assigned to the Authority under the Act
is to develop the policy, procedure and
systems for issuing Aadhaar Numbers to
individuals and perform authentication
thereof and also perform all the functions
as per the provisions of Sec 23 of the
Aadhar Act 2016 Section 23
Contd…
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200 Reporting and Writing for Media

2. The procedure followed in its The functions and powers of the

decision making process, including authority are performed as per the
Notes channels of supervision and provision of Sec 17, 18 and 19 of
accountability. Aadhaar Act and delegation orders
issued under Sec 51 of the Act. Section
17,18,19,and 51

3. The norms set by it for the discharge (Detailed Information)

of its functions.

4. The rules, regulations, instructions, General rules/regulations etc applicable

manuals and records used by its to Ministries/Departments in
employees for discharging its Government of India and the regulations
functions. as notified by the Authority

5. A statement of the categories of the The UIDAI holds documents related to

documents held by it or under its the UID project and are available on the
control. website in the "UIDAI documents"
section

6. The particulars of any arrangement The UIDAI consults various stakeholders

that exist for consultation with, or on particular issues. Further,
representation by the members of suggestions are taken by emails and
the public, in relation to the other social media platforms from public.
formulation of policy or
implementation thereof.

7. A statement of the boards, councils, No board or counsel is constituted.

committees and other bodies However, tech committees may be
consisting of two or more persons constituted from time to time depending
constituted by it. Additionally, on the requirement
information as to whether the
meeting of these are open to the
public, or the minutes' of such
meetings are accessible to the
public.

8. A directory of its officers and See Contact Us (Detailed Information)

employees
9. The monthly remuneration received (Detailed Information)
by each of its officers and
employees, including the system of
compensation as provided in its
regulations.
10. The budget allocated to each of its
agency, indicating the particulars of
all plans, proposed expenditures
and reports on disbursements
made.
11. Power and duties of its officers (Detailed Information HQ) / (Detailed
Information RO)
12. The manner of execution of subsidy Not applicable.
programmes, including the amount
allocated and the details and
beneficiaries of such programmes.
Contd…

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News Gathering and Sources 201
13. Particulars of recipients of Not applicable.
concessions, permits or Notes
authorizations granted by it.
14. Details of the information available Information in electronic form are
to, or held by it, reduced in an available on the website.
electronic form.
15. The particulars of facilities available There is no public library or reading
to citizens for obtaining information, room maintained by the UIDAI. Most of
including the working hours of a the information is available on the
library or reading room, if website of UIDAI
maintained for public use.
16. The names, designations and other List of CPIOs & FAAs at UIDAI, HQ
particulars of the Central Public List of CPIOs & FAAs at UIDAI ROs &
Information Officer. Tech centre

4.18 ummary
Privacy is one of those issues that are especially tricky for journalists looking to balance
the rights of the individual with the needs of the greater public interest.
Until very recently in Canada, invasion of privacy has been addressed by the courts
indirectly through the development and application of other torts, including appropriation
of personality, nuisance, harassment, defamation, and injurious falsehood.
Not surprisingly, this has created an almost ad hoc approach to privacy which has
often left journalists in the position of having to second-guess the courts when
conducting research into a story.
Take the case of Jan Wong, for instance. In 2006, the Globe and Mail ran a series
of articles written by Wong called "Maid for a Month.”
The articles were based on Wong’s experiences cleaning other people’s toilets,
floors and kitchens. To gain access to peoples’ homes, Wong had obtained
employment with an actual maid service in Toronto. She used her own name, but she
did not tell the company she was a reporter with the Globe. In her series, Wong
changed the names of all the people she wrote about—her boss, her co-workers and
some families. But she did not pull her punches when making accusations of
mistreatment by employers who treated housekeepers as little more than their personal
slaves.
One family, who lived in Markham, north of Toronto, was incensed, claiming that
details such as the neighbourhood in which they lived, the family makeup, and the
ample pant-sizes of the father were enough to identify them to ‘any reasonable reader’.
They contacted a lawyer and filed suit for $50,000.
As the family’s lawyer, Sam Hall, put it, had his clients known the truth, they’d never
have let Wong into their house. “Journalists and powerful media companies”, said Hill,
“can’t invade someone’s home under false pretences and put their private lives on
public display to sell newspapers”.
So, was this an unwarranted invasion of privacy or was it a case of good old
fashioned journalism seeking to bring to light an issue that was in the greater public
interest?
Superior Court of Ontario Justice David Aston apparently was inclined to agree with
Hall and his clients. In his 2008 ruling, Judge Aston rejected the Globe’s attempt to
have the case dismissed; noting that the plaintiffs claim that they had suffered damage
as a result of Wong’s intrusion into their private lives had merit.

