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Partisan view in Europe debate


I really don’t think that the disgraced Denis MacShane gives a fair account of the media in his article in the last edition of The Journalist. I expect The Journalist to give me a wide range of


news and views. Yet Mr MacShane, as a noted pro-EU campaigner, misleadingly refers to “isolationist calls from Eurosceptics, Tories, Ukip and the BNP”. To him, it is “isolationist” to want to rejoin the wider


world. Of course, it is nothing of the kind. And, as for his inclusion of the BNP (which I’m not sure even exists any more after its failure to register this year with the Electoral Commission), he clearly hopes to juxtapose anti-EU “isolationist” and presumably fascist opinion with his account of foreign travel and trade. And, in apparently assessing how the media are


allegedly backing the “Europhobe” position, he conveniently forgets to mention the BBC which, we read elsewhere in The Journalist, is the single largest source of information to British citizens – and which receives EU funding. He also fails to mention Channel 4, which many would claim is equally pro-EU. Mr MacShane purported to give an assessment of the


state of play with the media. In fact, he delivered a series of cheap slurs. Neil Graham Preston


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We shouldn’t be using Denis MacShane’s work In the small contributor’s biography at the end of Denis MacShane’s article in the last magazine, the following ought to have been added: “Resigned as MP, suspended by his party, removed from the Privy Council and convicted of false accounting”.


Could you not have found somebody with more credibility and better judgment? Hiring a convicted criminal to contribute to our house journal makes us look like a bunch of complicit, hypocritical clowns.


This is a man who talked down the expenses scandal and tried to hide his crimes. As a journalist and a trade


24 | theJournalist


unionist, I don’t like seeing my subs being used to pay such a person. Please, use someone else next time. And think hard about hiring criminals. Craig Williams Glasgow Broadcasting Branch


I have always been passionate about causes Denis MacShane writes: It is typical of the anti-Europeans to play the man not the ball. I admit all my imperfections and wish that no one had ever shown me how to fill in an exes form when I started out at the BBC and Daily Mirror four decades ago.


I have always been passionate about causes I support, including not isolating


ourselves from Europe. The vast majority of the press by circulation has been anti EU in the past 20 years. Even now, the BBC Today programme recently let the pro-Brexit Tory MP Angela Leadsom say that “60 per cent of our laws are made in the EU” which is a grotesque untruth. She wasn’t challenged. How can we expect citizens to vote on the facts when the BBC allows such factual inaccuracies to be broadcast about Europe?


Why no mention of future additions to the EU? Amid all the media coverage of the EU referendum, I am amazed that nobody ever mentions the future addition of new members to the EU. With the US


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and NATO pressing the EU to get Russia in an ever tighter corner, Ukraine and Turkey are being offered real or associate membership.


Thus the geopolitical push eastwards will mean that even more people will be ready to come to the UK seeking work and better living standards. I personally think that immigration is what makes the UK a dynamic society, but I am nevertheless surprised how little comment there has been in the media about the Ukrainian plumber joining the Polish plumber in seeking a better life. Dave Siddall Cockermouth


Roy McHardy should be remembered with pride I was sorry that no space could be found in the Feb-March issue of The Journalist for an obituary of Roy McHardy, who died just before Christmas. Roy was a frontline on-screen reporter for BBC Scotland and was immensely proud of his uncanny (or canny?) ability to write, memorise and deliver a word-perfect report on any subject under the sun, directly to camera, exactly within the time allocated – and frequently live.


He got the NUJ bug and became the BBC staff representative – he drew his BBC salary but worked exclusively representing NUJ members in tribunals, disciplinary hearings, salary disputes, grievances and more. There must be hundreds of BBC journalists who are grateful for his interventions. In his work, he toured the country from gig to gig like a 1960s rock band – one day in Norwich, the next in Penzance, the next in Inverness– and strangely seemed to like the life. Roy was a longstanding member of the NUJ National Executive Council. He was a bit right wing for me but he brought honesty and common sense, and all committees need a range of views.


Someone like Roy McHardy, with his journalistic excellence, his commitment


TIM ELLIS


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