Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom | ukwatch.net

Media Exploiting Young Workers

Ellie Keen — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:20:09 +0000

A survey of journalism student placements among various media outlets in the UK has found that over 50 per cent of them took place after the students had gained their qualifications. It has prompted the National Union of Journalists – which conducted the survey – to declare that “media companies are breaking the law by using bogus work experience placements to cover full-time jobs”.

The union says it is writing to companies warning them it will name organisations refusing to take action.

The survey also found that one-in-five people who did post-qualification work experience undertook a placement for three months or more, with some working for more than six months unpaid.

And that, of those people who had material published or broadcast, 78 per cent received no payment for their work.

More than half of the survey respondents felt that they didn’t get enough support or guidance during their placements.

Says NUJ General Secretary, Jeremy Dear: “This isn’t work experience, it’s exploitation. We’re all in favour of students getting a feel for life in a newsroom, but in many cases companies are just looking for free labour.

“Demanding that people put in months of work for free doesn’t help companies find the best journalists, it helps them find the ones that can afford to put in the hours without pay.

“Even those able to work for free are often getting poor quality experience. Some are given purely administrative tasks and get no editorial work at all, whilst others are expected to churn out professional material without getting any training from experienced staff.”

The survey is part of a major campaign by the union to tackle the unfair ways in which media businesses are using work experience placements to exploit newly qualified and student journalists.

Jeremy Dear added: “Organisations can’t go on treating newly qualified journalists as a lower class of worker to which they have no responsibilities. We will continue to campaign for employers and government to bring an end to this damaging exploitation.”

Only Slightly Kafkaesque

Tim Holmes — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:59:45 +0000

The court of appeal (30 July 2007) has modified reporting restrictions on a leaked memo containing details of a meeting in 2004 between Tony Blair and George Bush, but limits on reporting aspects of the case still remain.

As reported in the current issue of Free Press, O’Connor and Keogh were jailed in May for breaching the Official Secrets Act. David Keogh, a civil servant, had leaked a memo of a conversation between George Bush and Tony Blair, which he gave to Leo O’Connor, a parliamentary researcher.

During the trial, discussion of the contents of the memo were held in camera. After Keogh and O’Connor were sentenced, the judge, Mr Justice Aikens, ruled under the Contempt of Court Act that the press could not discuss the trial and the alleged contents of the memo in the same article – despite the fact that the memo had already been widely discussed in the press.

He also ruled that the media could not report a statement made by David Keogh in open court, which related to the contents of the document. The media can now however say that Keogh was said to have described the contents as ‘abhorrent’ and ‘illegal’ and that he believed the memo exposed Mr. Bush as a ‘madman’.

So although the Kafkaesque restrictions have been modified, the press remains gagged on how it reports aspects of the case.

Writing in the Guardian on 31 July, Richard Norton-Taylor said that concerns about the document already published in the media could be repeated.

But the appeal means that secrecy is maintained, protecting the UK government and the US administration from immense potential embarrassment. The prosecution even conceded during the trial that the leak did not constitute ‘actual damage’.

What is exposed is the farce of conducting an official secrets case. The contents of the memo remain in the public interest, but it remains in the government’s interest to keep them hidden. Despite the modifications, it’s still bad day for journalism and the right to report; and because of the complexity of the appeal court decision, no journalist can write freely about this case without risking contempt of court.

A Bad Day for Journalism

Tim Holmes — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:10:59 +0000

The court of appeal has ruled that reporting restrictions on a leaked memo containing details of a meeting in 2004 between Tony Blair and George Bush must remain in place, even while acknowledging that the initial grounds on which restrictions were based were incorrect.

Index on Censorship is claiming a limited victory in its joint appeal with the BBC, the Times, the Guardian and other media organisations, against the gagging orders on reporting the Leo O’Connor and David Keogh official secrets trial. As reported in the current issue of Free Press, O’Connor and Keogh were jailed in May for breaching the Official Secrets Act. David Keogh, a civil servant, had leaked a memo of a conversation between George Bush and Tony Blair, which he gave to Leo O’Connor, a parliamentary researcher.

