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 …
Head hunt: how the search for Elvis signals a threat to journalism Read more »
This article originally appeared in the July 2018 edition of NUJ Informed Walking into the Chinese state broadcaster’s gleaming studios, Mick Hodgkin passes a galaxy of other media outlets. The offices of Yanga! (serving African markets), Aparat Media (TV content …
Global transmission: London booms as world tv hub Read more »
Picture Northern Ireland’s most senior police officer, George Hamilton, settling down to watch the film No Stone Unturned. It must have left him worried, angry and possibly betrayed. It certainly landed a big decision in his lap. The documentary feature, …
Chief constable shoots the messenger as gun men roam free Read more »
Article first appeared in Amateur Photographer 8 April 2017 WITH A COUPLE OF HOURS between meetings one afternoon last summer, I walked the perimeter of BMW’s Oxford plant. My hope was to take a photograph that somehow conveyed the idea …
This article first appeared in Amateur Photographer in December 2017 WHEN MY BROTHER DIED unexpectedly at the age of 40, my family was distraught. Like others struck by grief, we flapped around searching for ways to celebrate a life cut …
In Hollywood blockbusters (and countries run by despots) attacks on the free press see journalists dragged to prison, presses smashed and tv stations forcibly shut. In Britain’s liberal democracy, undermining our ability to investigate, and to express freely what we …
IFJ/NUJ/Guardian conference – Journalism In An Age Of Mass Surveillance The Guardian, London 16 October 2014 Above: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger Cocktail shakers are newly popular among Guardian journalists, and manual typewriters are making a comeback. Both result from rising …
Source marked: how journalists’ smartphones blow contacts’ cover Read more »
Watching television pictures of the demonstration outside the BBC’s Scottish headquarters yesterday, I felt concerned for my friends and colleagues who work there. Estimates of the crowd size outside their place of work started at around 1,000 – some called …
Bias cut: why journalists should embrace the angry mob Read more »
Shocking as was the sight of Al Jazeera journalists Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed locked in a cage while they were sentenced to long jail terms, broadcast pictures rendered the scene remote. Meeting with the three journalists’ colleagues, …
Captive audience – applying pressure to free journalists jailed in Egypt Read more »
This is a written up version of a speech that I gave to the Association of Journalism Educators’ annual conference on 13 June 2014, at Liverpool John Mores University. When Keri Hudson was 21, she took on an unpaid internship …