A mighty call for justice for Pearl and O’Hagan

Posted by Press Gazette on 27 September 2007 at 09:00
Tags: Daniel Pearl, Martin O’Hagan

The release of Hollywood film A Mighty Heart this week drew the world’s attention again to the kidnap and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002. This week Press Gazette reports how one of Pearl’s former colleagues has launched a new online project – Pearlpedia – aimed at finding his killers.

Shortly before Pearl’s execution by Islamic fundamentalists, British journalism had its own martyr when Sunday World journalist Martin O’Hagan was gunned down by Loyalist paramilitaries, six years ago this week.

O’Hagan’s colleagues don’t need to start their own version of The Pearl Project to find his killers – they already know the names of the eight men they believe were the hit squad, and a year ago they gave the names to Press Gazette. It remains their firm belief that the eight have never been charged because some were police or army informants.

Now there appears to be some progress at last in the campaign for justice in the O’Hagan case. The Northern Ireland police ombudsman is reviewing the original investigation into his killing and a new police review team is to look at unsolved terrorist murders between 1998 and 2004.

O’Hagan’s was more than just another senseless killing among the thousands who died during The Troubles – he was the only journalist in the entire history of the conflict murdered by paramilitaries for doing his job.

If the killers of a journalist have impunity then the ramifications go far beyond one tragic death – they threaten the press freedom which is the cornerstone of a democratic society.

Too many hours for too many stories

Posted by Press Gazette on 13 September 2007 at 08:00
Tags: Press Gazette Leaders

Regional press publisher Archant deserves praise for reviewing its work practices after being criticised by an employment tribunal.

Reporter Jane Denny had her case for unfair dimissal thrown out. But the tribunal called on management at her paper, the Norwich Evening News, “to look urgently at their procedures for recording hours of work and for treating their employees properly and sensibly with regard to the hours that are put in”.

It added: “There appears to be a slightly macho ethic among some journalists that you work very long hours without any particular reward because that is the nature of the job and, to use a corny expression, ‘if you can’t stand the heat, keep out of the kitchen’.”

Many regional daily newspaper journalists will tell horror stories of typical workings days which can stretch from 8am to 6pm and beyond – meaning many journalists habitually work 10 or more hours unpaid overtime a week.

No self-respecting journalist will begrudge working long hours when a big story breaks – it’s that sort of buzz which keeps many in the job. But habitual long hours caused by too few journalists being employed to write too many stories is bad news for everyone.

And it is ultimately self defeating because, without the space to be creative and to generate off-diary stories, the quality of the publication will ultimately suffer.

Cutting reporters off from the world they are supposed to be covering by keeping them in the office churning out copy is not the way to create a paper which reflects the community that it serves.

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Charity begins in the boardroom

Posted by Press Gazette on 20 August 2007 at 15:48
Tags: Guardian Media Group, Northern & Shell, Pearson, Trinity Mirror

For all the challenges currently facing the media – the work of journalists still underpins an industry which is worth billions of pounds every year.

In the regional press, profit margins of 20 to 30 per cent are still the norm, as is the case for many B2B publishers.

National newspapers typically earn less cash for their owners, but the likes of Express Newspapers has delivered up to £1m a week to its owner in recent years.

The UK's biggest newspaper publisher, Trinity Mirror, made an operating profit of £207m in 2006 on turnover of £1,032m and Guardian Media Group has just announced full-year profits of £105.2m on turnover of £700.3m.

In 2006 Trinity Mirror made charitable donations of £68,000. Why, despite being approached by the Journalists' Charity, was none earmarked for its care home? The GMG annual report reveals that it made £503,731 of charitable donations in 2006 – yet again, despite being approached, it made no donation to the Journalists' Charity. As Press Gazette went to print last week, GMG told us it would be making a donation. Bravo.

News organisations expect a lot from their staff – and in the main, journalists deliver admirably. They work long hours above and beyond their contracts – sometimes to the extent that they make themselves ill – often because they are motivated by helping others. They know what they write matters because it can make a difference to people's lives.

The Journalists' Charity provides financial aid for thousands of journalists no longer able to help themselves – and cares full-time for many, and their dependents, through its fabulous new nursing home. But the charity's work could be undermined if cash is not found to cover a £3m shortfall in the cost of building Pickering House.

Hopefully it has only been an oversight that so many of the big news organisations have yet to fulfil their responsibilities.

