Is there a place for traditional reporters in the age of citizen journalism?

You probably have a smartphone in your pocket. Powerful little thing isn't it. TV. Films. Music. Games. Apps. Limitless selfies. All at your fingertips within seconds. Now imagine if a protest kicks off outside the cafe you're supping at. You rush outside, press record and capture events as they unfold. Then, you share it to Facebook and Twitter. Does that make you a journalist? Did you get the whole story or simply your view of events? These questions were at the heart of a recent Intelligence Squared debate in London, presented in association with Google+ and ITV News.

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/smartphone-journalism-the-changing-face-of-news/ Filmed at LSO St Luke's on 8th May 2014. Cameras are everywhere capturing headline events, from the worst atrocities in Syria to the tragic unfolding of Drummer Rigby's death in Woolwich. The proliferation of smartphones and social media means that the first instinct of many bystanders is to give rolling commentary on live events by posting footage, images and tweets online.

Some of the most powerful and indelible images of breaking news stories during the past few years have come from so-called citizen journalists on the ground: the tsunami in Thailand, the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring, Syria, the Boston Marathon, the Japanese earthquake, the London riots, the brutal murder of Lee Rigby… A window to events as they unfold. Traditional media and trained reporters cannot be everywhere and when they do shimmy their way to the front, they are hardly the most inconspicuous, agile or welcomed. So surely having more information at hand is good for both the press and the public?

But this tidal wave of media can be a double-edged sword. There is a danger of misinformation and misinterpretations, hoaxes and vested interests. I still remember the Boston bombings wildfire on Twitter, major news organisations posting with scant regard for journalistic ethics and standards. As Mark Austin, ITV News anchor and chair for the evening, asked in his introduction, "Should we always believe what we see? And is citizen journalism informing or distorting our understanding of world events?"

Here are a few soundbites from the panellists that evening:

Oren Yakobovich
Founder of Videre (set credere), a human rights group that works to expose violations around the globe through covert filming. Yakobovich, a former Israeli soldier, has trained hundreds of citizens in the West Bank to use cameras to fight for justice.

"Journalists can't be everywhere. They're not always able to be on the ground. Citizen journalists are an underground and sustainable network of people that can give us the news that we wouldn't normally hear about."

"Everyone has an agenda. Everyone should verify sources and do their own checking."

Claire Fox
Renowned libertarian writer and director of Britain's Institute of Ideas. She writes regularly for national newspapers and is a member of the European Cultural Parliament.

"Citizens with cameras: good. But not journalism. Journalism is about developing context, being skeptical and asking awkward questions. These people are just watching events and not really understanding or asking the big questions [who, why etc]."

"There is the potential for a distortion of the truth in some citizen footage."

"Detachment and objectivity are important benefits of the parachuted in journalist. They are there to convince us why this news is important."

"[Traditional] journalists are trying to ape the citizen journalists too much. There has been a collapse of editorial confidence [retweets as a metric of success at some papers]."

"We [the public] should hold journalists to account. Demand the best of truth. Not try to do it ourselves."

Will Self
Author, journalist and broadcaster, who writes two fortnightly columns for the New Statesman.

"The best definition of journalism is by HL Mencken: 'It is the job of the journalist to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.' It's my watchword. Run that test…"

"There is a frisson that lies behind a lot of this smartphone footage, a rather grotesque form of entertainment – a form of comfort, if that's what it is – that responsible journalism should not be involved in."

"Citizen journalism is coming in to fill a vacuum but it's a mistake to call it journalism."

"Everybody can be heard now, but nobody's listening."

"Here is an example of non-journalism: the use of chemical weapons in Syria, supposedly by the al-Assad regime, which was not in fact the case. Footage almost triggered ground force invasion by the US. Decontextualised citizen journalism could have precipitated a human rights violation on a gargantuan scale."

"Of course [the citizen journalism debate] is about money and revenue streams. There is a febrile mood that's created an atmosphere of hysteria. Everyone's tweeting, sending in this smartphone material… But who get to use this head of effectively useless steam that this material generates?"

"Anyone over the age of 50 will remember growing up around the time of Vietnam and witnessing unmediated news coverage for the first time. It took a while for the media to understand what a responsible relationship with that material was. It is the responsibility of mainstream news media to try to develop a way of dealing with [citizen journalism] material and developing an ethic around it."

