MAGAZINE OF THE NATIONAL UNION OF JOURNALISTS WWW.NUJ.ORG.UK | APRIL-MAY 2021 DANGEROUS WORK The mental health risks of journalism Contents Main feature 14 Strains of stress Mental health and journalism News afety has been on all our minds over the 03 BBC moves jobs out of London past year amid the pandemic. But while the coronavirus threat is Specialist teams to be relocated thankfully receding at the moment, 04 From Brixton to BLM there are many other risks that A persepective on combatting racism Sjournalists face on a daily basis. The demands of a exacting, deadline-driven 05 Reach closes newsrooms job which can involve dealing with traumatic news events take Radical move to homeworking their toll on mental health as our cover feature by Samir Jeraj 07 Members stressed by the pandemic explores. Survey finds isolation and anxiety And increasingly journalists are facing physical and verbal intimidation for just doing their jobs as Neil Merrick reports “in his feature. We also have a report from the TUC’s women’s Features conference on an NUJ motion about the spiralling abuse of 10 Spotlight on Liverpool women journalists. How journalism is faring in the city Help is hopefully at hand to tackle intimidation after the creation of a government-launched national plan for the safety 12 Pandemic of abuse of journalists. The NUJ contributed to the drafting of the plan How we can make journalism safer and will help monitor how journalists are protected in the 16 Weathering a storm future. Looking back to 1921 In the wake of Piers Morgan’s resignation, Raymond Snoddy looks at other high-profile departures and the reasons behind them. Regulars And on a lighter note now Spring is here, our regular media anniversary feature looks at the rise of the weather forecasters. 21 Technology Wishing everyone a return to more normal life. Stay safe. 24 Obituaries 25 And finally... Christine Buckley Editor @mschrisbuckley Editor NUJ Arts [email protected] 72 Acton Street Page Design London WC1X 9NB Surgerycreations.com [email protected] 20 [email protected] www.nuj.org.uk Advertising Tel: 020 7843 3700 Ray Melanie Richards Manchester office Tel: 07494975239 [email protected] Snoddy [email protected] Glasgow office Page 19 Print [email protected] Warners Cover picture Letters and www.warners.co.uk Dublin office [email protected] Gary Neill Distribution Steve Bell GB Mail ISSN: 0022-5541 Page 22-23 www.gb-mail.co.uk ” 02 | theJournalist news 400 jobs moving out of inbrief... RECORD COMPLAINTS OVER PIERS MORGAN London in BBC shake-up Two episodes of Good Morning Britain in which Piers Morgan made THE BBC is shifting 400 roles moves, raising expectations comments about the Duchess of BBC out of London including that there could be a series of Sussex’s interview with Oprah whole specialist teams in one high-profile departures. Winfrey that led to him quitting the of the biggest changes to its There are plans to create show, have attracted the most structure. 150 jobs will be 56 new roles mostly in digital Teams covering complaints to the TV regulator ever. scrapped rather than moved and and because some Ofcom said the episodes triggered out of the capital. programmes will be regularly the environment, 57,121 complaints, surpassing the The cuts are part of 520 job broadcast from outside technology and previous record of 44,500. losses across news that were London. announced last year and part Paul Siegert, NUJ national education will of a £800 million savings broadcasting organiser, said: “ FACEBOOK FACES package across the BBC. News “We welcome more diversity move to Leeds, LAWSUIT IN FRANCE is being asked to save £85 number of 6Music’s staff. and creating more content Cardiff, Glasgow and Reporters Without Borders, the million. A third of Radio 4’s Today out of London is a good freedom of expression campaign ’Teams covering the programme will broadcast thing, as is extra investment Birmingham group, has filed a lawsuit against environment, technology, outside London. Newsnight in apprenticeships. However, Facebook in France. It claims that and education, will move to and Radio 4’s PM will also it’s strange that at the same the platform is not providing the Leeds, Cardiff, Glasgow, and regularly go to other regions. time the BBC is talking about ‘safe’ online space that it promises Birmingham. The proportion of the TV the importance of getting out for journalists and the public. Daytime programmes on budget spent outside London of London and investing in Radio 1, Radio 2, and 1Xtra will increase from 50 per cent the regions as a means of will be broadcast from to 60 per cent in the next better serving the audience, it BURSARIES ON OFFER elsewhere in the UK. seven years. has also axed 450 posts in AT THE GUARDIAN Radio 3’s leadership team Some specialists have English regions and cut £25 The Guardian Foundation is