Regulator fails..again

On the train on the way back from Scotland having caught the sleeper up overnight for an early morning meeting with senior Johnston Press management.

Like all newspaper groups Johnston are axing jobs, leaving vacancies unfilled and cutting resources, leading to unmanageable workloads, stress and falling morale.

With NUJ members across the group considering industrial action and with an ongoing dispute in Sheffield, NUJ Scottish Organiser Paul Holleran and I sought to convey the enormous concern, fear and in some cases anger there is at the current situation. We had a very constructive meeting and I'm hopeful something more positive can come from it. I'll be reporting back to officials and reps shortly.

That meeting, like so many at the moment, focused a lot on the stress facing journalists in under-resourced newsrooms. That’s why this week the NUJ has launched its Stressed Out campaign – making workloads and stress workplace issues, central to the collective action of the union. We’ve already had a really positive response to that.

The response to the film we produced to provide evidence of the harassment faced by photographers and camera crew has also been really positive. We’ve had more than 3600 hits on it so far – and as a result we’ve been asked to take part in a major media and civil liberties event later this year.

Yesterday was dominated by the Ofcom report. In an era of failing regulation it is little wonder Ofcom have given in to ITV’s shareholders so easily. Stewart Purvis claims the union have got it wrong by attacking Ofcom when they are protecting the future of regional news. But he misses the point – big style.

Local news is what people want not just regional. With mega regions, such as the one stretching from Penzance to Tewkesbury, it is madness to think you will maintain the penetration achieved at the moment by programmes which are much more distinctive.

In the next few years wait to hear ITV claim no-one watches these shows therefore they should be allowed to ditch further public service broadcasting commitments. It’s a familiar cry from ITV’s shareholders and one which Ofcom accepts time and time again. It’s called light-touch regulation.

Although it didn’t make all the headlines the equally damaging aspect of Ofcom’s report is their effective support for top-slicing the licence fee – a subsidy from the public purse for commercial broadcasting.

Our comments on the issue were picked up by The Guardian, BBC News and others and we got good coverage on TV and radio.

Yesterday was also the union’s Finance Committee meeting at which I gave updates on the union’s building share project, the staff pension scheme, staffing changes, pay negotiations and budget reports. It is one of the strange aspects of my job – I am both campaigner, spokesperson, organiser and trade union activist as well as chief executive of the union. I also did some internal interviews for vacant posts in our administration and took part in a meeting on pensions.

Other things I’ve been up to in the past few days – a meeting with our FoC at Telegraph newspapers, a meeting with BBC Director General Mark Thompson and with Wilson Borja, the Colombian Congressman, who along with a number of journalists is part of a move by the regime to criminalise any opposition in the country.

I also tried to get a bit of culture in by visiting the excellent Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum and by going to see Spurs play Wisla Krakow in the UEFA Cup - that wasn't quite so cultured.

Now it’s back to the office to try and clear emails and correspondence and a whirlwind set of internal meetings before I head off on holiday tomorrow.

The blog will also be on holiday – It’ll be back up and running from 13 October. In the meantime all the news of NUJ campaigns will be available at www.nuj.org.uk

Picture this

It's a veritable picture gallery today.

First up there's a picture from the meeting with the Ukrainian ambassador - which was slightly depressing and not fruitful at all. He couldn't update us at all about the progress of the investigations in to the murder of Gyorgy Gongadze.
I did an interview with the BBC's Ukrainian service after the meeting in which I said that unless we started to get some answers over the coming months to key questions we have raised, next year we would raise the profile and publicity around the failure of the Ukraine authorities to bring the instigators to justice.
Maybe the ambassador's mind was elsewhere. When I got home last night I read the Ukrainian government had finally collapsed!

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - 16.09.08. Jeremy Dear, General Secretary of the
National Union of Journalists leads a delegation for a meeting at the
Ukraine Embassy on the anniversary of the murder of journalist Gyorgy
Gongadze London, England on Tuesday 16th September 2008. The headless
body of Gongadze was found in a ditch outside Kiev in 2000. Despite the
arrest of three people in connection with the killing press freedom
campaigns hold the view that the people who ordered the killing have
evaded justice. (Photos by Marc Vallée/marcvallee.co.uk) (c) Marc
Vallée, 2008.

