As this morning’s sad news broke that ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson has passed away, a sad day for pop music and fans worldwide – but it also brought with it a wave of emotion across the internet and a new era of online mourning. Previous iconic losses like Diana, John Lennon, Elvis have impacted the public but never before have we had such an icon die at a time when the media generation is at its’ most ripe – which saw the breaking news spreading globally in just seconds….

Already Michael Jackson has taken up a third of all twitter subjects – including celebrity tweets of condolence including Demi Moore and P Diddy, and according to the London Evening Standard the mass of online users wanting to clarify the singer's death caused even Google's software to play up – with its computers used for running the news section to interpret the "Michael Jackson" requests as an automated attack for around half an hour.

This morning, of the top ten most popular web topics – 6 of them revolved around the Jackson news, the BBC News website also reported at 4am that its UK web traffic was up 48% than usual. Further to this the news has led to an unprecedented rise in Michael Jackson online music sales – taking up the Top 15 places on Amazon.com's bestsellers list. iTunes has also been bombarded – with three other Jackson singles and albums in the top 25. The news first broke on American site www.tmz.com this morning which reported it was "looking bad" for the star – the overload of interest meant the site actually went down temporarily, yet of course the news is still being spread via blogs, twitter and social networking sites ….and continues to do so…..

The BBC are in the spotlight today – following calls for BBC executives expenses to be revealed after fears they could be wasting public funds.

The announcement comes after the recent release of the Digital Britain Report this month – which states part of BBC licence fee is to be used to fund universal broadband access.

Recent high profile revelations and uproar about MPs expenses is also most likely to have contributed to the call for expenses to be published – with public funded companies like the BBC now expected to be much more open and accountable for spend of the publics licence fee money.

This morning the BBC released five year’s worth of expenses claims of 10 of their executive board members – including champagne for Bruce Forsyth, a ‘replacement’ handbag, two iPods, extreme petrol claims and more.

You can view the expenses online for past and present BBC executive directors from 2004/2005 – 2008/2009 financial year, as well as individual expenses for the current 10 BBC executives, including Mark Thompson’s expenses, Director General of the BBC.

The information was released following a new policy by the BBC to publish salary and expenses details from now on, including details of its top 50 executives and decision-makers – even Director General of the BBC Mark Thompson claimed £2,236.90 on October 30, 2008 to fly family back in the midst of the Sachgate affair – with justification from the BBC stating: "The Director General ended his family holiday early in order to deal with the issue relating to the Russell Brand show. The Chairman of the Audit Committee of the Executive Board agreed that the expense of cutting a family holiday short would be met by the BBC in advance of the claim being made. The Chairman of the BBC Trust was also informed."

Thompson himself claimed £9,000 in expenses last year saying: "top talent costs perhaps 2% of the licence fee", approximately £72m. Thompson also claimed government policymakers were "ideologically focused" on negative funding systems of the BBC, which jeopardised "the independence and ability of the BBC to deliver its services".

Despite the release of such private documents, it has been said that some sensitive information has been removed citing an exemption in the ‘Freedom of Information Act’ allowing to conceal information related to its "journalism, art or literature".

So how much of our money is being spent? It seems last year saw the BBC's top 10 executives claimed a total of £145,000 on expenses – and this is not the first time executive and channel controller claims have gone public.

Mark Thompson was speaking at the Chartered Institute of Public Finances and Accountancy's annual conference in Manchester at time of the breaking news, saying that the trust and the BBC's executive board had "strongly encouraged us to look at whether we could and should go further in our practice of routine disclosure".

The Department for Culture said it was "disappointed" with his comments.

So how will this affect the BBC and its future spending structure? Things are certainly changing – from the recession to a reform in government expenses guidelines (and indeed now a new, more modern speaker of The House of Commons as a result), and frivolous unjustifiable spending is no longer tolerable. Will this lead to the public dictating how the BBC spends its money – perhaps one day we could have even have a vote on this like political elections?

In short – the public pay for the BBC so surely we have the right to see how our money is spent….

How to close the honesty gap between bloggers and newspapers?

Last week Twitter reported The Mirror had ‘tweeted’ online that Phil Spector (music producer jailed for murder), had used Twitter to complain that his wig was confiscated in jail. The story was a high profile news piece….however, one snag – it wasn’t true!

The day after the story broke, ‘Phil Spector’ (aka the anonymous person behind the Twitter comments), revealed it was infact a prank. This is all very well…but of course, Mirror readers did not/do not know. After all, they have read and consumed the story, and most likely spread it by word-of-mouth and in their own online forums also.

So the story remains on the web, and further irate user comments stoking the flames of controversy: "What's Phil Spector – or any other convicted murderer for that matter - doing with a computer in jail?...Spector should have no such luxuries…”

The Telegraph covered the story twice – firstly believing the joke and running with the headline: ‘Phil Spector complains about prison confiscating his wig on Twitter’, then running the blog practical joke revelation story separately after – with no correction or link to let readers know it is inaccurate at all.

So how come mainstream media do not follow this rule?

A recent example pointed out by Martin Belam (Currybetdot.net) where local newspaper, Birmingham Mail, blogged inaccurately on an ex-Aston Villa footballer –  yet instead of ignoring this, the journalist acknowledged and corrected her own article, ensuring she did not edit/remove any inaccuracies but simply, honestly and openly corrected the mistakes.

With content freeloading being an issue for newspapers, copyright issues for Google, as well as blogging – often blamed on providing opinion and getting factual evidence for free – should we trust everything we read? Traditional journalism is not always quick to correct, remove or apologise for inaccuracies – unlike digital journalists who are perhaps more instant and honest with their reactions.

Of course it is becoming more frequent for ordinary people to reveal breaking news (citizen journalism) ahead of the media (via twitter/camera phones etc), but surely it is common practise for well regarded media brands to conduct themselves via a set of journalistic principles which moderate breaking news fast and accurately….which in theory, is why this source should be more trusted.

Who will be the first to report if/when Gordon Brown leaves government? And if/when you do read this news….you might want to make sure it is infact true before you announce it to your friends and colleagues, shout it out on twitter, or blog to your clients about it…