According to Index, the Court of Appeal has upheld the ruling – albeit under a different section of the law – which bans the press from reporting the statement made by David Keogh in open court. It also ruled that the press cannot suggest that allegations about the contents of the memo, which appeared in the Daily Mirror in 2005, was discussed as evidence given in camera. Mr Justice Aikens has said that the reports were inaccurate.

So although the Kafkaesque restrictions have been modified, the press remains gagged on how it reports the case. No journalist can write freely about this case without risking contempt of court.

The appeal means that secrecy is maintained, protecting the UK government and the US administration from immense potential embarrassment. The prosecution even conceded during the trial that the leak did not constitute ‘actual damage’.

What is exposed is the farce of conducting an official secrets case. The contents of the memo remain in the public interest, but it remains in the government’s interest to keep them hidden.

A bad day for journalism and the right to report.

BBC "Ban" on Anti-war Song

Tim Holmes — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 00:38:20 +0000

Respect MP George Galloway has accused the BBC of banning the hit single ‘War’, which features a Tony Blair look-alike in the accompanying video, over fears that its pro-peace message will offend the government.

The record, by the band Ugly Rumours (Blair’s college band), is currently number six in the UK single chart and is expected to vie with ‘Take That’ for the top spot this Sunday. The song, and the video, have already featured in a regional BBC news programme and the single was the ‘and finally’ spot on last night’s (Thursday’s) ITV news. It has created enormous interest around the world and has been played and broadcast on TV stations from Damascus to Mexico City.

The BBC Radio One Newsbeat programme was due to record a package about the single today, but pulled out at the last minute, claiming that the record was ‘not newsworthy’. However, according to Respect, sources at the highest level within the BBC have privately confirmed that a banning order has been instituted. A spokesperson for the BBC confirmed to the CPBF that the decision was taken on ‘news worthy grounds’, and that two other stories had not been included.

The record joins others bizarrely banned by the BBC, such as ‘Something In The Air Tonight’ and ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’, both banned by the BBC during the first Gulf War. And in the second Gulf War a leaked memo by the corporation’s head of news, Richard Sambrooke, told staff that too many ‘extreme anti-war’ views were being aired.

In a statement to Respect, Tony Blair (the singer) said: ‘I may have taken the country to war on a pack of lies, but when I now try to push the message about world peace I’m gagged.

‘Where is Alastair when I need him?’

Respect MP George Galloway, who features on the video along with Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth demanded that the record was reinstated on the play list and that a statement be made by the director-general about why the BBC is censoring one of the country’s most popular songs.

‘This lickspittle BBC has a deplorable record of toadying to the government. Let’s not forget that only three people have lost their jobs over the war, two of them BBC employees,’ Galloway said, ‘and not one government minister has paid the price for sending us into this illegal and immoral war. I will be raising this in parliament and I am writing to the director-general, if he isn’t too busy visiting the chic restaurants in Manchester, demanding an explanation and the dropping of this banning order.’

Galloway added that he would asking the sacked BBC employee Andrew Gilligan – whose reports have been entirely vindicated by history – to take part in Ugly Rumour’s follow-up single and video.

Impartial Media?

Tim Holmes — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 18:30:22 +0000

A DETAILED investigation into how the media covered the 2003 war in Iraq has found that commentators who questioned the Coalition line were given little chance to make their point. The study – led by Dr Piers Robinson from The University of Manchester – also found that Sky News and ITV were most likely to report good news for the Coalition, Channel Four News the least likely with BBC News sitting somewhere in the middle.

The findings on BBC News go against accusations of bias levelled by politicians at the time including the then Home Secretary David Blunkett.

Among newspapers, the Sun gave the most explicit support to Coalition operations. But much newspaper coverage, even that of the anti-war Independent and Mirror, was supportive of the military campaign.

Dr Robinson, from the School of Social Sciences, led the team from Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool Universities which looked at all media briefings from the Coalition as well as news stories from the time.

He said: “Coverage of the war was narrated largely through the voice of the Coalition with much less attention given to other actors.

