Guest comment: After 97 years in print, Brentwood Gazette is being sacrificed...
The Brentood Gazette is one of more than 100 titles taken over by Trinity Mirror in November 2015 after its buyout of Local World group. Following cutbacks, reporters now focus on writing for online –...
View ArticleFrom gollies to Gazza: Journalists could be next when causing offense appears...
It can now only be a matter of time before a journalist in the UK gets a criminal conviction for writing something deemed offensive. (If I was a betting man my money would be on Rod Liddle in The...
View ArticleHow Brexit will impact media law part three: The Data Protection Act
In this latest article about the possible effect of Brexit on media law, I will look at data protection. In previous articles, I have examined message boards and copyright. Most journalists rarely...
View ArticleSky News presenter Colin Brazier on why the refugee crisis has been biggest...
The migrant crisis. Has Europe seen a more important story since the fall of the Berlin Wall? Its repercussions are multi-dimensional. Politicians have been tested, in the case of Angela Merkel,...
View ArticleIn the race to demonise Mazher Mahmood, don't forget his 'victims' were often...
Speaking to Press Gazette in 2005, after the News of the World was named British Press Awards newspaper of the year, editor Andy Coulson used the example of a Mazher Mahmood sting to explain why he was...
View ArticleMazher Mahmood, the baby for sale and his use of stings to target...
In a comment piece earlier this week I noted that former News of the World editor Andy Coulson once boasted to Press Gazette that a Mazher Mahmood sting had saved the life of a child who was offered...
View ArticleWhy does media obsession with beauty infect news values?
The other day I was interrupted in what I was doing by a beautiful woman. I took her home, and, as I write these words three weeks later, she stares back at me still, her perfect mouth forming a smile,...
View ArticleI wish they could be like David Watts: A lament for today's lazy, badly...
Last week I took another trip to St Bride’s to honour an old colleague and friend. I had known David Watts and we had taken the piss out of each other for 20 years or more, between and during our...
View ArticleRoyal Charter-backed press regulation differs little from IPSO - but the...
When it comes to their main complaints-handling functions there is a barely a cigarette paper’s worth of difference between rival press regulators Impress and IPSO. At present they both follow exactly...
View ArticleAnthony France's Operation Elveden acquittal ends a shameful episode in the...
The successful appeal of Sun reporter Anthony France means that of 34 journalists arrested and/or charged under the Met Police’s Operation Elveden no convictions at trial stand. For France is is the...
View ArticleImpress vs IPSO: A chasm, not a cigarette paper
In his blog this week the editor of the Press Gazette argued that there was “barely a cigarette paper’s worth of difference” between would-be press regulators IPSO and Impress. If only. In truth, there...
View ArticleThe strange thing about journalists: 'If I hear of an earthquake, I feel sad....
There is a piece of research I have been keeping from you in the hope that, if I sat on it long enough, it might eventually fade from my mind altogether and you would be spared its embarrassing truths....
View ArticleThe British Journalism Awards
A number of the British Journalism Awards judges felt uncomfortable about the fact that Impress were a sponsor of the event. Although the judging process is entirely independent of any sponsorship,...
View ArticleMax Mosley says he could fund Royal Charter-backed press regulator Impress...
Royal Charter-backed press regulator Impress is almost entirely funded by £3.8m from the family charity of press reform campaign Max Mosley. Newspaper publishers have voiced strong opposition to...
View ArticleJournalists should be cautious over picking 'low hanging fruit' science...
Last week The Times was forced to publish an apology for a set of articles and a leader about a group of scientists and their alleged financial links to the tobacco industry. “Tobacco giants fund...
View ArticleSeeking an advertising boycott of newspapers you disagree with is an...
The Stop Funding Hate campaign strikes me as an illiberal way to set about achieving the liberal objective of less negative press coverage around immigration. What right do a few hundred, or a few...
View ArticleJournalists urged to resist proposed laws which threaten sources and...
As journalists we enjoy no professional privileges. The application of graft and guile are all that our work requires. Our relationship with the public, however, rests on two vital foundations – that...
View ArticleImpress director: We are no more a state regulator than a company which...
When John Milton defended press freedom, he did so because he thought that difficult and dangerous ideas were better expressed publicly than swept under the carpet. At a time of bloody civil war, he...
View ArticleImpress a state-backed regulator because it is cue for law which punishes...
Those of us who support unfettered free speech and freedom of the press should accept chief executive Jonathan Heawood’s right to put the case for Impress “in a free and open encounter”. For those same...
View ArticleExposure of Sun and Mirror sources raises moral questions which News Corp and...
The exposure of 32 journalistic sources by News Corp and Trinity Mirror raises huge moral questions for the UK’s two biggest newspaper publishers. The human consequence of that exposure is illustrated...
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