Bristol NUJ

Have you ever wondered what influence the back room boys, the media owners and managers have over the news we read in the paper every day and see on TV every night? How much is biased or spun, and how much did we never get to hear about at all?

The modern media is changing fast. Technological developments such as satellite, WAP and broadband mean that, rather than a handful of channels, we have hundreds of ways to get our news. Media ownership is changing too with the once local ITV stations up for auction in a global marketplace and giant transnational media corporations dominating the market.

The inaugural lecture is given Ex Bristol MP Tony Benn who, after being demobbed from the RAF, began his career as a BBC radio producer in the 1940’s. He entered politics and went on to become Postmaster General and Secretary of State for Industry and then Energy, cabinet posts under Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.

This 34 minute DVD is available by mail order only for £8.50 which includes postage.

Please send your name and address with a cheque or postal order made out to ‘Bristol NUJ’ to: Bristol N.U.J., c/o 10-12 Picton Street, Montpelier, BRISTOL, BS6 5QA.

Look What’s Happening To TV News?

Last November’s Benn lecture is now available to stream or download in .mp3 format

Andrew Gilligan audio - 01hr 12mins - 2007 Benn Lecture with audience questions

Gilligan launches attack on Coughlin

Coughlin: ‘maverick’ Gilligan is wrong

Telegraph foreign editor leaves staff

2006 Tony Benn DVD available from Arnolfini bookshop

THURSDAY 24 JANUARY 2008: Alterego Bar,  77 Whiteladies Road, Bristol, BS8 2NTZ;

6.30pm for a 7pm start.

Hello to all our members,

Our next NUJ Bristol Branch Meeting is on Thursday 24 January 2008, from 6.30pm for a 7pm start.  We are having the meeting at Alterego Bar, 77 Whiteladies Road, Bristol, BS8 2NT, which is close to the BBC on Whiteladies Road up towards Clifton Down Shopping Centre.  We have booked the upstairs area.

NUJ Annual Delegate Meeting 2008

On the agenda will be motions and amendments to this year’s Annual Delegate Meeting (ADM) held in Belfast this April. This is where delegates from Branches across the union vote on issues of NUJ policy.  The outcome of these votes determines what the NUJ does and does not do in many areas of the union’s business and campaigning on behalf of members.

Redundancies in the media industry have led to a small decrease in the NUJ’s membership numbers and contributed to a shortfall in members’ subscriptions, the NUJ’s main income. Additionally the NUJ’s own staff pension fund is in deficit. Because of this and rising costs there are some cost-cutting motions at this years ADM.

There is a motion to cut the number of Branch delegates at future ADMs. For example Bristol Branch would be reduced from our current 3 delegates to 2 delegates under this proposal.  There is also a motion that all Retired and Life Members of the NUJ should from now on pay a £25 per year subscription. The number of seats on the NUJ’s National Executive Council may also be limited.  There have already been cuts in some NUJ budgets this financial year. Bristol Branch has 6 motions in the preliminary agenda, some of which need amendments. These are on the NUJ’s Pensioners, the media situation in Pakistan, support for Polish trade unions, Associated Newspapers and Northcliffe, Freelance Fees, and Equal Pay for Women.

The ADM Preliminary Agenda is now available online at: http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?ac=1&docid=170

Please take a look through for any motions you are interested in, feel strongly for or against, and come and discuss them at the Branch meeting.  Topics include:  NUJ internal organisation, Ethics, Government Policies, International Issues, Wages Payments and Conditions, Media Freedom, Copyright, Broadcasting, Equality and Training.

Other issues on the Bristol Branch meeting agenda will include:

Our own Branch financial matters correspondence and reports, New Members, Branch Officer vacancies, Campaigns including Save ITV News and Fight For Your BBC, and other issues from our Chapels and Freelance members.

The NUJ needs your input as members to work democratically and respond to your needs. So please come along and share your concerns and ideas.

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday 24 January. You’ll be very welcome.

 

Copyright Simon Chapman 2007

On Monday 26 November the celebrated investigative journalist Andrew Gilligan gave the second annual Bristol NUJ/Arnolfini Benn lecture on the media and politics in Bristol.

In 2003 it was Gilligan who made the famous statement live at 6.07 a.m. on BBC radio’s Today programme that he had been told by a source that the Government “probably knew that the 45-minute figure [on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction capability] was wrong even before it decided to put it in.”

This was the report which led to Dr David Kelly taking his own life, which led in turn to the Hutton Report in 2004. The report found against the BBC and Andrew. The NUJ, however, supports what Gilligan did, believes that the BBC acted in the public interest, and maintain that it’s vital for the right of journalists to protect the anonymity of confidential sources to be protected in law.