“This suggests that factors such as reliance upon elite sources, patriotism and news values rooted in episodic coverage continue to be important in shaping war-time coverage.

“Most reports did not discuss WMD at all but of those that did, 54% TV and 61% newspaper made substantial reference to the Weapons of Mass Destruction rationale for war in unproblematic terms, reinforcing the Coalition argument.

“Coverage overwhelmingly reflected the official line on the moral case for war: over 80% of TV and press stories mirrored the government position and less than 12% challenged it.

“Controversial issues such as civilian casualties and anti-war protest accounted for considerably less than 10% of news stories across both TV and newspapers.

He added: “The Coalition was responsible for over 50% of direct quotations across TV channels and 45% across newspapers, but quotes from the Iraqi regime never amounted to more than 6% of the total.

“And while Iraqi civilians received a substantial degree of media attention as subjects, they were less well represented via direct quotation with figures ranging from 5% for Channel Four to Skys 11%, averaging 8% across newspapers.

“Anti-war actors were responsible for 6% of all quotes, fewer in TV coverage, while humanitarian actors never achieved more than 4% across both TV and newspapers.”

However the study did unearth a degree of critical reporting of the Coalition. He said: “Most reports did not discuss humanitarian operations at all, but those that did were critical of Coalition attempts to manage humanitarian operations: 48% of TV coverage and 40% of press coverage being coded as critical.

“Only 20% of TV coverage and 25% of press coverage gave more upbeat assessments.

“There was also criticism on the subject of Coalition military casualties:

26% of TV coverage of these was coded as negative and only 5% of reports were reinforcing.

“And across TV and press, only around 10% of law and order stories were positive for the Coalition while approximately 30% were coded as negative.”

Read the full report

War on Palestine's Orphans

Tim Holmes — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:44:59 +0000

The Palestine Return Centre strongly objects to the grotesque representation of UK-based charities that are dedicated to helping needy Palestinian families in the Occupied Territories, in the latest BBC Panorama programme. “Faith, Hate and Charity” by John Ware has deliberately painted an ominous image of charities that for years have extended a helping hand to Palestinian orphans and widows.

“Ware’s programme has failed to live up to the most basic standards of journalistic integrity,” said Majed al-Zeer, the general director of PRC in London.

“Moreover, it’s difficult to view the programme and its harmful messages separate from the current Israeli onslaughts in Lebanon and the Occupied Territories; as if the intended message is to demonize Palestinians at a time where Israeli aggressions have resulted in uncountable deaths and unimaginable destruction,” he added.

Indeed, Mr. Ware’s message was hardly confined to that of “investigative journalism”, but exceeded it to an unwarranted attack on Islam, depicting it as a religion of hate whose primary messages are those of death and mayhem. Even more, the program, basing its allegation on highly questionable information apparently supplied by Israeli and American intelligence agencies made it crystal clear that funds generated to helping needy Palestinians were in fact being channelled to groups with insidious political and ideological objectives; not one single evidence, except of the personal ‘observations’ of Mr.Ware himself was offered to cement the programme’s shaky argument throughout.

Using bizarre production technique, and no solid evidence in attacking charities with a clean record – according to the British government’s own investigations – Mr. Ware’s final message was that of defamation, hoping, perhaps to deny many Palestinian families their only and last source of income.

Not only has the international community failed to provide any meaningful support to the Palestinian people, now some in the media wish to see an end to the few remaining channels of support. Who will benefit from such unwarranted campaign? we ask. Who will stand up to aid thousands of Palestinian families, the most vulnerable amongst them, the orphans, in their hour of need, if charity work is disrupted?

Expectedly, Mr.Ware hardly appreciates the urgency of such questions.

The Palestine Return Centre calls on the BBC not to allow such compromised journalism from finding its way to millions of viewers across the UK and elsewhere, especially as the viewers were hardly presented with alternative viewpoints for the sake of balance and journalistic integrity. PRC is of the opinion that at times of wars and conflicts, such hatful and ideologically tainted views can only further animosity towards Palestinians and those dedicated to helping them.

