Alarm bells ring, a wake up call for The Guardian?

by iosaf - "oh there's still a bit more" Sat Aug 27, 2005 13:08

"The readers' editor on ... good practice and declarations of interest"
by Ian Mayes
published : Saturday August 27, 2005

On July 13, less than a week after the fatal London bombings, the Guardian carried on its Comment pages an article headed We rock the boat: Today's Muslims aren't prepared to ignore injustice, by Dilpazier Aslam. At the end of the piece Mr Aslam was identified as a Guardian trainee journalist. What the endnote did not say, apparently because the editor of the Comment pages was not made aware of the fact, although it was known to others in the paper, was that Mr Aslam was a member of the political organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Article continues
This was something that clearly should have been stated and eventually it was - in the Corrections and Clarifications column 10 days later on July 23. The delay occurred because Mr Aslam's membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir had become the subject of an internal inquiry. This resulted in the termination of Mr Aslam's traineeship after he had declined to resign from the organisation, membership of which the paper held to be incompatible with the Guardian's values. The note in the Corrections column coincided with the publication of two Guardian statements on the matter, a brief one in the paper and a more extensive one on the website.

I am not going to discuss Mr Aslam's dismissal or the reasons for it. My terms of reference, which are published on the Guardian website, direct me to consider and respond to complaints and queries about the paper's journalism.

The question of the disclosure of relevant associations clearly falls within my brief and is central to the Guardian's relationship with its readers. In the matter of openness the Guardian already goes further than most other newspapers in the world. It publishes on its website not only my terms of reference but the entire contents of its social audit - which does deal with staff issues - and its editorial code.

These stand as an open invitation to friends and enemies alike to make comparisons between the stated intention and the achievement. Gaps are not uncommon.

A whole section of the Guardian's editorial code is devoted to personal behaviour and conflicts of interest. The preamble contains the following sentence: "It is intended to ensure that outside interests do not come into conflict with the life of the paper in a way that either compromises the Guardian's editorial integrity or falls short of the sort of transparency that our readers would expect."

It says: "Guardian staff journalists should be sensitive to the possibility that activities outside work (including holding office or being otherwise actively involved in organisations, companies or political parties) could be perceived as having a bearing on - or coming into conflict with - the integrity of our journalism. Staff should be transparent about any outside personal, philosophical or financial interests which might conflict with their professional performance of duties at the Guardian, or could be perceived to do so."

There is an anomaly. The industry code, monitored by the Press Complaints Commission, forms part of the contract of employment for the paper's staff journalists. The Guardian's own code does not have contractual status. In effect it comprises guidelines relying on their power to persuade reasonable minds.

The guidelines are themselves, in my view, eminently reasonable and, while acknowledging resistance to the idea from the National Union of Journalists, I think they should be contractual (I speak as a life member of the NUJ). I believe this would be in the interest of the paper, its journalists and its readers.

In the light of the controversy over Dilpazier Aslam, the editor of the Guardian now sees a number of options, one of which might be to ensure that applicants for any editorial role, including traineeships, at the Guardian in future, should be given a copy of the Guardian code and specifically asked whether, having read it, they foresee any conflicts.

Events since the publication of Mr Aslam's article reinforce the view that the omission of the appropriate declaration in his case was a mistake. The fact that opinion is divided over the nature of Hizb ut-Tahrir and over the government's stated intention to proscribe it, does not alter that. If anything, it further reinforces the point.

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· Readers may contact the office of the readers' editor by telephoning 0845 451 9589 (UK only, calls charged at local rate) or +44 (0)20 7713 4736 between 11am and 5pm UK time Monday to Friday excluding UK bank holidays. Mail to Readers' editor, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER, UK.
Fax +44 (0)20 7239 9997.
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by archives Fri Feb 23, 2007 10:22

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/363129.html

and the Picket:-

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/363129.html

by iosaf .:. Tue Oct 13, 2009 17:05

Judging by the anglo-media sphere this morning, the 1688 bill of rights that cornerstone of peculiarly English privilege was about to be set on its head. The Guardian newspaper led its faithful readers and twitter types through print, online updates and yep - tweets to tantalisingly tell how a British court injunction would not allow it to cover parliamentary business. This morning's editions began with a quite short of lurid list of "un-nameable affair" and "un-nameable minister" to ask "unspecified question" about "un-mentionable matter".

Madam editor of the Irish Times was so taken by all this non-news and non-journalism verging as it did on pique with photographs of the Guardian's editor appearing across the web looking a suitable mixture of gawky earnest intellectual and wounded wall flower goofy, !! that she covered the non-story in international news updates by brunch time!!!

Around noon the legal team of the Guardian had upturned the injunction which it has transpired since ( in near real twit time ) had been taken out in secret by the company Trafigura to help put a lid on its contamination of Ivory Coast.

* Ivory coast is a poor country in Africa whose flag is exactly the same as Ireland's but only the other way round. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_Coast

* Trafigura fked up its coastline, ecosystems and is most probably to blame for making Ivory Coasters very sick. But this illegal dumping of waste wasn't the first time the Swiss company has attracted scandalous interest : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafigura
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/trafigura-probo-koala

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Anyway the point of this comment, pinging and updating an old thread on how "The Guardian's" freedom of the press is merely a privilege held in British society and under British law, as well as a thread which invites people to consider how in the Guardian's case (& no doubt the Irish Times' case) commercial newspaperschoose what to report and what not to report regardless of their freedom was to just do that.

There. I've done it and said it. Now I suppose I could leave off my pointing out that the big bad wolf in today's case was the London based law firm "Carter Rucks". They do media gags. Indeed they've even done indymedia gagging in the past. The last instance I can think of was when Carter Rucks forced the removal of material from Indymedia UK by a Guardian contributor (Mark Hollingsworth) in April 2008. Not content with threatening to take down the whole "united kollectives group" as we affectionately know IMC UK, their minion Nuala Guiney (an Irish name for an Irish lass) found the same article reproduced on this indymedia site, as despite the international legal bits and bobs of its, bullied an application of British defamation law (brought by the Carter Rucks client Nadhmi Auchi who felt the article entitled ""Billionaire linked to Labour arrested in London" had been bad for his image to delete this article : http://www.indymedia.ie/article/39959

It wasn't even such a good article.

But its passing showed us on the alternative political media side of things something new -

Carter Rucks had climbed up a notch on the press predatory foodchain . This morning's tussle with the Guardian may have been covered with all its non-news in the Irish Times and English media and even thanks to the Guardian's editor twitter and tweeted upon but the safeguards of European freedom of speech, which this article demonstrated - did not come into play.

I'm sure by tomorrow had the gagging order stood some European journalists would have picked up on the story as did Liberation before with the D notice secret service mallarky reported in the article above. I'm even convinced that with some good phone calling even I or one of my neighbours in Barcelona would have got some idea of the proceedings in Westminster and been able to drop a name sooner or later.

But my point, twice made now is this :-

The ladies of our "press of record" do protest too much & winsomely at times - I can not accept that use of twitter or facebook is a satisfactory sidestepping of the erosion of core privileges ( I can not term them rights & note with interest the Guardian itself referred to a privilege) .

For if it had been so - then why didn't we read on twitter or facebook or even an IMC site or wikileaks : who the minister was? who the company was? what the question was? what the scandal was about?

Thereafter Carter Rucks could have written more emails to indymedia or even wikileaks ands silenced us.

But no - the ladies of the commercial press turned this into a vindication of thier privilege and a false assurance that they really do report the news.

did Lady Editor of the Irish Times protest the gag on her "peers" too much? Or are we to expect Trafigura coverage?