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202 Reporting and Writing for Media
On the other hand, a year later, in Nova Scotia, in a case involving a politician
seeking to prevent a journalist from publishing contents of a private conversation
Notes recorded on a private tape recorder, the province’s Supreme Court sided with the
journalist.
In his ruling, Justice Gerald Moir decided stated that the public interest trumped any
claim to privacy. "It is wrong to deprive the press,” he wrote, “and the public it serves, of
remarks made privately”.
Confusion and Contradiction
The confusion over privacy and the often contradictory approaches of the courts
can be explained in part by the absence of a universally accepted definition of privacy
or a common law tort of privacy with a standardized test to determine when a breach
has occurred. In effect, this has meant the courts have adopted the view that there is no
“free-standing right to dignity or privacy under the Charter or at common law."
Federally there are two laws that help protect the privacy of all Canadians. The
Privacy Act gives individuals the right to access and request corrections to personal
information held by federal agencies. The Personal Information Protection and
Electronic Documents Act regulates how private sector businesses and organizations
can collect and make use of personal information. Beyond these two laws, each
province and territory has enacted their own privacy laws, some of which have been
favourable to journalists (B.C., Manitoba), and some of which have been less
favourable (Nova Scotia, Ontario).
Despite the existence of these laws however, privacy law is not well developed in
Canada. This has meant that judges have generally approached matters of privacy
involving journalists on a case-by-case basis. As described above, such an approach
can cut both ways for reporters wondering whether they have overstepped their bounds
in the pursuit of a story.

Some Progress
Progress is being made however at the regional level by individual courts seeking to
create a standalone tort of invasion of privacy that would define and entrench privacy
rights while clarifying the boundaries of acceptable newsgathering activities.
In a recent article, University of Toronto law professor Jared Mackey suggested that
a decision last year by the Ontario Court of Appeal has created a ‘fundamental and
modernizing shift’ in Canadian privacy law. In Jones v Tsige, the Court held that a
person is liable for an invasion of privacy, if “he or she intrudes, physically or otherwise,
upon the seclusion or private affairs or concerns of another person”. The Court then
created a new tort called an intrusion upon seclusion, which Mackey suggests has the
potential to ‘dramatically’ change the way journalists operate as well as the way we
think about “our core conceptions of individual privacy”.
Of importance for journalists is that the tort of intrusion upon seclusion does not
require an element of publicity. It is enough that an individual’s expectation of privacy
has been violated, regardless of whether the material gathered is ever published.
This distinction could have far reaching effects for journalists, especially when as
Justice James Sharpe wrote in his decision, there is activity involving “listening or
looking into private places,” with or without mechanical aids. In this sense, an intrusion
into seclusion could occur when a journalist stakes out a private residence, conducts an
“ambush interview” at an individual’s home or place of business, or makes use of
telephoto lenses and shotgun microphones to capture private activity.