We fear that this was precisely the intentions of Mr. Ware’s programme.

ACTION REQUESTED: You are urged to contact the BBC, demanding that the corporation shuns, and for good, such mediocre journalism. Please express your deep concern that such programmes could discourage charitable work in Palestine, which will inevitably further aggravates the humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Territories as a result of Israel’s ongoing war and occupation.

Panorama on Interpal

Tim Holmes — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 23:39:13 +0000

The Chairman of Trustees of British charity Interpal has called the BBC Panorama programme Faith, hate and charity, transmitted on Sunday 30 July, a “wholly unbalanced and incomplete picture”. Speaking after viewing the programme, Ibrahim Hewitt called into question the BBC’s decision to broadcast this edition of the supposed flagship of the corporation’s current affairs output on the day that Israeli missiles killed 54 civilians most of them children in Qana and Israel was under increasing pressure over its military action in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

“We are extremely concerned that the Panorama production team appears to have gone out with a pre-set thesis and made a programme to suit a particular political agenda,” said Mr. Hewitt. “There is a severe imbalance inherent in the content that gives the lie to the claim that this is responsible investigative journalism. In giving viewers an incomplete narrative, they have been left with a distorted picture of the truth, without which it is impossible to reach balanced and reasoned conclusions.”

By way of illustration, Mr. Hewitt drew attention to the remarks of the spokesman from the US Treasury, interviewed by reporter John Ware, who expressed his purported “bewilderment” at the Charity Commission’s 2003 decision to unfreeze Interpal’s accounts in the wake of the Bush administration’s designation of Interpal as a “terrorist entity”. What the programme completely failed to point out, however, was that the Charity Commission did at the time give the US Treasury ample opportunity to provide evidence for its decision to brand Interpal as a “terrorist entity”, but the US authorities were unable and unwilling to do so.

Mr. Hewitt also pointed out that the Trustees did not decline to be interviewed for the programme, as alleged by John Ware. One of the Trustees gave many hours of his time to Mr. Ware’s questioning off-camera, but the BBC refused to agree to Interpal’s request that any such interview should be shown in full and live, or recorded as live, and not subject to what the Trustees feared would be selective and unbalanced editing. These fears arose out of a similarly unbalanced and controversial edition of Panorama concerning the Muslim Council of Britain, which was broadcast last year and was produced by the same BBC team, giving rise to fears throughout the Muslim community as to the unfair and unrepresentative manner in which these programmes are researched and reported. Last night’s broadcast demonstrated that these fears remain well-founded.

In closing, Mr. Hewitt said, “All charities working in war zones face attempts to drag them into the political arena, and Interpal is no exception. This is not the first time that we have been accused of unlawful activity and it will probably not be the last, and the allegations contained in the Panorama programme are nothing new. Only last year, the Trustees of Interpal won an out-of-court libel settlement from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, despite the Board of Deputies committing vast financial resources to the litigation and garnering support from Israel and the USA.

Accusations such as those contained in the Panorama programme should not divert us from the very real humanitarian needs of Palestinians and our entirely lawful efforts to alleviate their suffering. As we have made clear repeatedly, Interpal is politically neutral in the collection and distribution of funds as is required by Charity Commission guidelines governing the operation of charities in this country. In addition, as a charity committed to relieving hardship and suffering, we have never supported ‑ and will never support any terrorism or illegal activities. We will continue to cooperate fully with the UK authorities ‑ including the Charity Commission ‑ in any enquiries they may wish to raise with us and to grant them unfettered access to our records, as we have always done to-date.”

This matter is now in the hands of Interpal’s legal advisers, Carter-Ruck.

Success for British Justice

Tim Holmes — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 18:44:41 +0000

It was another resounding success for British justice. Mr Justice Eady granted a permanent injunction against David Shayler in the High Court today (Friday 28 July). In a breathtaking ruling, Eady stated that David was not entitled to present evidence or cross-examine his accusers (again), but instead issued a summary judgement based on assertions made by MI5.