Thought crime? We could all be guilty

Posted by Press Gazette on 10 August 2007 at 10:00
Tags: Journalism, Journalists, Law, Police and Criminal Evidence Act

Journalists working in the Thames Valley Police area fondly recall the days when they could phone up police officers and get stories, put out witness appeals, report crimes.

Nowadays they say they are effectively banned from talking to officers directly and must rely on a sparsely populated website – which is open to the public anyway – for the latest information.

They say the situation has gone from being one where journalists felt they were on the same team as police to one where police see journalists as the enemy.

The treatment of Sally Murrer, the 48-year-old mother of three and part-time local paper reporter arrested in May, suggests police relations with the media may have sunk to a new low. And her treatment has the potential to sour relations not just in Milton Keynes but nationwide.

Her contention is that she that all she has done is what thousands of local paper journalists do every day – talked to police officers and written stories.

She says she has been told that for the offence she has been accused of – aiding and abetting misconduct in a public office – it is in enough for her to have merely been told sensitive information without even writing a story.

For journalists to be held accountable for what they are told – even if they do not print a word of it – would be like a creating a new "thought crime" which would be almost impossible to avoid committing.

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Why an online local news service is vital

Posted by Press Gazette on 30 July 2007 at 09:30
Tags: Journalism, ThisIsGloucestershire

Last week’s flooding disaster across parts of the UK illustrates at once the challenge and the opportunity for local newspapers.

The challenge is how a weekly – or even a daily newspaper – can possibly compete with rolling news outlets on such a rapidly changing story.

The answer, of course, is via their websites – and no-one else is better placed to do so.

No other news organisations have the sheer manpower at a local level to tell communities what is going on. TV news will provide an overview of events – but at a macro level. Local radio is closer to home, but listeners still face frustrating minutes waiting for an update that is relevant to their area.

Only local newspaper websites can provide the sheer depth of detail, available instantly – and with a story like this, minutes could prove vital.

Readers need to find out instantly whether their house is at risk of flooding – and if a local paper can’t do that, it will not be long before a commercial competitor does so. (The Environment Agency is useful up to a point – but still general and slow compared to what a local paper can do).

At the Gloucester Citizen and Echo the papers’ joint website ThisIsGloucestershire has been providing updates every 15 minutes up until midnight. Often they are just snippets of information – not like news stories at all – revealing the location of drinking water across the county, which roads are closed and which shops have supplies of food and drink.

The Gloucester experience shows that local papers have little choice but to provide as comprehensive a news service as they can online.

In the short term, this coverage should at least market the paper to a new audience. In the long term, the commercial teams must start capitalising on web readers.

Coroner’s Bill would make unexplained deaths a mystery

Posted by Press Gazette on 19 July 2007 at 09:00
Tags: Journalism, Law

Reporting on coroner’s courts can be one of the least enjoyable parts of a reporter’s job – involving a day spent hearing the often harrowing details of suicides, drug overdoses and tragic accidental deaths.

But such work can be among the most rewarding and worthwhile that a journalist does.

Coroners regularly use their findings to issue public warnings on everything from the dangers of drugs to the risks associated with cooking when drunk (a common cause of fatal fires).

The draft Coroner’s Bill could give coroners the power to exclude the press at will from hearings. If this went ahead, journalists would lose a valuable source of stories. But the loss to society would be far greater.

Without names and faces to stories, the pronouncements of coroners on matters of public safety would have vastly diminished news value. And with journalists routinely excluded, coroner’s courts could swiftly become as irrelevant as Family Court hearings.

If the public has no right to know about unexplained deaths, what is to stop a future government refusing to release details about those arrested by police?

It is another small step on the road to Britain becoming a secret state, where people are allowed to just disappear – rendered invisible to the inquiring eyes of the press.

The draft Coroners Bill is currently out to public consultation. With a new Secretary of State for Justice in Jack Straw and a new PM in Gordon Brown, there is every chance that these regressive proposals will be thrown out if enough journalists protest.

The consultation deadline is 8 September. Details on how to respond to the consultation are available on a Government web site.

Media MPs’ move could end hounding

Posted by Press Gazette on 12 July 2007 at 09:00
Tags: PCC

Journalists can breathe a sigh of relief this week after the influential Commons Media Select committee backed self-regulation – despite the furore earlier this year over the Clive Goodman affair and the hounding of Kate Middleton.

