news MI5 pays out over unlawful surveillance
FOR the first time, the security service MI5 has been ordered to pay damages to a journalist. It was forced to pay
£10,000 to NUJ member and RTÉ News Northern Ireland editor Vincent Kearney over highly intrusive, sustained and unlawful surveillance while he was a reporter at the BBC.
The Investigatory Powers
Tribunal (IPT) also ordered the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to pay £10,000 to Kearney for similar offences. A three-day hearing at the
Royal Courts of Justice in February laid bare the impact of unlawful surveillance, lasting more than a decade, on Kearney’s personal and professional life.
The judgment was hailed by the NUJ as a damning indictment of the police and security services and “a clear and
unambiguous vindication” of Kearney, the BBC and investigative journalism. The tribunal heard how police and security forces breached his right to protect his sources and subjected him to considerable risk as a journalist working in a
post-conflict society. Kearney’s family was also subject to intrusion. PSNI admitted to creating a profile that included details of his wife and mother-in-law that were obtained from phone data. Last year, MI5 conceded it had breached his rights to privacy and source protection by accessing his communications data in 2006 and 2009.
Kearney’s case arose from a separate IPT hearing into the unlawful surveillance of NUJ members Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey by PSNI and the Metropolitan Police. Séamus Dooley, NUJ assistant general secretary, said: “This is a landmark judgment and a clear and unambiguous vindication of Vincent Kearney and the BBC.”
Speaking to RTÉ, Kearney
said: “This is a tremendous victory for journalism and an affirmation of the duty and legal rights of journalists to protect sources.” Kevin Cooper, NUJ Belfast and district branch vice chair, added: “It is time for a public inquiry into all the security agencies and their illegal surveillances.”
NUJ reps attend two equality forums
DELEGATES from the NUJ attended two key equality forums during the summer – the TUC LGBT+ conference in Brighton and the TUC disabled workers’ conference in Bournemouth. The former passed a motion opposing the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s revised code of practice.
The code, amended following the UK supreme court’s decision in April last year that ‘sex’ in the Equality Act means biological sex, will now be challenged in a motion to the TUC congress in September.
The NUJ has responded to the change by publishing a statement stressing the media’s responsibility to
treat transgender people with ‘fairness, integrity and respect’.
The NUJ, along with other unions, is raising concerns that the new guidance – which clarifies how organisations can restrict single-sex spaces based on biological sex – does not properly protect
transgender people and is unworkable.
The meeting in June followed another TUC equality forum in May, the TUC disabled workers’ conference, where NUJ rep Lynn Degele told delegates that the focus must switch from disabled people constantly having to fight their corner to employers fulfilling their responsibilities. Degele said giving employers seven years to
Gazette stalwart reaches a century
FORMER Middlesbrough Gazette journalist and life NUJ member Malcolm Race celebrated his 100th birthday on June 24 – with a cake showing him at his typewriter. Race joined the Gazette on leaving Middlesbrough High
School in 1942 aged 16. He had been evacuated twice, to Scarborough and Teesdale, where he attended school lessons in the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle. He spent two years as a junior reporter. He was then called up and spent three and a half years in the army; in the last two, he worked on an army magazine, Parade. In 1948, he came back to the Gazette and stayed there until he retired in 1948. He was municipal editor for his last 23 years there.
04 | theJournalist
He was a magistrate for 33 years and took on the roles of president (twice) and secretary (several times) of the Middlesbrough Rotary Club. He also served as president of his school’s old boys’ association.
Race wrote a number of books on local history. Until last
year, he was a contributor to Now and Then, a free community magazine, and the Great Ayton parish church magazine. He served on Yarm and Great Ayton parochial church councils and was involved in Yarm Civic Society. He was also dedicated member of the NUJ, serving in various positions on the Teesside branch and on chapel committees.
“
This is a tremendous victory and an affirmation of the duty and rights of journalists to protect sources
Vincent Kearney Editor, RTÉ News Northern Ireland
introduce ‘reasonable adjustments’ was too long and urged all unions to campaign for faster implementation.
The conference, held on
May 19 and 20 at Bournemouth International Centre, was Ann Galpin’s last as the NUJ representative on the TUC disabled workers’ committee; she will continue as co-chair of the NUJ disabled members’ council.
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