Fight for all our pay
I have just made a contribution to the Reach strikers’ hardship fund. I would encourage everyone else who cares about pay in the media to do the same, whether or not you are a member of the NUJ. The NUJ’s …
Category: The practice of journalism
Pub-bomb probe could jail journalist
Chris Mullin outside the Old Bailey © Tim Dawson
On Friday (25 February 2022), Detective Constable Darren Sutton cut an uncomfortable figure in the witness box at the Old Bailey. Little wonder. At the behest of his employer, West Midlands Police (WMP), he was attempting to undermine a journalist’s imperative undertaking …
Truths revealed by the camera’s lies
Opinion column originally published in Amateur Photographer 5 October 2019 Photojournalism succeeds because of its apparent veracity. That ‘the camera doesn’t lie’ is at the heart of the reportage captured through the lens. Of course we know that images can …
The Letraset Insurectionary
Review of David King Designer Activist Visual Historian, by Rick Poynor Like many1970s teenagers, a postal order dispatched to Finsbury Park, London initiated my engagement with politics. I received by return several sheets of lapel stickers, a poster and some …
Remembering Harry Evans
NUJ event poster
I danced a jig when Sir Harry Evans (who died in September 2020) responded to my speculative email. Anticipating little chance of acknowledgement, I nonetheless agonised over how best to address a Knight. Formalities, it turned out, were needless. “I …
Saved by suicide – Assange, self harm and free speech
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I observed Julian Assange’s extradition hearings in February and September 2020 on behalf of the International Federation of Journalists and the National Union of Journalists. I was also the only reporter whose daily coverage of the court case appeared in …
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Unfettered reporting threatened – what Assange extradition hearings reveal
Julian Assange’s extradition hearing took its last evidence at the Old Bailey, London yesterday. Closing submissions will be made in writing and Judge Baraitser’s ruling will be handed down on 4 January at The Old Bailey. Until 23 May 2019 …
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Reporting fictions: a novel start for journalists
A crowd outside the Express building in Fleet Street awaits Amy Johnson in 1932. (Getty)
In the rat-infested basement of The Public Benefit Boot Company in Leeds City Market, Harry Proctor was sacked. His boss had caught him reading a novel. The tattered pages had already worked their magic, however. It was 1932 and Proctor, …
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Legend dependent: only the titled achieve immortality
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First published in Amateur Photographer 14 December 2019 A friend of mine has been an enthusiastic photographer for nearly 40 years. The knack of composition has always eluded him, however. In his street scenes, tarmac occupies most of the frame. …
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Head hunt: how the search for Elvis signals a threat to journalism
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Article originally published in the December 2019 editor of NUJ Informed. Each September, Porthcawl is alive with white jumpsuits, improbable sideburns and gyroscopic hips as 40,000 Elvis impersonators descend on the Welsh resort. “Arrests are very rare, the whole event …
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