Why are journalists so awful? A retired hack speaks out

The text of a talk I delivered to Devises Labour Party on Thursday 29 October 2020

Good evening everyone, on what has been a tumultuous day for the Labour Party – the day on which the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published its investigation into Antisemitism in the Labour Party – on whichever side of the fence you are standing, and pretty uncomfortable if you are sitting on in. 

Let me begin with a few words of explanation. I am not member of the Labour Party or any other political party. I have never felt it appropriate to belong to a political party if I am to function properly as an independent journalist. In my younger days as a community worker in London’s East End I did stand with other tenants activists as a East London People’s Alliance (ELPA)candidate for Tower Hamlets Council. We came second to the Labour Party who immediately sought to recruit us! 

However I have worked as a press officer in local, national and European elections under both Neil Kinnock and John Smith, and I have worked in parliament with Clive Soley and Anne Clwyd and as a parliamentary advisor with the media unions. 

I was founder editor of the East End News which gave people like George Alagiah his first break in journalism, and led to the creation of The Voice newspaper. I also worked for the Greater London Enterprise Board set up by Ken Livingstone and moved to Bristol when made redundant by Margaret Thatcher. I have mostly worked as freelance since then and set up PressWise – now The MediaWise Trust – to help people who are victims of media abuse, way back in 1993. I also taught journalism at the University of the West of England (UWE) for 10 years, and I am a Life Member of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ). I serve on its Ethics Council.

The short answer to the title of my talk tonight – Why are journalists so awful? – is, of course, we are not. Most of us anyway.

There are estimated to be in excess of 73,000 people functioning as journalists in the UK at present; a figure which has increased considerably in recent years. That may seem counter-intuitive at a time when we have seen massive reductions in staff at local and national newspapers and the loss of many titles. But there are magazines, radio, TV, and online outlets that require staff and freelances, and the public relations and publishing industries also employ professional wordsmiths.  Unfortunately little more than a third of those working as journalists belong to the NUJ and agree to abide by its Code of Conduct.

You may be interested to know that the first body of journalists to develop an ethical code was the Institute of Journalists (IoJ) founded towards the end of the 19th century. The idea was to differentiate ‘gentlemen journalists’ working for respectable journals from those engaged in the yellow press, the ‘penny dreadfuls’ that focused on crime, sex and scandals. The Institute, which included editors and proprietors as well as ordinary pressmen – they were all men – won a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria for their efforts. But the working stiffs who knew they did not share the same interests as their bosses, broke away to form an industrial union, the NUJ, in 1907. 

Ideological discrepancies between the two organisations became more pronounced in the aftermath of Stanley Baldwin’s astonishing attack on press barons, the good Lords Beaverbrook and Rothermere in 1931.

“The newspapers attacking me are not newspapers in the ordinary sense,” this Conservative Prime Minister declared. “They are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes of the two men. What are their methods? Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker’s meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context… What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

Doesn’t that sound familiar? 

The IoJ’s response was to demand a national register of accredited journalists who could be struck off and banned from the profession if they broke its rules,

The NUJ’s response was quite different. Anyone could be a journalist once they learned the tools of the trade. All they had to do was to sign up to a Code of Ethical Conduct and be subject to discipline by their peers  for bringing their union into disrepute. That Code has been updated over the years but remains a document each member must sign up to. Today’s version seeks to define what a journalist should be.

There is a sinister and significant irony in what happened when NUJ discipline was applied to a Sun journalist who accused colleagues of treason during the Falklands or Malvinas war in the 1980s. In a front page editorial he objected to Guardian and BBC journalists giving space to Argentinian points of view as well the British government’s statements, and not referring to the armed force as ‘our boys’. He was found have breached union rules and was fined, with expulsion the ultimate sanction if he did not pay up. In those days we had closed shops on the Fleet Street nationals so that meant he could lose his job. Instead editors and proprietors took his side and made it a press freedom issue. They accused the NUJ are smothering freedom of expression. And his Fleet Street colleague threatened to withhold their union subscriptions which could have bankrupted the union. 

Since then the Ethics Council has had to play a more discreet educational role when dealing with complaints, which can no longer come from members of the public. At the time local branches were asked to mediate between complainants and journalists alleged to have offended against the Code.

