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Football Association backsNUJ on bans


football clubs censoring sports reporters and broadcasters. The move comes as the


T


BBC said it would boycott Rangers press conferences after it banned reporter Chris McLaughlin for leading a match report by mentioning the accompanying sectarian chanting and fighting which had resulted in three arrests. Rangers also banned Times and Herald columnist Graham Spiers, who has written about the club’s financial and ownership issues in recent years. NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet wrote to FA chairman Greg Dyke, a former journalist, in July “because of our concern over a worrying trend among football clubs to ban reporters and instead have their own hand-picked writers


he Football Association has backed a campaign by the NUJ to stop


peddle propaganda from the proprietor’s point of view.” Mr Dyke replied that he had


strong views on censorship, and agreed “with much of what you say.” But he he said he could not act because “the clubs are members of the leagues in which they play and it is for their leagues to set down requirements for the clubs”.


Stanistreet welcomed


Dyke’s support for the NUJ’s view. “Although it is not in his gift to direct these clubs to drop the bans of reporters, I hope his words will have some influence on the other football chief executives. She said she would write to


the Premiership, the Football League and the Scottish Professional Football League to seek their views. Newcastle United banned


a swathe of media outlets in October 2013 for covering fans’ protests against the owner Mike Ashley. Telegraph journalists


are still not welcome at St James’s Park. At one point, a Channel 4 reporter was banned for seeking the club’s views on such bans. Swindon Town has said


it would ban independent news outlets from press conferences. “News” would be disseminated online by an “in-house journalist”.


WHO’S BEEN SNOOPINGAROUNDHERE, THEN? P P


olice Scotland has refused to confirm or deny allegations


that it unlawfully snooped on journalists to find their sources. Journalists working for


the BBC and Sunday Mail said they had been told that their sources had been targeted, The Sunday Herald said Police Scotland had used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act


(RIPA) to secretly obtain journalistic phone records without judicial approval since the law was changed to prevent this practice in March.


The change in the law Propaganda inverts truth in debate


ropaganda is the invisible government, the journalist, filmmaker and author John Pilger told an audience at the


Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He used an introduction to a Q&A session


entitled Power and Propaganda, to argue that misinformation, coupled with the distractions of consumerism and a different kind of politics, had succeeded in inverting the truth in public debate, so that – for example – the


conflict between the wealthy and the poor was presented as conflict between an open society and its enemies. Inversions of stories included the narrative


about Russia invading/threatening parts of Europe while the real story, he said, was the encirclement of Russia by massive forces, with the eventual aim of the country’s dismemberment. There was a reluctance, to recognise the ruthlessness of power, he said.


came after a campaign by UK Press Gazette. In Oxfordshire, Thames


Valley Police has again refused to confirm or deny whether it has used RIPA to spy on journalists.


INCAMERASTOCK/ALAMY “ ”


I hope his words will have some influence on the other football chief executives


in brief...


INDEPENDENCE STANCEDRIVESSALES The Sunday Herald’s pro- independence stance in last year’s Scottish referendum and the launch of the new independence-leaning The National helped drive a strong year-on year rise in the Herald group’s circulation in the second half of 2014. The Sunday title’s circulation surged by 35 per cent while the daily The Herald, which remained neutral in the campaign, saw sales fall five per cent.


HACKINGCOSTSHIT MIRRORPROFITS A slump in advertising and payments to victims of phone hacking depressed first-half profits at Trinity Mirror. The group made profits of £12.1 million: it has put aside an additional £16 million to cover the impact of phone- hacking costs.


SKY CUSTOMER MILESTONE PASSED Sky has passed the 12 million customer mark in the UK and Ireland in what the company described as its highest organic growth in the UK and Ireland for 11 years, adding 506,000 customers in the year to the end of June. Annual revenues were £11.3 billion with profits of £1.3 billion, slightly ahead of analysts’ forecasts.


UNIONRECOGNITION ATGUARDIANUS Journalists at Guardian US have voted unanimously for union representation and recognition. Brian Williams, joint FoC of the UK’s Guardian and Observer chapel, said the chapel would “look to work closely with the News Media Guild to improve all journalists’ terms and conditions and to fly the flag for quality journalism.”


MORE EVIDENCE OF NEWSPAPERDECLINE A third of people in Scotland have stopped reading newspapers regularly since the millennium. According to The Scottish Social Attitudes survey – 41 per cent of Scots “regularly read one or more daily morning newspapers” in 2014, down from 76 per cent in 1999.


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