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News Gathering and Sources 203
4.19 Check Your Progress
Multiple Choice Questions Notes
1. The first State to introduce the a law on RTI was
(a) Tamilnadu
(b) U.P
(c) Maharastra
(d) Gujarat
2. Which was the State in which local authorities started providing people access to
certain information related to the `Public Distribution System` (PDS) even before the
State Assembly introduced / passed an RTI Act?
(a) West Bengal
(b) Rajasthan
(c) Madya Pradesh
(d) Kerala
3. The `Right to Information Act, 2005` came into full force on
(a) 2nd October 2005
(b) 12th October, 2005.
(c) 5th Sept 2005
(d) 25th August 2005
4. How many schedules does the `RTI Act, 2005` have?
(a) 5
(b) 10
(c) 2
(d) 8
5. Indian citizens have the right to information because of
(a) Judgment of Supreme Court
(b) Implementation of International Laws by Indian Government
(c) All states adopted agree to implement the Act
(d) a law passed by the Parliament of India.
6. Rules can be made by Appropriate Governments or Competent Authorities by
notifying the rules:
(a) in the Official Gazette
(b) by publishing them on the website of the Appropriate Government.
(c) by publishing them on the websites of Information Commissions - as applicable.
(d) none of the above
7. For the PIO to disclose certain information, the Competent Authority should be
satisfied that larger public interest warrants its disclosure. This information pertains
to
(a) commercial confidence.
(b) trade secrets.
(c) intellectual property.
(d) information available to a person in his fiduciary relationship
(e) All of the above

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204 Reporting and Writing for Media
8. How many TYPES of `Public Authorities` are there?
(a) Central Public Authorities
Notes
(b) State Public Authorities.
(c) Both
(d) none of the above
9. The time limit specified in the `RTI Act, 2005` for the Central / State Information
Commissions to decide on complaints is
(a) 15 days
(b) One Month
(c) Two Months
(d) No such time limit has been specified.
10. How could a Public Information Officer receive applications?
(a) Those submitted by a requester in hand.
(b) Those sent by an applicant by E-Mail.
(c) Transferred by another Public Authority.
(d) Forwarded by an Assistant Public Information Officer.
(e) All of them

4.20 Questions and Exercises

1. What are the Basic tools for information gathering?
2. How can one maintain a diary?
3. Explain how to take notes.
4. What are the various use of computer?
5. Define internet
6. Define mobile and explain its uses.
7. What do you mean by Right to information?
8. How can the information from various resources be checked?

4.21 Key Terms

 Analyzing the problem: The researcher needs to identify the purpose and the
process of the research he is doing. For whom is he doing it and why? These
questions and more needs to be answered right at the start of the research.
 Identifying the sections of the information gathering: Before going through with
the process of information gathering, a sectioning of the general outline of the task
can be helpful. Sections such as those classifying the recipients of the data, the
detailing of the specific questions that needs to be answered, and also the setting of
the knowledge levels of the team members involved facilitates an easier to follow
research program.
 The gathering methods and tools: The tools that are involved in information
gathering such as data storage devices and publications have their own set of
required skills that the researcher must readily possess or is capable of having.
Languages contained in publications could pose a problem and data storage
devices could have proprietary names. And names, as we all know in the computer
industry means lots of adjustments.
 Begin the gathering: During the gathering of the data, the researcher encounters
various amounts of information that may or may not be relevant to the present
subject of the research. He must sift through all of these carefully.

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News Gathering and Sources 205
 Review and record the data obtained: a recording that includes everything from
the start to the end of the gathering process must be set in writing to provide all the
information that the organization needs. Notes
Check Your Progress: Answers
1. (a) Tamilnadu
2. (c) Madya Pradesh
3. (b) 12th October, 2005
4. (c) 2
5. (d) a law passed by the Parliament of India
6. (a) in the Official Gazette
7. (c) intellectual property
8. (a) Central Public Authorities
9. (c) Two Months
10. (d) Forwarded by an Assistant Public Information Officer

4.22 Further Readings

 Writing and Reporting for the Media, John R. Bender, Lucinda Davenport, Michael
W. Drager - 2016
 News Reporting and Writing, Missouri Group - 2013
 Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting across the News Media, Janet
Kolodzy - 2006
 The Mas Media: Reporting Writing Editing, William L. Rivers - 1975
 Sports Journalism: An Introduction to Reporting and Writing, Kathryn T. Stofer,
James Schaffer, Brian A. Rosenthal - 2009

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