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sections were popular and journalists wrote in them; a few years before, only clubs and readers contributed to them. Now sport is just taken from Wales on Sunday with match reports on clubs mainly nowhere near the weeklies’ areas. One week, a banner line stated LOCAL SPORT but it wasn’t! Meanwhile, any Walesonline sports coverage appears just when a club hits problems. And the paper’s cover price is £1.30. Phil Howells Merthyr Tydfil


Conferring about the news (or not) We now live in a world with endless digital outlets and 24-hour TV news and it appears that modern wording somehow doesn’t always accurately describe what it should. Many years ago, while working for BBC Radio, a producer politely reminded me the term ‘news conference’ was a contradiction in terms. He impressed upon me that the word


‘conference’ is an extension of ‘confer’ which means to gather and exchange opinions. So, a ‘press conference’ is where the media confer or gather for an event/announcement, which sounds pretty straightforward. As it was pointed out to me, news happens, and a statement or a press release is handed out to waiting journalists at a predetermined venue. News, by definition, does not confer and therefore ‘news conference’ is an incorrect term.


All broadcast media are now using it when in reality it isn’t appropriate even though we all know what it means. Am I being pedantic or do other


wordsmiths with a command of the English language actually care? I’d love to know their thoughts. Ken Murray Irish Eastern Branch


Voting system stopped a rethink on Brexit Antony Collins may be correct when he says a number of pro-Brexit supporters are likely to have voted for the ostensibly neutral Labour at the general election; Francis Beckett may therefore be incorrect to state “more people voted for remain parties than leave parties”. (Letters, April/May; Control freaks and Corbyn’s catastrophe, February/March). Nonetheless, if Britain had


proportional representation for general elections, the Tory party would not have a Commons majority and we would be heading for a second referendum on Brexit. Considering the direction of travel,


possibly hastened by the Covid-19 crisis, this might well have produced a majority for remain. Mick O’Hare London Freelance Branch


‘Sympathetic writers’ do not help Labour cause There is now proof that Jeremy Corbyn’s team (aka Seamus Milne)


twitter feed Tweet us your feedback: @mschrisbuckley Denis MacShane @DenisMacShane 1:55 AM – Jun 21 2020


‘All you need is hate… and you could be contributing’ from The Journalist in 1977 shows deep roots of racism and how too many journalists kept stoking it. Even today, Tory Spiked crowd dog whistling strong – see attacks on Sadiq Khan cos he protected WSC [Churchill] statue


Tony Naylor @naylor_tony Natasha Hirst @HirstPhotos 10:28 AM – May 29 2020


Tony Harcup, author of What’s the Point of News?, has published an article with NUJ on the pandemic and the news: https://bit.ly/2Ah4BK0


11:46 AM – May 28 2020


Pleased to see my feature in #TheJournalist on how #photographers have been covering the #CoronavirusPandemic – it showcases some great work and a range of ways the pandemic has been documented


wanted a fair hearing for the Labour leader (Control freaks and Corbyn’s catastrophe, February/March). This proof is in an internal investigation


into Labour’s governance and legal unit in relation to anti-Semitism (leaked to the Guardian in April). This shows that Labour Party HQ staff frustrated attempts to pursue policies that were successful in the 2017 general election. It says HQ’s opposition to the leader’s


office ‘disproves allegations that Corbyn’s office had influence over [the general legal unit’s] work’. It dismissed the claim in the 2019 BBC Panorama programme of Labour anti-Semitism,


where staff said Corbyn’s office had asked to be directly involved in the complaints process. It tells of anti-Corbyn staffers who


were more interested in fighting an internal war than in processing complaints, prioritised spending in right-wing MPs’ seats and were disappointed at Corbyn’s successful 2017 general election campaign. The help of ‘sympathetic‘ writers


could have something to do with the cool reception given the authors. The article won’t help them. Roy Jones North Wales


STEVE BELL


THE OWNERS


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