offering will go to Salford along with a voiced doubts about the million from that budget.” bursaries for aspiring journalists to study for an MA in journalism. The awards aim to help those who face Plan to ensure journalists’ safety financial difficulty in studying, and those from backgrounds that are THE NUJ has welcomed a national plan sets out a range of measures attack and threaten journalists are under-represented in the media. safety plan for journalists which was designed to ensure freelance and staff brought to justice. The application deadline is launched by the Government in journalists are protected and A survey of NUJ members last year May 22. See https://workforus.the response to the growing intimidation supported. It also calls on social media found that more than half of guardian.com of reporters, photographers and other platforms to do more to stamp out respondents had experienced online media workers. The National online abuse, and on the criminal abuse and nearly a quarter had been Committee for the Safety of Journalists’ justice system to ensure those who physically assaulted or attacked. Delegate meeting deadline International drive UNION branches have until from 6.6 per cent to 12 per on Belarus May 14 to put late notice cent depending on members’ More than 50 leaders of journalists’ unions and motions to the postponed incomes. delegate meeting, which is Many of the motions in the associations across Europe have written to European being held online on May 21 agenda are already being governments and heads of state to express their and 2. Late notice motions implemented because deep concerns about the intensification of are to enable the agenda, there was no opposition from the repression of journalists in Belarus. The which was finalised early last the NEC. initiative was organised by the European year, to be updated. Federation of Journalists to mark Freedom The union’s national Day in Belarus on March 25. There are executive council (NEC) is currently 12 journalists in jail in Belarus and asking delegates to approve since the elections, which were an increase in subscriptions held last August 2020 some 480 after failing to achieve an journalists have been detained. increase at the last delegate meeting in April 2018. The proposed increases range theJournalist | 03 news From Brixton to Black Lives Matter: international resistance to racism Johannesburg-based broadcaster Jacqui Hlongwane spoke about her late mother, Jane Hlongwane, who was general secretary of the Steel Engineering and Allied Workers’ Union and a Black Consciousness Movement activist, and growing up in apartheid South Africa: “As black children, we had to go to a As black children, different school and even a separate swimming pool.” Hlongwane wanted to make a difference by working in the we had to go to a media. After graduating from Witswaterand – “a top South different school African university” – she got a job at a television station, where she became programme manager. However, she noted: “Since “and even a separate 1994, we have had black majority rule but the privileged white swimming pool minority population are doing a lot better than black people.” Grassroots Black Left activist Sophia Mangera, born in South Africa and politically active in Lewisham from her teens, spoke Jacqui Hlongwane INTERNATIONAL speakers came together to mark the UN’s about the racist activity of the National Front that culminated in anti-racism day in a webinar organised by the NUJ’s black the 1981 New Cross fire in which 13 young black people were members’ council, writes Marc Wadsworth. They included a massacred. The huge Black People’s Day of Action march resulted. senior broadcasting executive from South Africa, a Jamaican Police failed to find the murderers. newspaper editor and a leading American civil rights lawyer. Weekly Gleaner editor George Ruddock said The Voice, a The 40 Years of Resistance: From the Brixton Uprisings to British black national newspaper, was founded a year after the Black Lives Matter event heard from Pan Africanist Congress of Brixton disturbances of 1981. Azania activist Lindiwe Tsele, aged 86, who recounted what Justice4Grenfell campaign co-ordinator Yvette Williams backed happened in 1960 in Sharpeville, South Africa, when at least 69 US speaker Vanita Banks, who answered a question by NUJ mainly young black protesters were shot dead by police. national executive council member Natasha Hirst. Hirst asked The protesters were peacefully demonstrating against a law what white people could do to give solidarity to black people. that forced them to carry identity cards because they were black. Participants felt the establishment of a sustainable anti-racist “Many of them were shot in the back when they were fleeing movement that would be a fitting tribute to fallen heroes the scene,” said Tsele.