Paul Conroy 
World-renowned photojournalist and war photographer. In 2012 Conroy suffered severe injuries in the Syrian city of Homs during an attack that killed two other reporters, including celebrated Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin.

"We wouldn't dream of printing hearsay. We would go to the spot. The job of the journalist is to bear witness. Marie was incredible at going one step further, one step further… With citizen journalists there isn't that depth."

"Give me 20 minutes with that footage and I can tell any story you like."

Jessica Mayberry 
Citizen journalist and founder of Video Volunteers, an organisation that works to empower India's rural and slum communities, who have been excluded from the traditional media.

"There has always been a continuum between activism and journalism. They go hand in hand. We [Video Volunteers] talk about video for change. Our network of community corespondents work as reporters. They don't just make the videos, they use them to try to solve the problem that the video addresses. If they see that opportunity … they seize it."

"Subjective personal experience is certainly not journalism, but it's nonetheless valid. A real opportunity now exists…"

Simon Ostrovsky
Soviet-born American journalist, director and producer, currently reporting for VICE News. He was recently held captive for three days by pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

"In Ukraine, a lot of people have started setting up Livestreams from occupied public buildings but I wouldn't call this journalism so much as activism. They use it for co-ordination but us journalists can follow the cameras set up to know what's going on where."

"Citizen journalists are mostly endangering themselves." 

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Tim Singelton 
Director of Newsgathering at ITV News, who was sitting in the audience that night. He is chiefly responsible for handling citizen journalism submissions to the channel.

"In Syria, where access becomes increasingly difficult, meaningful contacts are hard to come by and reporters are treated as outsiders, citizen journalists can be a great resource. We've always needed citizen journalists in one shape or another – eg fixers – but now they have the power to help make the news."

"Mainstream media organisations are more important and relevant than ever. We continue to have bureaus and to report news from around the world because we must confront the fact that a lot of material on the internet isn't unreliable."

From left to right: Will Self, Paul Conroy, Mark Austin, Oren Yakobovich and Claire Fox

The subject of verification came up time and again. Several companies have tried to answer this challenge by helping to filter the authentic and reliable from the noise and successfully bridge the gap between traditional and social media. CNN employs various mechanisms to verify information posted to their iReport platform, including checking the source's account for multiple videos or photos, and proximity to the location of the incident using geolocation information. However, CNN is also aware of the dangers in identifying sources and their locations, particularly in oppressed countries or where violent acts have occurred. So certain submissions can appear anonymously to the public.

Storyful is a news agency that came to prominence during the Arab Spring uprising, delivering a stream of reliable footage from the frontline. They use a combination of old-fashioned journalistic manpower and clever algorithm software to identify, verify and provide social media content for some of the biggest names in news, including Reuters, the Wall Street Street Journal and Channel 4.

On a recent blog post the company identified a "fundamental difference" between the work of the citizen journalist and the professional journalist: "While this [difference] makes neither less important, it must be kept in mind. Many citizen journalists have more obvious vested interests and personal biases. They may, for instance, be participants entrenched in the situation they are reporting on, their views thus involuntarily skewed. This does not necessarily invalidate what they see and record, but taking theirs as the 'whole truth' can lead to a view about news events that has more than just a few blind spots." A clear example of this is the reporting of conflict in the Ukraine. 

Tim Pool was one name strangely absent from the panel. He has helped to popularise the term "citizen journalist" more than anyone else. It is, however, a title that he quickly rejected when I asked him about the debate and the reliability of footage from reporters such as himself. "I am not a citizen journalist," he replied. "I am the Head of Live News at Vice. What they are really arguing is that if you don't have a degree or get a salary that somehow you are less ethical than they are. Rubbish. Always consider your sources."

VICE News is launching soon. Meet Tim Pool, whose unique style of interactive broadcast journalism lives at the intersection of social and traditional media. His reporting gives us a first-person look at the social movements that are changing the world around us.