Next up is from the Public Service not Private Profit Rally I spoke at in Nottingham last night. It was far more inspiring and a chance to get a wider group of trade unionists to understand the importance of defending public service broadcasting - and in the local context backing our fight to save jobs at Central. Alan Simpson MP spoke really well about the current economic crisis and Mark Serwotka, the PCS General Secretary, as ever, gave an excellent analysis of the government's privatisation obsession and in particular the new workfare proposals.

(c)Pete Jenkins

One meeting I forgot to mention on yesterday's blog was an informal get-together of leading legal and media press freedom campaigners to discuss ways to tackle the crackdown on independent journalism through the use of the terrorism laws in light of the Shiv Malik judgement.There's certainly some food for thought from that for our meeting with Tony McNulty.

Pressure builds as papers and broadcasting feel the heat

Heading off to Nottingham today to speak at a Public Service Not Private Profit rally with Mark Serwotka from the PCS and John McDonnell MP. I'll be highlighting our concerns over the future of public service broadcasting at ITV as well as the threat to the BBC posed by top-slicing. Ofcom's report on the issues is due out next week and so it is important we alert as many people as possible, not just in the industry, to the potential devastation facing local and regional news.

Before that I'll be at the Ukraine embassy to mark the anniversary of the murder of journalist Gyorgy Gongadze. Whilst three people have been arrested in connection with the killing the suspicion is that the people behind the murder - believed to go to the highest levels of government - have evaded justice. We will be keeping the pressure up.

Yesterday morning I met with our officials covering Johnston Press to catch up on the latest situation across the group and later on drafted a 4-page letter to Tim Bowdler setting out our concerns at the decisions being made by senior management which we believe are not only leading to short-term job cuts but also jeopardising the long term future of the titles.

It is clear there is likely to be industrial action at several centres following on from the dispute at Sheffield as members have lost confidence in management and fear for jobs and the future of some titles - what's more they believe much of the investment in new media is being wasted because there are just not enough staff to ensure they are producing quality web content.

On Saturday I attended part of our Newsquest Group Chapel to plan a group-wide campaign over stress and workloads which will be launched in the next couple of weeks. I have no doubt the results will show urgent action is needed to tackle the pressures being heaped on journalists at regional and local titles.

And finally...a plug. I know the cheek of it. Now the blog's being used to give free publicity to events. But this one's a good one. The TUC are celebrating 10 years of the Organising Academy with an event on October 14 featuring Brendan Barber and Paul Mason from Newsnight as well as other speakers aimed at discussing how to build stronger unions. Surely we're all up for that...see you there!

Brighton ruck

The blog's been taking a well-earned sabbatical (i haven't - i've just been handling issues on pensions, staffing and buildings which make dull copy) - but now it's back with a vengeance. Hello, from cloudy Brighton.

I'm just leaving this year's TUC Congress where apart from the delights of dinner with the Prime Minister (at which we got jokes and a lecture as to why we have to show restraint and not ask for more pay) and a speech by Alastair Darling (at which we got the same lecture but no jokes) the NUJ delegation worked hard to raise the issues faced by members - with motions passed on civil liberties and journalism, equality, redundancy laws, ownership of the media and public service broadcasting.

I moved our composite motion on civil liberties and launched a film of recent evidence of the police clampdown on independent journalism and wrote an article for New Statesman from Congress.

I also chaired the conference's biggest fringe meeting with the head of the Colombian CUT (equivalent of the TUC) and spoke at the NO2ID rally highlighting the concerns of journalists and at the launch of the Trade Union Co-ordinating Group, a new Parliamentary Group bringing together unions such as PCS, FBU, RMT to co-ordinate our work across a range of issues. The meeting was lively, well-attended and the group is an important new development.

So what else has been going on?
Last night I hosted a telephone conference of Johnston Press reps - we both expressed our solidarity with members in Sheffield who had taken industrial action earlier in the day and pulled together our plans for co-ordinating our action across the group over the coming weeks.

We've spent time with lawyers too - not least because of the Telegraph's threat to injunct us and it looks like we'll be spending time with Express members as Richard Desmond reacts to the rising price of large cigars by threatening to sack dozens of his journalists. Roy Greenslade describes Des as the "worst newspaper owner in the last 60 years" - and there's some stiff competition.

Michelle Stanistreet took up her post as Deputy General Secretary on Monday - so now I can share the blame again for everything that goes wrong (but take the credit for everything good we do - only joking!)

Having been away at TUC for three days I now have 316 emails to answer. Well that's today taken care of...