Go to the NUJ’s full report here <http://www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=661>

Gilligan, working these days at the Evening Standard and Channel 4’s Dispatches, spoke about the ongoing attack on journalism since Wapping in the mid-Eighties and the demise of the printers’ unions, the fact that it has since become possible to make real money out of the media and what media-as-marketable-commodity has meant for quality journalism.

He made a passionate argument for the need to stand up for true reporting and impartial analysis - for the dignity of journalism as the fourth estate of the realm. Speaking about the institutions in Britain (”the most centralised and secretive large democracy in the world”) which have both failed, and have failed to acknowledge their failings, Gilligan pointed out that the forces of hostility to journalism are on the increase, with clampdowns on unofficial sources; new difficulties in publishing memoirs; and leaks - and those who report on them - being punished even with jail to no murmurs of protest from the media.

So it’s hard times, but important ones. Andrew pointed out that we still ARE a democracy; that it IS possible to roll back state power; and that journalists have the potential to produce an alternative narrative which will hold government to account, inform the public, and defend democratic freedoms. Although the economics are going to become more difficult, he said that in a world full of cacophony the power of focused information is still considerable - and that as journalists, we should aim to supply it.

A really lively debate followed the talk and it was clear that the audience had both concerns and possible solutions to offer. It was great to be able to engage with Andrew and ask questions, and bring some local issues under the spotlight too. From weapons of mass destruction to the difficulties of withdrawing labour, we were still at it hammer and tongs in the bar at 10.30….

So yes, a great evening, attended by many NUJ members as well as the public, and it achieved what we as a Branch set out to do - that is, bring the debate on the key issues facing journalism today to a wider and live public, and provide a forum for discussion. Clearly there’s an appetite for it!

And finally, a plug: DVDs of last year’s lecture, featuring Tony Benn and produced by the Branch, are now on sale in the Arnolfini bookshop (£7), and a DVD of this year’s lecture will follow in due course.

Day of Action for Stand Up for Journalism by the NUJ, and Fight For Our BBC by BECTU the NUJ and Unite unions; BBC Bristol Offices, Whiteladies Road, Bristol; 05 November 2007.

Staff and union members gathered outside the BBC Bristol offices at lunchtime with a ‘guy’, Mark Thompson Director General of the BBC. There was also leafletting in the morning.

Photos by Simon Chapman.

©Simon Chapman 2007. All Rights Reserved.

STAND UP FOR JOURNALISM

Report on Bristol Day of Action, 5 November 2007; by Simon Chapman

Thanks to all those who took part in the Bristol Stand Up for Journalism rally on 5 November 2007 at BBC Bristol in Whiteladies Road. Staff from the BBC and Bristol Branch members began the day with leafletting at the BBC Bristol offices in Whiteladies Road in Bristol, where many jobs are scheduled to go as part of the cuts announced recently. At lunchtime NUJ and BECTU BBC members were joined by staff from the Bristol Evening Post and Western Daily Press newspapers, and freelance colleagues. The traditional Bonfire Night ‘guy’ was an effigy of Mark Thompson, the BBC Director General.

The Evening Post sent a photographer and there was some coverage the next day. There are also some photos as part of a national round up of NUJ events at: http://www.flickr.com/groups/standupforjournalism/pool/

STAND UP FOR JOURNALISM

Report on the NUJ rally in Manchester, 5 November 2007; by Francis Harvey.

A burst of Mancunian drizzle coincided almost exactly with the duration of the NUJ’s Stand Up for Journalism gathering and march in Manchester city centre.

But, to trot out the old village-fete-report cliche, rain failed to dampen the spirits of demonstrators at this good-natured but impassioned campaign. However, invoking that chestnut is not an example of the “quality journalism” that the event was concerned with protecting.

It may have rained on their parade, but around 70 hearty protestors (the figure 200, stated elsewhere, is an exaggeration) wielded banners and placards and handed out leaflets as they joined a short march under a grey sky.

Setting off from outside the “Manchester Evening News” building in Hardman St, off Deansgate, they walked a few blocks to the Radisson Edwardian Hotel in nearby Southmill St, which was hosting the Society of Editors conference.

Protests were going on around the country and across Europe, but the Manchester march was the main UK event. Banners largely represented northern and Midlands centres - Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Coventry, Birmingham etc - but attendees from further afield included members from Belfast, Bristol and Brighton. London PR officers and freelances each fielded their own delegates, as did Preston University journalism department, Manchester’s Pink Press and Wrinklies Portsmouth.

The brevity of the march, and the relative paucity of passers-by in the area, meant the immediate impact of the protest was rather muted. However, by the nature of a journalists’ event, plenty of interviewing, photographing and podcasting each other was going on - creating plenty of material to amplify the message later.