This means that David can now only talk about a restricted range of disclosures specifically what appeared in the Mail on Sunday on 24 August 1997. This means that he cannot talk about a whole range of topics which are in the public domain and have already been cleared via the injunction and for the publication of my book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers.

Specifically, this means that, while I and the rest of the world can talk about state-sponsored false-flag terrorism, including the Gaddafi plot, David is banned. Very convenient when the 911 campaign is taking off.

The temporary injunction was issued in September 1997 on the explicit understanding that a full legal hearing would be needed before it could be made permanent. David has now been denied this.

Also, the injunction has been abused repeatedly, for example allowing the government to spin lies against him when he wished to reveal the wrongful conviction of two innocent Palestinians, Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh, for the bombing of the Israeli embassy in London in 1994. Also, when he tried to alert the government to murder and a major terrorist attack organised by MI6 officers in the Gaddafi plot, he did so legally via the injunction.

For his pains, he was the one thrown in prison in Paris in 1998.

The injunction has also repeatedly been used to intimidate journalists (one of whom was tried and convicted) and to stop the media investigating the criminality of MI5 and MI6. With this ruling, the judge has also abolished at one stroke the media’s right to publish whistleblowers’ testimony if they can argue it caused no damage to national security.

If any future whistleblower emerges from the intelligence services, and is injuncted, the media has lost this defence, enshrined by parliament in criminal law (Section 1.5 of the OSA). And why is an injunction necessary anyway? There already exists a criminal sanction under the Official Secret Act. The judge was kind enough to say that the injunction was for Davids own good and would stop him having to break the OSA again! We are through the looking glass.

Yours in wonderland. Annie

MI5 Whistleblower Back in Court

Tim Holmes — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 13:24:31 +0000

MI5 whistleblower David Shayler returned to the High Courts of Justice on Thursday, 27th July to fight another government attempt to win a permanent injunction against him.

The terms of the proposed gagging order will ensure that he can no longer speak out about the many crimes of MI5 and MI6 that he personally witnessed. It will ban him from speaking about a number of serious incidents, such as MI6’s illegal funding of Al Qaeda to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi of Libya in 1996 – information which has been in the public domain world-wide since 1998, and which MI5 itself has already cleared for publication.

Background

David Shayler worked for MI5s political and counter-terrorism departments in the 1990s. He was so disgusted by the crimes and incompetence of MI5 that he left and went on the record about the services failings. Ministers have consistently refused to take his sworn evidence. Instead, they have used the Official Secrets Act and a temporary injunction, issued in September 1997, to stop journalists from investigating his disclosures. This has led to a life on the run, exile in Paris, his voluntary return to the UK in 2000, a 2-year court case and two spells in prison.

The initial allegations: Files on Labour ministers, civil liberties activists, pop groups etc; illegal telephone taps; drinking culture in MI5 and MI6; the failed management culture in MI5.

Subsequent allegations made through legal channels:
The mistakes made by MI5 in the run-up to the Israeli Embassy bombing in London in 1994. MI5 then allowed two Palestinians to be wrongfully convicted of the attack.
The case of IRA bombs going off in Tyneside in 1993 because of failures on the part of MI5 and police Special Branch. MI5 then lied to government.

The Gaddafi plot – when two MI6 officers operated outside government control and paid an Islamic extremist group in Libya with links to Al Qaeda to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi; the attack went wrong and killed innocent civilians. A police investigation has established that Robin Cook’s assertions that this allegation is “pure fantasy” are at best misleading.
The mistakes that led to the Bishopsgate attack in London in 1993.

A temporary injunction was granted in September 1997 against David and The Mail on Sunday newspaper. The action was dropped against the newspaper, but only stayed against David. The proposed permanent injunction will ban David from discussing ever again any but the initial disclosures, even though the subsequent disclosures were cleared by MI5 for the publication last year of my book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers.

In a world where our country is taken into an illegal war on flawed evidence, where people in the UK can be imprisoned without trial on the word of the intelligence services, and where the threat of terrorist attack is a daily fear, we need to know that those responsible for Britains security are really doing all they can to protect us.

Whistleblowers should be protected not prosecuted.