Informed 07


News Update


Road trip and chat boost NUJ charities


Almost £1,150 was raised for the NUJ’s charities by two entertaining evening talks by The Guardian’s Gary Younge and freelance writer, Eugene Costello. NUJ Extra is the union’s hardship fund which assists members and their families who need temporary financial help. The George Viner Memorial Fund (GVMF) was set up to address the lack of diversity in the British and Irish media by giving black and ethnic minority students financial help with their journalism studies. Gary was the Guardian’s US


correspondent for 12 years and his latest book, Another Day in the Death of America, centres on 23 November 2013, when 10 people were killed by guns. He spent 18 months unearthing the stories that lay behind these young lives and their premature deaths. Fittingly, his interviewer for the In


NUJ


about “black stuff” by their editors and the Home Secretary’s decision to strip Shamima Begum, the Isis bride, of her citizenship. “Sajid Javid is a year younger than me and grew up with our immigration laws and sus laws [stop and search laws used by the police predominantly on young black men], but that’s what Tory Home Secretaries do.” Eugene Costello described his madcap


Gary Younge and Saadeya Shamsuddin


Conversation With… evening was Saadeya Shamsuddin, a former George Viner scholar and now a trustee of GVMF who produces Eddie Nestor’s Drivetime on BBC Radio London. In a wide-ranging discussion, Gary


talked about journalists’ failure to predict events such as Trump’s election and the result of the EU referendum, black journalists being forced to write


road trip to Timbuktu. The freelance journalist had been forced to turn to NUJ Extra and the kindness of friends following a heart attack and stroke which meant he couldn’t work. He detailed with his characteristic sense of humour the 5,000-mile trip which ended at a bougainvillea-clad nirvana in Mali, but also entailed flea-pit hotels, broken axles, “navigational cock-ups”, hot deserts, hot tempers, and the rapidly deteriorating relationship with his travelling companion, travel writer Nick Redmayne.


So far he has made £1,700 each for NUJ


Extra and The British Heart Foundation on his fundraising website https:// uk.gofundme.com/uk-to-timbuktu-by- road-challenge.


Students’ exposé of secret society defended by NUJ


Te NUJ has defended a university newspaper which recorded the activities of the all-male Knights of the Campanile society and reported on groaning, gagging and retching sounds emerging from an apartment where an initiation ceremony was taking place. Te organisation, established in 1926, is known for its “mysterious entry procedures and a reputation for alcohol- fuelled high-jinks”, according to the Irish Times.


Te Trinity College Dublin’s University Times article reported members of the


society being taunted, jeered at and instructed to bend over and get in the shower as part of a “hazing” or initiation process. Members were told to “open your fucking mouth” and asked, “Why aren’t you on your knees”. Te report made national news, the student journalists were accused of breaching ethics standards by the editor of the university’s rival student newspaper and the students’ union called for a referendum to starve the publication of funds.


Commenting on the society, Irish Times writer, John McManus, said,


“Tink Dan Brown’s Illuminati meets David Cameron’s Bullingdon Club” and high-profile members denied the hazing allegations, with senator David Norris, an honorary member of the club since 1990, saying: “When I joined, they simply dipped my tie into a pint of stout.” Riding to the rookie reporters’ rescue came Professor Chris Frost, chair of the NUJ’s ethics council, who described the editorial staff’s investigative techniques as “beyond reproach and consistent with the highest professional standards of public interest, investigative journalism”. It was acceptable to use a tape


recorder to record conversations that can be heard in a corridor when in the public interest, he added.


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