Peter Bale: MSN's mission to explain, worries about defamation

Bale is Microsoft's UK executive producer. He joined the computer giant’s content portal MSN two years ago from News International where he oversaw the TimesOnline site for The Times and The Sunday Times. Previously he was editor-in-chief of FTMarketWatch and had other online roles at the Financial Times.

Bale joined Reuters in Australia in 1985 and during a 15-year career covered British politics and Romania before becoming deputy news editor, Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Talking about Microsoft’s plans, he told The Independent: "The thing which is not immediately visible to most people in the media is the extent to which we create our own content."

More established news players may not be quaking in their boots, the newspaper said, but for the last two years, MSN has been short-listed by the Association of Online Publishers as digital publisher of the year in the consumer category, losing out to the Telegraph group and Sky respectively.

"We have an evolving approach to news that is based around immediacy and a mission to explain," Bale says. "We can't go out and compete on scale with a major news provider but we can compete by bringing explanatory information, maps, more pictures, discussion, adding value to the news package."

MSN's news operation was set up in 1995 by three former newspaper journalists. It now has 35 staff and 15 contractors.

With multi-skilled staff capable of devising an editorial concept and seeing it to fruition, Bale accepts there is a need in the system for checks and balances. "We have introduced a reasonably robust system of copy editing because what you get with everybody being an expert is that everybody has tremendous power in being able to publish anything. We've invested quite a lot in training in ethics and copy-editing, laying down pretty good ground rules," he says. Some of MSN's young new media professionals have had little experience of seeing their work edited by a colleague. "When you have a lot of younger inexperienced people you've got to give them framework, training and support," says Bale. "My worry is defamation, which is a big risk in the UK. We've invested in defamation training, making people relaxed about having their copy edited." ■