The 28-year-old American came to prominence in 2011 when he hopped on a bus to New York and broadcast from his phone for 21 hours non-stop during Occupy Wall Street's eviction from Zuccotti Park. His DIY ethos, "commitment to the decentralisation of information" and determination to "tell it like it is" using everyday technology really chimed with hundreds of thousands of news-hungry streamers across the world. Although some have questioned his gung-ho approach, filming everything and everyone without first seeking consent. Since then he has experimented with a drone, hacked a pair of Google Glass to report from Istanbul and even co-created Taggly, an attribution app that allows the user to instantly share photos and video footage with an optional watermark. The citizen journalist gets credit for their content, while news agencies are able to check the veracity of the material they wish to use.

If there was a consensus among the panel it is that the footage from these citizen journalists  has some value – particularly in closed countries where, as Mark Austin put it, mainstream journalism does not exist. But professional in traditional media are the masters of their own destiny. The onus is on editors and trained journalists to be collaborative and resourceful in their mission to make sense of the world in an informative and accessible way. But they should, as always, rigorously check their sources.

And that's not all. A good journalist is skeptical, always quick to question their own assumptions and investigate the possibility that they are wrong. As Guardian reporter Paul Lewis did during the investigation into the unlawful death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in 2009. After speaking about this – and the Jimmy Mubenga case – at a TED talk on citizen journalism in 2011, Lewis concluded with the following line: "That process of witnessing, recording and sharing … is journalism. And we can all do it."

A powerful ideal and an impulse to be encouraged in every person.

Bad news for the media

"Don't believe everything you read." That's the motto of many where the media is concerned. In which case, who can you trust? Last week I snuck into an informative debate on this very subject, the second in a series curated by Fran Plowright and Free Word. Big questions were asked. What is "news"? Do we need to trust the news? And what are the consequences if we don't?

Among the small but vocal crowd were students under 16 from schools in Hackney and Manchester, together with practising journalists, seasoned pros, keen amateurs and enthusiasts. Before us was a panel of established members of the media industry including Piers Bradford (Commissioning Editor of BBC Radio 1), Angela Phillips (a journalist and reader at Goldsmiths, University of London) and Derren Lawford (Commissioning Editor of London Live, The Evening Standard's new TV channel dedicated to the capital and each of its boroughs).

In light of recent national scandals such as phone hacking and Savile, I didn't expect the public to look favourably upon "the press". Regardless of instances where the press has checked itself – the ITV Exposure investigation on Savile, for example – sometimes even within its own organisation. Nonetheless I was shocked by the depth of distrust felt towards the media. There's one statistic in particular that stuck in my mind, plucked from a survey conducted by Transparency International:

"69 per cent of the country think that
the media is corrupt."

All media. That's a broad brush. That figure is up 29 per cent since 2010. In fact, people think that the media industry is more corrupt than politics. Ouch. 

The mechanics of trust in the context of the media industry's relationship with the state is a curious one. The positive influence of national prosperity balanced against the negative influence of corruption and impropriety. It's too big to go into here but consider that levels of trust in countries where government either owns or controls the media (UAE, Singapore and China, for example) is often higher than in countries where media is traditionally thought of as “free” (eg Australia and the UK) according to a research by global PR firm Edelman. Does this mean that people in some countries turn a blind eye if they feel upwardly mobile? Are these results nothing more than testament to the power of propaganda? Incidentally, the same firm revealed figures pointing to a rise in public trust of the media in the UK: up 21 per cent since the phone-hacking case and seven per cent since 2013.

But back to the lecture theatre, and another revelation. When the subject of young people was raised it became abundantly clear that the next generation feels demonised and wholly underrepresented in the media. A recent survey by Demos, "the country's leading cross-party think tank", revealed that a staggering 81 per cent of teenagers felt they were negatively represented in the media. "These negative stereotypes are having a detrimental impact on how they engage with the wider world and their employability," we're told.

A good example is this article in the Guardian, written by a young master's graduate who took exception to a student that rebuffed her offer of a job at the cafe she occasionally works at. What did he say? 'No thanks, I'm over-qualified." Cue a rant about "a certain type of student who looks down on such lower-skilled jobs." Her customer's comment seemed rather innocuous, and the writer's tone was largely cautionary, presenting graduates with the harsh reality of low-paid work in trades far away from their passion or vocation – just to make ends meet. But the article did also paint a picture of the young person as lazy, rude and deluded by a sense of entitlement. Predictably, it prompted a vehement response in the comments section. Here's a taste:

Rabiesx15
20 February 2014 5:03pm
"If minimum wage jobs – that not even a person who owns their house outright could live on – are "gold dust", then what is the point? Students now have to take on real-time debt to study … and then to land in Costa? They have a right to their expectations. The problem is this society first bleeds them then kills their expectations off.