It means that Gordon Brown is less likely to back any further statutory regulation of the press – beyond the already strict privacy, contempt of court and libel laws.

Whatever the shortcomings of the Press Complaints Commission, freedom of the press must be better served if journalists can regulate themselves, rather than having to contend with yet more legal constrictions.

MPs also called for the Editors’ Code to be included in the contracts of all journalists – underlining the fact that it is a rule book not just for editors to follow but for reporters, subs, photographers and all other editorial staff working in print.

Although it is not up to MPs to tell companies how to phrase their employment contracts – that would defeat the whole point of self-regulation – their recommendation should be noted.

The contractual inclusion of the Editors’ Code into all journalists contracts, although already widespread is not yet universal. Such inclusion, in effect, amounts to a sort of “conscience clause”, giving individuals the ultimate back-up if they feel they are being asked to behave unethically.

All journalists should know the code backwards and feel free to refer to it if they fear they are being urged professionally to break it. No employment tribunal in the land would uphold the dismissal of a journalist for following their own professional code of conduct.

Regional journalists deserve a fair deal

Posted by Press Gazette on 5 July 2007 at 10:00
Tags: Gannett, Newsquest, regional

The regional press is big business. Let no-one have any doubt about this just because, occasionally, some parts of it look penny-pinching and mean, most notably to its journalists.

Every year advertisers spend more than £3bn and readers many millions more. The regional press is six times larger than the radio industry in the UK and its readership is growing.

Yes, growing.

This according to The Newspaper Society which represents its interests.

Last Friday we were celebrating the quality of regional journalism, the main asset of the regional press. At the same time, according to the NUJ, the second largest regional newspaper company in the UK sent out letters to its 9,000 pension fund members admitting a £65m shortfall in their pension fund.

Great timing. This same company has been growing profits, announcing growth in various revenue sectors and boasting of its superior performance by contrast with its American owner.

So why has Newsquest and its parent company Gannett suddenly discovered a £65m shortfall?

What follows is a period of consultation over how to run the scheme better. No doubt this will involve those regional journalists who are already among the worst paid in the industry being invited to pay out more.

An independent investigation into this sorry affair is the least they should expect.

After 114 days, Alan Johnston is a free man

Posted by Press Gazette on 4 July 2007 at 10:55
Tags: Alan Johnston, BBC

Some of the first words spoken by freed journalist Alan Johnston were heartfelt thanks to journalists and listeners around the world who campaigned for his release.

The moment that Johnston, his family and colleagues had hoped for during his 114-day captivity finally came in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Johnston, who listened to the World Service on a radio he was given in the second week of his captivity, said he was aware of the support he received during the series of interviews. He said he was aware of the protests held in cities including Beijing and Moscow as well as the Monday vigils to mark his kidnap on 12 March by the Army of Islam on his way home from work in Gaza City.

Speaking by telephone to BBC News 24 from the home of sacked Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya, Johnston said that he was “hugely grateful to all the people, an amazing number of people, that worked on the Palestinian side, the British Government, the BBC from top to bottom, and the huge amount of support from BBC listeners”.

We must not allow death of local government news

Posted by Press Gazette on 28 June 2007 at 09:00
Tags: Journalism, councils, local

It was 18th-century parliamentarian Edmund Burke who was said to have coined the term “fourth estate”.

Describing the first estate as the Lords Temporal, the second as the Lords Spiritual and the third as members of the House of Commons, he pointed across at the parliamentary press gallery and is said to have commented: “Yonder sits the fourth estate, and they are more important than them all.”

But away from the hurly burly of Westminster politics, it is in council debating chambers where the British press today plays arguably its most essential role as one of the pillars of civic society.

It is a pillar which is in danger of crumbling due to tightening resources. From parish-hall debates on how to control the problems of dog mess on playing fields (which can be, as we know, a major health risk) to city council arguments about major multibillion-pound developments – journalists, predominately from the printed press, are the public’s eyes and ears. They are the only way for the public – beyond the few enthusiasts who attend meetings – to engage in the democratic debate.

Many journalists will remember attending these meetings in the early days of their career and being somewhat awed by the realisation that their shorthand scribblings were the only way that their community could know what a multimillion-pound local authority was up to with their money.

Local government reporting is among the most worthwhile work that any journalist will do in their career. And it will be a shame for journalism, but a much greater shame for society as a whole, if detailed and conscientious reporting of local government is allowed to perish.