Gathered outside the hotel as editors milled around the lobby, marchers coined various impromptu slogans and chants. Despite being versed in devising punning headlines, they started with a rather tentative “Hacked off” and “What do we want? Quality journalism! When do we want it? Now!”, before voicing more confident chants of “Stand up, stand up, stand up for journalism”.

Photographer Paul Herrmann was swiftly asked to leave the hotel foyer by a burly bouncer, but managed to take shots through the glass facade.

Addressing the throng via a megaphone, NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said the day was seeing the “biggest ever Europe-wide protest in favour of quality journalism”. He declared the union was “not prepared to stand by and let those who would line their own pockets” do so “at the expense of quality journalism”.

Many of the attendees then repaired to the Friends’ Meeting House in nearby Mount St for a rally and buffet. Topically enough, the Biblical quotation on a sign in the front garden, citing the Book of Proverbs, read: “Give us neither poverty nor wealth”.

A panel of speakers was compered by NUJ president and “Sunday Express” contributor Michelle Stanistreet, who said: “I think the demo went really well. I think we made quite a splash at the hotel.”

She introduced Manchester nurse Karen Reissman, who had been in trouble with her employers for speaking to the media about problems in the health service.

Following five months’ suspension for four charges of gross misconduct - which included behaviour as trivial as mentioning to colleagues that she might lose her job - Reissman had been informed that day that she had indeed been sacked.

An eloquent speaker, Reissman told the meeting: “It is often difficult to get press about mental health that isn’t about mad axemen or stereotypes.” She said reporting needed “context, rather than just regurgitating press releases”, and thanked journalists, such as the “Manchester Evening News” health correspondent, who reported mental-health issues properly.

She expressed a wish that reporters be given more time to investigate stories, and said journalists and health workers should not be “frightened of speaking out”.

The audience literally stood up for journalism, giving her a standing ovation.

“Manchester Evening News” NUJ mother of chapel Judy Gordon warned of the need to find a balance between traditional newspapers and electronic media. She said editors were “rushing headlong to destroy” old media “by saying newspapers are dying”, and called “Guardian” editor Alan Rusbridger “one of the worst” in championing websites above print.

She said: “There is room for all these forms of media. We are not afraid of them - we should embrace them. I told my editor 10-12 years ago we should have a presence on the web.”

Michelle Stanistreet added: “It is to the shame of the Society of Editors that they had MI5 [head Jonathan Evans] speaking to them, rather than Karen Reissman.”

She had told the society’s executive director Bob Satchwell that papers should not “treat information and news as nothing more than a commodity”. She said “quality, standards, ethics and integrity” should be defended but were “put at threat by profiteering by media companies”.

NUJ North of England regional organiser Chris Morley told the rally: “Today’s been an amazing day of international protests.” He added: “There’s a bit of hot news that I want to give you”, announcing that the “Press” newspaper in York had just reached an settlement about reporters’ involvement in video journalism.

The paper’s chapel had secured agreements on workloads and health and safety, he said. “I don’t think it was any coincidence that it was today.”

The meeting dispersed after about an hour, with newly-empowered journalists and supporters going back to their constituencies and preparing to resist excessive cutbacks.

Long-term awareness and credibility of the protest among the wider public remains to be seen – especially given the enduring misconception of journalists as being on an ethical par with estate agents.

But, within the industry, Stand Up for Journalism seemed to generate a sense of solidarity and encouragement which can hopefully be sustained and translated into practical action in the workplace.

Our next NUJ Bristol Branch Meeting is on Monday 12th November at 7pm. We are having the meeting at The Hub, 35 King Street, Bristol BS1 4DZ, which is two doors down from the Old Vic Theatre.

On the agenda will be motions to next year’s Annual Delegate Meeting (ADM) held in Belfast. What do we want our union to do, and how do we want to do it? ADM is the place where we can put forward our ideas, and vote on how our union can support and fight for us in times of change.

We have to submit any motions this month for inclusion in the ADM preliminary agenda. If you are concerned about job losses and budget cuts, low pay and freelance fees, new technology and working practices, or the way the NUJ is run, this is your opportunity to put forward motions for the Branch delegates to take to ADM and persuade the rest of the NUJ to vote in as union policy.

Also we can put in nominations for election to the NUJ’s National Executive Council and other ADM elected bodies including NUJ Extra, Pensioners Committee, Disabled Members Council, Equality Council, and the Journalist Magazine Editorial Advisory Board.

Other issues on the agenda: The NUJ’s Commission on Multi-Media Working draft report, Freelance Industrial Council, the Pensions Committee, Student Training Conference. And we will be hearing about what has been happening in our own Branch, the Chapels, and Freelance issues.

Please come along  - all members and prospective members are very welcome