Scottish compassion doesn't just apply to high profile cases

When Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds it caused a lot of passionate feelings to come forward. Radio phone-ins, online message boards and newspaper letters columns were full of people venting opinion both in agreement and against Kenny MacAskill's decision.

My feeling was that the Scottish Justice Secretary had got it right, and that our society is better for showing such compassion. Of course conspiracies abounded and unusually there was some truth to this as Jack Straw has said that oil and trade considerations played a part in setting up a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya.

I did wonder how common it was for prisoners to be released on compassionate grounds, and whether the nature of their offences affected this at all, but I hadn't seen any information about this anywhere. So I went to www.whatdotheyknow.com and used the guidance available there to make my first request under the Freedom of Information Act. I wanted to know how many prisoners in Scotland had applied for release on compassionate grounds, how many were granted their freedom, what crimes they had been convicted of and how long their sentences had been. To provide a limit to the scope of the request I asked for information going back to the start of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.

Today I got a response, exactly 20 working days after making my request.

The headline is that 33 prisoners applied for early release on compassionate grounds and that 26 had this granted (79%).

Five of the 26 were serving life for murder and one for culpable homicide.

15 were due to be in jail for five years or more - assuming they'd serve their whole sentence.

So what does this add to the debate? It looks as if Mr MacAskill was acting along the line of other such decisions made by theScottish government, and Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi certainly isn't the only person to be treated with such compassion by Scotland.

Reporting Statistics - when 25% isn't 25 out of 100.

Statistics often raise problems for journalists. Clearly some journalists don't get numbers, or find the concepts involved difficult to communicate.

Drive on BBC Radio Five Live today ran an interview with Jillian Satin on this story linking depression with reduced cancer survival rates. It's on the iPlayer here for the next week or so (about 2 hours 52 minutes in).

At the end of the interview I didn't feel much more informed than before. Some of that has to be down to Anita Anand who did the interview, but the contributor didn't do much to help either. For instance, when asked about the significance of the increased risk, she said "When we hear 25% we think of 25 out of 100, and that's not the right way to interpret it."

That made me stop and think for a bit, and put me off the rest of the piece. What I was hoping for was a clear explanation of how I should think of this 25% increase in probability. Unfortunately that wasn't forthcoming. Part of this is a problem with the format - Five Live tends to favour brevity, but on this occasion the item, and contributor, deserved more time.

As a listener I felt let down - the story is interesting and deserved a proper explanation, but Jillian Satin's answers didn't help explain her work and Anita Anand's questioning didn't give her the opportunity to tell the story.

Radio 2 to pre-record Jonathan Ross's show.

The BBC really needs to work out what to do with Jonathan Ross. I happen to like him as a broadcaster. Yes, he takes risks, but he's funny. Friday Night with Jonathan Ross is a good show, with guests I'm often interested in and frequently great musical perfomances. It's also pre-recorded, which hasn't in the past stopped the show causing offense to some viewers.

The Sachsgate row came about after Jonathan's contribution to a pre-recorded programme. That caused thousands of complaints to Ofcom, although most seemed to come from people alerted to the incident by newspaper reports rather than by actually hearing the show. (As a side issue, I wonder if so many people would have been offended if the messages had been left on the answerphone of someone who was less of a national treasure.)

Yes, the BBC has tightened up the compliance process, but clearly pre-recording shows (with or without Jonathan Ross) does not stop you making programmes that people will be offended by.

AudioBoo on air?

This post is inspired by a tweet sent to me by @richardberryuk

He spotted that I'd been using AudioBoo and wanted to know if it would have any use in radio broadcasting.

I sort of replied, but the 140 character limit imposed by Twittter didn't really help me make a coherent response.

Hopefully I can fix that now.

If you haven't come across AudioBoo it's an iPhone app that lets you record short audio clips and and send them off to the internet - if Twitter is micro-blogging this is micro-podcasting.

I've really only played with it, but there are definitely situations where AudioBoo could help a broadcaster.

First of all what are the limitations? Well, at the moment it's iPhone only (although there is a beta test going on that lets you post Boos on the telephone). The built in mic on the iPhone isn't fantastic, but the one on the headphone lead is better.

The Boos are saved and published as mp3 files, which is fine for the internet, but some people may be squeamish about using such a lowly format on the radio (although I've filed quite a few pieces from home as mp3s and never had a complaint). The website doesn't allow for direct download of the mp3s, but does provide RSS feeds for each user and a button that subscribes to the feed in iTunes. Once you've downloaded the files in the feed it's easy to get them into your sound editing app of choice or load them up for playout.

There's an adage in photography that the best camera is the one you've got with you, and it may well turn out for radio reporters that the best recorder is the Boo they've got with them. At the scene of a breaking story if you've got AudioBoo on your iPhone you're ready to record interviews and send them back to the newsroom for broadcast. AudioBoo can also synch with your Twitter account and there are lots of options for for multi-media operations.

The Guardian used AudioBoo extensively in their coverage of the G20 protests in London, including this interview with Mark Thomas.

What about me? Well here's my first Boo interview, I don't reckon much to the reporter but the guest is great!

Fliggo's multiple personality disorder

My FdA Journalism students are doing a video journalism assignment. I've set up a private room on Fliggo for them to upload their finished pieces to.

This afternoon there were several students on the site and as they clicked onto a new page their identities would change. Even though they were individually logged onto the college network Fliggo couldn't work out who was on which PC and returned random identities to the students.

This was a bizarre and frustrating for the learners. I've emailed the college IT team about to see if they can sort it out, but I wonder if anyone here has any ideas?

UPDATE: Chrys Bader from Fliggo responded to my tweet very quickly - he suggests the issue might be caused by "proxy caching" on the college network, which gives me something to offer to the IT dept. A great response from Fliggo which I'm really pleased with.

Free range, but not trouble free.

When we moved to the countryside almost three years ago one of the benefits was definitely going to be letting the children have more freedom than we could have expected to give them in Wigan. (That's not to knock Wigan - we really enjoyed living there and enjoyed good neighbours and a friendly community.)

We now live on the village green, and imagined Jack and Edward playing there after school on long summer evenings. But now Jack is beginning to explore his new environment with the support of his friends and wants to be out more and for longer. The evenings have been bright and the local children are out playing. Each time I let Jack go and join them I feel a pang of parental guilt - I wonder if I'm being irresponsible. But I do believe that giving him this freedom will help him develop physically and socially. The scrapes he gets falling off his bike and tumbling of walls will heal, and the lessons learned in earning those scars will stay with him for a long time.