Media industry news
Global media
Ida's secret is out

Here was a chance to follow science as it happened - a project with extraordinary potential for traditional and digital media. But there was also a catch: this find would have an immense impact on the scientific world, and the whole project had to be kept under wraps until the team of scientists had finished their research. Jorn wanted the story to be released simultaneously across media, coordinating the release of the academic paper with the public launch.
Each person involved became a guardian of the project. I travelled thousands of miles to meet them face to face, allowing them to see Ida and persuading them to sign a confidentiality agreement. Many were initially unwilling, but the potential significance of Ida was too seductive.
The first element for the documentary was to put in place the broadcasters. The project was branded Project X. Very few people could know it was happening. Nothing could be sent over the web, and the images could only be released on the day of the launch.
I also knew that we should have a book deal in advance to run with the unveiling. Our publishers, Little, Brown, shipped the book in untitled boxes, to be held by the booksellers so it could be released in a single day. This sort of exercise is normally the preserve of blockbusters such as Harry Potter.
The right venues were critical to the launch - the American Museum of Natural History and the Natural History Museum in London, both of which had to verify the science. They too agreed to secrecy, and we arranged to ship the fossil through a back-channel normally used for moving artworks around the world.
The story broke. The final act was Google sketching an image of Ida for its home page. In a moment, after months of secrecy, Ida reached the desktops of billions of people around the world.
Anthony Geffen
The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor, is on BBC1 at 9pm, tomorrow.
Publishing
Libel show stopper
In June 1959, exactly 50 years ago, Wladziu Valentino Liberace, the highest-paid and most flamboyant entertainer of the time, sued Daily Mirror columnist William Connor, known as Cassandra, for implying that he was homosexual, then a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment.
Three years earlier, while the American pianist was on a UK tour, Cassandra described him as a "deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love". It was the term "fruit-flavoured" that did the damage in a six-day trial that had far-reaching ramifications for libel in this country.
Liberace's 73-year-old lawyer, Gilbert Beyfus, pulled out his trump card when he asked Cassandra: "You know, do you not, that 'fruit' is slang in the United States for homosexual?" Cassandra replied that he did not, whereupon Beyfus brandished The American Thesaurus of Slang as proof. He then asked Liberace several times whether he was homosexual and Liberace replied: "No sir, I am against the practice because it offends convention and it offends society."
Although the judge, Mr Justice Salmon, directed the jury to discount the term "fruit" as it was an American word, they took no notice and found for Liberace, who was awarded £8,000 damages - the highest award for libel to date.
The case cost the Mirror £35,000 (£500,000 today), but the paper's circulation rose rapidly in subsequent years - from 4.56m at the time of the trial to average daily sales of 5.28m until 1967.
A new book on the case uses transcripts of the cross-examination. The author, former Mirror staffer Revel Barker, says: "The verdict was a serious miscarriage of justice as it all hinged on innuendo, but Liberace was just too popular to lose. Beyfus was the ultimate court performer, and swayed the jury by portraying Cassandra as a vicious journalist only out to murder reputations, and Liberace as the all-time nice guy, loved by millions of women the world over."
Liz Hodgkinson
Crying All the Way to the Bank: Liberace v Cassandra and The Daily Mirror, published 8 June by Revel Barker Publishing.
Television
Tune in to tumours
First use of "fuck" on television - Kenneth Tynan, yawn yawn. First inter-racial screen kiss - Star Trek's Uhura and Kirk, yeah we know. First live, interactive broadcast of complicated surgery - Channel 4. Even better, viewers will be able to Twitter with a wide-awake patient as a brain surgeon opens the top of his head and cuts out a tumour. They will even be able to phone this surgeon at appropriate moments - as well as three others, who are removing heart tumours and operating on the human stomach.
Two obvious questions spring to mind: why? and Why? Why would someone decide to broadcast surgery with added Twitter, microblogging and phone-a-surgeon features? And, more importantly, why would anyone agree to chat away on live TV while someone stuck their arms in his head?
On the first point, Channel 4's commissioning editor for science, David Glover, says: "Surgeons routinely teach and talk observers through operations. Now, for the first time, viewers will be able to interact with surgeons as they carry out life-changing procedures."
Interactivity, of course, is the buzz-word of the age. But really, is it something you'd really want to be a feature of your brain tumour operation? Isn't that a bit of interactivity too far? What will viewers be saying to the surgeon: "I'm sitting watching television at home and I must say that I believe the patient doesn't, in fact, have anaplastic astrocytoma. In fact doctor, I'm convinced a clipped aneurysm is all that's needed."?
As for the "why let them film your brain?" issue, we are, fortunately, not given the name of the man receiving an awake craniotomy. Although as he'll be expected to chat throughout the op, I'm sure we'll pick up one or two things about him and his reasoning.
The hospital says it is taking part in the programme because patients do tend to feel a moment's nervousness when they hear that someone is going to slice into their brain while they are awake. "The easiest patients to treat are those who have seen the operation on telly," says Paul Grundy, consultant neurosurgeon at Southampton General - the shrug is almost audible at the end of the line. He's hoping it will encourage more people to agree to the procedure as a result.
I'm hoping it doesn't ever come to that. Or at least that I don't have to tweet with strangers at the same time.
Stephen Armstrong