Spoldge4514
20 February 2014 6:03pm
"It's time society stopped attacking; different sections of itself - we have big challenges in the years ahead. We should be working together to tackle them. Sweeping generalisations, stereotyping and one-sided arguments help no-one. I'd like to add I agree some young people are like that. The key word is some. The Commons voted the changes to Tuition Fees into law in 2010. You never see good hard-working [young] people represented in a newspaper. A few shots of them drunk or passed out is the perfect way to provoke an emotional response. Higher education is not a party. Anyone who thinks that is just wrong. Some do treat it as a massive party. But that's some. Why stereotype a whole section of society? Is this not a swinging media agenda? Just because the author was sneered at coffee shop doesn't warrant this piece. The Guardian should be asking why there aren't enough graduate jobs? Why is the labour market so broken? Why has society placed these burdens on their young?

ellamarcel
21 February 2014 3:32pm
To those already working as baristas, barmaids and babysitters while studying this article is really patronising 'advice'. With fees increasing to 9k a year, hundreds chasing every internship and significant cuts in the arts there is probably about three disillusioned students left in England who believe they can walk into a job. One of them must have come into your cafe.

Some strong examples of questionable media conduct were discussed at the #OnTrust debate: the portrayal of Shereka Marsh as a Hackney gang girl first and a schoolgirl second; Mark Duggan's portrait, taken at his daughter's funeral but cropped to make him appear more menacing; how the bulk of the media allow a story and its headline to be dominated by negativity instead of spotlighting positive measures to help (eg self-harm and YouthNet's dedicated response).

From left to right: chair Dekan Apajee, panellists Ruby Mae Moore (editor of Amor magazine), Adam Sich (Senior Producer for Truthloader, ITN's YouTube news channel), Derren Lawford, Piers Bradford and Angela Phillips

So where do we go from here? Obviously a major restructuring and recalibration of the media industry is required, one where newspapers, magazines, radio stations and broadcasters are not only broadening the range of voices and opinions in their programming but also being fair and accurate in the stories they choose to share. In many people's eyes, the newspaper industry cannot be trusted to police itself, which is why the farce of the new Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) has further agitated the public.

I do feel though that it's unfair to condemn an entire industry because of a handful of incidents. There are bad apples in every profession, in every city, and we should remember that it was the press that broke some of the biggest public interest stories of the past few years: Snowden/NSA (the Guardian), MPs' expenses (the Daily Telegraph) and phone hacking (the Guardian).

To those young people who feel voiceless and misrepresented, I offer one word of encouragement: technology. Mad Men's Don Draper blows his fair share of hot air but he was right when he said: "If you don't like what people are saying about you, then change the conversation." You have all the tools, the weapons, you need to make that change. From YouTube channels and internet radio stations to live streamed citizen journalism using your mobile phone, there's never been a better time to shift the balance of power and prove what's really newsworthy when it comes to the youth. I'm certainly fired up now and ready to press ahead with my journalism academy project. Eager to hear how the next generation would change the world. This country has bags of talent and we can't let the wicked acts of the few overshadow the promise of others.

I'll leave you with some key thoughts from the night:

"News is anything you hear that you didn't now before. News is something that is sensitive to both audience and platform." Angela Phillips

"Money is missing from the conversation. Excessively negative and exaggerated stories are often used as click bait. The press is motivated by money rather than what's newsworthy or responsible journalism." A girl in the audience.