So now we are somewhat hidebound. Especially as editors have never recognised the NUJ Code of Conduct, and refuse to allow a Conscience Clause in contracts of employment. Instead they require journalists to comply with the Editors’ Code of Practice policed by the Independent Press Standards Organisation which, like its predecessor the Press Complaints Commission, is funded by the industry itself. The Editors’ Code is not a bad document in itself but it is designed to protect papers from prosecution, and the editors are the first port of call for complaints. 

So does all this answer our opening question?  In a manner of speaking, it does. The ‘awful’ journalists that incur your wrath are usually those most visible at the top end of the trade. 

But let me ask you a question. Who are the people who win promotion in your place of work? Is it always the most conscientious workers? And who are your managers? Do they usually come for the ranks or are they imposed from above?

The same is generally true in journalism.  You probably have specific journalists and columnists whom you despise. But for all the ‘stars’ there are thousands of other unsung heroes and heroines doggedly digging out stories to help explain how the world works.  They are the ones most likely to be NUJ members.

Always remember that most of the best known journalists at national level are a very small proportion of the journalistic population. Many will have risen through the ranks but seldom will they have rocked the boat.

Have you ever asked your pet hates if they are NUJ members? Have you ever challenged their adherence to the NUJ Code or the Editors’ Code? 

It makes headlines when someone like Samira Ahmed takes her bosses to a tribunal for equal pay or Naga Manchetty defends herself against criticism. It was a freelance on the Daily Express persuaded her colleagues to take their boss,  Richard Desmond, to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) over his campaigns against asylum-seekers and Gypsies to boost sales. It was one of the reasons why Michele Stanistreet was later elected as General Secretary of the NUJ.

Unfortunately many of those who opt for journalism as a career these days have been immersed in the showbiz gossip, scandal and celebrity that the main news outlets serve up to win readers and advertisers in what has become an increasingly competitive, for which read combative, market place. Many of the conglomerates that own our media have many other business interests which help keep them afloat so they can wield influence in the public sphere. 

In the desperate contest for readers – and thus for advertisers – the concept of click bait has corrupted the basic trade of news gathering and dissemination. Think of the front-pages as marketing tools, as much for the vested interests of their owners as for the content produced by their employees.

What they don’t want are employees who challenge their hegemony. Many of those taking journalism courses these days are white, middle-class youngsters able to survive what are usually unpaid internships, sustained by the bank of mum and dad. It is their way in, and they know that rocking the boat is no way to secure a permanent contact, even if permanent contracts are rarely permanent for long. The NUJ’s George Viner Memorial Fund and the industry’s Journalism Diversity Fund provide a few ways into the trade for members of minority communities.

Journalism is not all ephemera, however. Daily media workers are jailed, threatened, injured and killed throughout the world. In 2019 alone the Committee to Protect Journalists enumerated 184 unsolved murders of journalists in the top 12 countries of its Global Impunity Lists. In many parts of the world, journalism has always been a risky job. And it is becoming more dangerous by the day when demagogues like Trump insist on referring to the Fourth Estate as ‘enemies of the people’, and so many politicians deride legitimate criticism as ‘fake news’. And look what is happening to Julian Assange for revealing the war crimes of the most powerful nation in the world. 

But for all the high flyers there are literally thousands now working in the alternative media – on such titles as BylineTimes, The Bristol Cable, New Internationalist, Delayed Gratification or Forbidden Stories which takes up the investigations left unfinished by those who have been killed for their pains.

At the hyperlocal level, initiatives like the monthly Voice network around Bristol, has have allowed individual journalists to sustain their families after being made redundant by the various owners off the Bristol Evening Post and the Western Daily Press.

We are not all awful, and few of us have even been thanked for our efforts to explain the world, hold the powerful account, or record the achievements and anniversaries of members of our different communities. Have you ever congratulated a journalist on a job well done?

Get to know us and you will find we are very much like you, and we are interested in what you have to say. We are not public relations agencies, but if we can see a story which will be of benefit to our readers we are more likely to take it up than to respond to being harangued for our faults.

I have never forgotten the celebrated Irish journalist Nell McCafferty, addressing an event on censorship I was speaking at in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. “Hug a journalist’ she advised an astonished audience. I repeat that tonight. Most of us are friends, not enemies.