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BBC showed a very non-Irish revolution


BBC TV series, Thatcher: A Very British Revolution, offered so much but delivered nothing - on Ireland that is. Northern Ireland dominated almost every single news


report during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership but the series didn’t refer to one single incident in Northern Ireland that further strained relations between the UK and Irish governments during her time in Number 10. No mention about the IRA killing of Lord Louis


Mountbatten in I979 or her poor handling of the 1981 IRA hunger strikes, which resulted in a major global PR coup for Irish republicans. Her stubborn attitude single-handedly contributed to a


growth in IRA membership but this wasn’t covered. There was no mention of the fact that she betrayed Ulster Unionists by doing a behind-the-scenes deal with Dublin to sign the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, which was angrily viewed as treason. No mention that pro-union MPs Robert Bradford, Airey


Neave and Ian Gow were murdered during her time in office. The tone of the series was one of ‘Margaret the brave, Margaret the heroine!’ One would think from watching this series that the


Troubles actually happened in a place other than the United Kingdom. Ken Murray Irish Eastern branch


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Ipso contract could give conscience protection It’s good to see Raymond Snoddy backing the NUJ’s longstanding call for a ‘conscience clause’ to be added to codes of conduct to protect journalists from being victimised for disobeying unethical instructions (Keeping the rubbish out of Brexit coverage, May/June). Members may be interested to know that we now appear to have the chair of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) on our side too. During a Q&A at an Ipso roadshow in


Sheffield on May 21, I asked Sir Alan Moses for his thoughts on adding a conscience clause to the Editors’ Code of


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Practice – a call that has been rejected by the Editors’ Code of Practice committee. He replied that, although there is no explicit clause, the nature of Ipso’s contracts with its member companies would in effect offer similar protection to any employee in such a situation. Moses explained that Ipso could not


compel the editors’ committee to make changes, but added: “I agree with you – I think it would be a very good idea if there was such a clause in the Editors’ Code. Why the editors haven’t done it is not at all clear to me.” Tony Harcup NUJ life member Leeds & Wakefield branch


All truth and no sauce makes for dull news Raymond Snoddy creates a wonderful image of NUJ-affiliated Telegraph journalists wrestling with their consciences as they sub the distortions the paper relies on to feed its readers in the shires (Keeping the rubbish out of Brexit coverage, May/June). Do these saintly journalists really exist, just waiting for armies of the righteous to free them from their chains? Meanwhile, Chris Proctor unwittingly


proves the fact that Snoddy and himself seem not to see: the truth makes shockingly dull journalism but lies make great headlines (Playing politics,


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Email to: journalist@nuj.org.uk Post to: The Journalist 72 Acton Street, London WC1X 9NB Tweet to: @mschrisbuckley


playground style, May/June). You could almost say that both politics and the media rely on doublethink untruthing. A lying politician gets lots of airtime – no publicity is bad publicity, right? As a journalist, once the original lies have been reported, you can write an opinion piece about the shameless publishing of lies. And so on. Nick Inman Occitanie France


Everyone has their favourite headlines Thanks to Jonathan Sale for his piece on the history of the headline (The Journalist, May-June 2019). I’m sure you’ll be inundated with


readers’ faves, but surely one of the classics must be Variety’s ‘Sticks nix hick pix’ from the summer of 1935? It referred to the reaction of rural audiences to films about rural life. The Wikipedia entry for this headline cites other headlines (from fact and fiction) that riff on it. In terms of errors, my favourite was a decimal point in the wrong place on the front page of Contract Journal circa 2002, turning a £64bn spend to £6.4bn or vice versa (details lost in the fog of time, I’m afraid). Justin Stanton Croydon


We want more varied, quality photographs The NUJ’s Photographers’ Council has discussed the recent criticism by a correspondent of the quality and scope of pictures used recently in The Journalist. While not necessarily agreeing with all the points raised by Paul Jacobs (Letters, March/April), council members did express their disappointment that, in the house magazine of the union representing a large number of photographers in the media and public relations, the variety and quality of images in the magazine fail to live up to members’ expectations. The preponderance of headshots and


stock images is a poor reflection of a union whose members produce some


TIM ELLIS


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