"Verification is important. Professional journalists are taught to be skeptical. Bloggers often aren't. Everybody is trying to be the first, but you can be too fast. Good journalism takes time." Angela Phillips

It's hard to get our perspective out there. There needs to be a change in journalistic culture. And not just at a local community level, but also around the big international issues. There needs to be a youth voice in there." Fran, a member of the UK Youth Climate Coalition 

"Celebrating youth is an absolutely fundamental part of our job at Radio 1." Piers Bradford

"The vast majority of young people are doing amazing things in this country. If the media is going to hold a mirror up to society, and not a cracked one, it needs to get its act together." Martyn Lewis, veteran TV journalist, news anchor and chairman of YouthNet

"We should be skeptical and question the news we read. But I've seen the great courage of and conviction that drives the work that many journalists do. So it's depressing to see the very low regard in which they are held. Don't necessarily trust but certainly value journalism." Jo Glanville, Director, English PEN

"We need to know what's being done in our name. And journalism does that in an organised way, on a daily basis. We need journalism that connects us, connects us to one another. If we don't then we can't be a democracy. Without the underpinning of information circulating around the world, we'd be all the poorer." Angela Phillips

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(c) UK Parliament

The BBC has a produced a very interesting TV debate show called Free Speech. The latest one addresses young people's distrust of another major institution – the police. The nation is still seething from the deaths of Jean Charles de Menezes and Mark Duggan; watch as young audience members protest about racial profiling and the abuse of stop and search powers in a country where black people are seven times as likely as white people to be approached by the police. According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) that figure is as high as 29 in some areas. Nonetheless 61 per cent of the viewers at home thought it was right for the police to judge us on the way we look. As with the media, conduct is the crucial factor.

Free speech under fire

Keir Starmer is a busy man. Besides being pulled into the increasingly sordid Saville scandal (more on that another time), the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) finds himself in the midst of one of the most contentious debates in history of media law. 

It all revolves around the huge popularity of social networks and the potential for unfettered users to persistently harass or incite hatred. Facebook now has more than one billion users and there are more than 250 million tweets posted each day. In turn, there are more offensive comments about others being made than ever before. For this reason it is even more important to review legislation and the limits on freedom of speech in light of new technology.

In the UK alone, the number of social media-related harassment cases has risen from 2,347 in 2010 to 2,490 in 2011. And that number could rise sharply. Yesterday, Starmer addressed a gathering at London School of Economics (LSE), explaining that "if you retweet, you commit an offence under the Act." The legislation in question is Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, which outlaws sending a tweet that is "grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character". According to the Act, a person can also be prosecuted if he or she "causes any such message or matter to be so sent". 

This has set alarm bells ringing in the ears of the Twitter community and libertarians nationwide, many of whom believe that the right to free speech should be absolute. In fact, Alex Macgillivray, the general counsel for Twitter, is known for describing the microblogging service as "the free-speech wing of the free speech party". For how much longer though… At the beginning of this year the micro-blogging service announced that it would now be able to selectively block tweets on a country-by-country basis, acknowledging that "different countries would have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression".

So far, courts in the UK have erred on the side of caution, but that isn't to say that they have ruled with consistency. In 2010, Paul Chambers was arrested for tweeting: "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!" He was found guilty at Doncaster magistrates court, and went on to lose his first appeal and a High Court appeal, before a second High Court appeal finally saw his conviction quashed on July 27 2012. Chambers' tweet was retweeted thousands of times by sympathisers; based on Starmer's view at LSE today, those people would theoretically be liable for prosecution.

In March, Swansea student Liam Stacey was sentenced to 56 days in prison for racially offensive comments on Twitter about the seriously ill Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba. The judge described the comments as "vile and abhorrent" and added that "there is no alternative to an immediate prison sentence". The decision was welcomed by a mass of sympathisers, but it was not without its fierce critics, who claimed that Stacey was not guilty of a public order offence and that the sentence was highly excessive. Others point to regularly outspoken tweeters such as Frankie Boyle and wonder how he gets away with half the offensive things he says. Perhaps it's because he's a comedian; it's a joke so he doesn't mean it…

Last month the CPS decided not to take action against Daniel Thomas, a semi-professional footballer at Port Talbot Town FC, who posted homophobic messages on Twitter relating to the Olympic divers Tom Daley and Peter Waterfield. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) stressed the importance of the sender's intention and ruled that his actions, "however misguided", were intended to be humorous to family and friends, and not grossly offensive to the divers.

