and finally...


When is a journalist not a journalist?


Fake reporters undermine our whole industry, says Chris Proctor T


here’s been an epidemic recently. No, not that one. I’m talking about the alarming outbreak of


people who are claiming to be journalists.


All kinds of passing illiterates are


picking up chewed pencils, dusting down Kodak EasyShares and announcing that they are one of our number. Take the case of Hannah Dean. She’s the delinquent who sneaked around corridors in the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth taking snaps of empty spaces. This 30-year-old ‘newsgatherer’ (and fitness instructor) subsequently wrote that the images were proof that the entire hospital was empty, that no one was sick and that Covid-19 didn’t exist. A genuine newsgatherer might have ascertained that on the day of Dean’s ‘investigation’, 426 people were being treated in the very same hospital for the virus, 47 patients were on mechanical ventilation and that nationally 744 people had died of Covid-19.


Stopped by security, this pretender- with-a-camera not only claimed to be a journalist but also to ‘work for the NUJ’. In fact, her only contact with the union was to subsequently be reprimanded by our assistant general secretary Seamus Dooley. Happily, the courts sided with


Dooley and Ms Dean has now been fined and banned from entering any hospital unless she is genuinely unwell...


If she were the only example, she


wouldn’t be worth a mention – but the problem is that she is only the head of an oozing pimple. There are all manner of bigots and buffoons who are wannabe journalists.


Some of the Dean ilk carry pieces of plastic issued by oddball organisations that ‘confirm’ that holders are legitimate newsgatherers. One issuer of these ‘press cards’ is the Workers of England Union (WEU). The Press Association news agency


took the WEU to court to stop the impression that it was in any way linked to its card-issuing nonsense. The PA’s barrister, David Ivison, called the cards ‘instruments of deception’ and ‘fake ID’. The leader of the WEU is a chap


called Stephen Morris, who stood as the English Democrat candidate against ‘sharia-appeasing’ Andy Burnham in the election for Manchester mayor. The popular Morris picked up 11,000 votes but Andy edged home with 360,000. Morris is also leader of the well-


known (in only his own mind) ‘English TUC’ (affiliates: nil). But concern for workers is not the only string to his bow. He is also the director of SVM Consultants, where he advises employers on how to deal with uppity employees. ‘Advice and support for businesses,’ he calls it. All of this leads a person to have


suspicions concerning the status and validity of his ‘press cards’– and the people who sport them. And just to move into the realms of what should be fantasy, there are


people who don’t exist who claim to be journalists, such as Raphael Badani. He is an authority on the Middle East


who has featured in a number of publications, including the Washington Examiner, RealClearMarkets and the dubiously named American Thinker. Badani’s CV is impressive. He was formerly a senior analyst in international relations at the US Department of Labor. Or would have been if he were a person. Except he isn’t. The bloke’s a robot, created by artificial intelligence to give readers some unmerited confidence in his pronouncements. He’s got a picture and everything. Does it matter that bigots, amateurs,


“ ”


offbeats and figments are trying to infiltrate our profession? Well, actually, yes it very much does. Because their actions threaten to undermine our whole industry. If you get nonsense and bigotry served


Pieces of plastic issued by oddball organisations ‘confirm’ that holders are legitimate newsgatherers


up on your Facebook, Instagram or Tumblr feeds, you don’t mind. You know most of it is fake news, unresearched opinion or mild indigestion. But if a report is written by someone


who is labelled a journalist, you should be able to be confident that it is authentic. If you can’t – and this is what bogus journalists encourage – the role, the job and the media become irrelevant and redundant. Journalism is delegitimised. We’re not worth our keep.


An NUJ-issued UKPCA press card is a


privilege to carry, and a mark that its holders are bona fide newsgatherers. Bogus infiltrators and their agents are a menace to us all.


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