Earlier this month, 20-year-old Azhar Ahmed was sentenced to 240 hours of community service for a Facebook post saying, "all soldiers should die and go to hell" following the deaths of six British soldiers. Soon after, Matthew Woods, also 20, was jailed for 12 weeks after posting "sick jokes" about missing girl April Jones on Facebook.

Whether you are aggrieved by the curbing of free speech or alarmed by the number of people casually causing offence, one thing is clear: the situation is getting out of hand and the Communications Act, conceived at a time when few could imagine just how instantaneous the transition from private thoughts to mass communication would become, is not comprehensive and clear enough to address the myriad situations that arise.

Starmer's position is quite clear. On BBC's Newsnight a fortnight ago he acknowledged a person's "right to be offensive and insulting" as well as 'the chilling effect" that an amendment to legislation could have on free speech. But he wants guidelines to be drawn up that will help to clarify the situations where prosecution is justified. He has mooted two categories: where there is a "campaign or harassment or a general credible threat" and " where communications are merely offensive or grossly offensive". (The former would require a high threshold of criminality and the latter would not necessarily be ring-fenced from prosecution.)

Over the next few months the CPS will consult lawyers, academics and representatives from social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook – both of whom are keen to be very hands off, relying mainly on community policing – as well as leading sports bodies including the Football Association, the Rugby Football Union and the British Olympic Association. The results will be shared before Christmas.

Ultimately, the aim should be to preserve democracy, outlining how the law will be clearly and consistently applied when an individual oversteps the mark. That is the challenge for Starmer and his colleagues – which words or deeds would most of us consider to be grossly offensive? We have all seen how revolutionary an advancement the internet, more affordable technology and the creation of social networks have been in giving a voice to those who were once disregarded or, worse still, suppressed. Look at the legitimate battle against "The Great Firewall of China", the toppling of dictators in Egypt and Tunisia (not that I am disregarding the power of the human spirit) or one "anonymous cyber-dissident's" exposure of corruption in Saudi Arabia.

On the other hand, the internet is not a parallel universe where people can roam free, attack, threaten or defame others and not expect there to be consequences. The inhibition-loosening age of the internet and rapidly advanced remote communication have made many of us intemperate and uncivil. People don't think hard enough before they act: that comment on YouTube or under a news article; Tweet exchanges that quickly escalate.

You may not be seen but you are heard nonetheless, and you're not necessarily taken less seriously, as lawyer Keith Ashby recently claimed, just because you're not face to face. Social networks have amplified people's voices, sometimes for the good, other times less so. One person co-ordinates troops for a riot and mass looting; another organises a mass clean-up operation in their neighbourhood. For that reason those who misuse social networks must be held to account if they act with malice or embark on a campaign of abuse and incitement to violence.

It is not in anyone's best interests to have more prosecutions and a more litigious society in the UK. So let's combine efforts to avoid any more nasty incidents: responsibility for policing social networks should be shared between the community, the courts (where necessary) and above all, the service providers. Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, speaking in relation to a review of the Defamation Bill, has said that, "Website operators are in principle liable as publishers for everything that appears on their sites, even though the content is often determined by users." I would extend part of that responsibility to highly successful companies such as Facebook and Twitter, encouraging them to invest more in moderation and work more closely with government or police departments. The privilege of being able to voice your opinion to millions should be taken away from those who don't act respectfully towards their peers.

Meanwhile, this debate plays out across the world. In India this August, extremists in two rival communities provoked a full-scale sectarian conflict by using Twitter to spread rumours that each side is attacking the other, supporting the charges with falsified pictures of purported victims. Violence erupted in Assam where both communities are based, killing 80 people and displacing 300,000. The rumours on Twitter quickly followed, causing tens of thousands of people elsewhere in India to flee for fear of their lives. After a tense stand-off between Twitter and the government, the social network agreed to remove six troublesome sites but not the spoof accounts of those impersonating and ridiculing the prime minister.

I do hope that Starmer and his team take this opportunity to lead the way and formulate a just and pragmatic set of guidelines that others can adopt. Common sense should prevail, together with an inate sense of right and wrong. Chambers' airport outburst did not constitute a "credible and genuine threat" in my view, although perhaps he should have chosen his words more carefully, but the comments of Stacey, Ahmed and Woods were indefensible in their context.