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RENNER WINS C4 FELLOWSHIP Solape Renner, a Bloomberg journalist who began her working life as an analyst for the European Central Bank, has been awarded the inaugural Sarah Corp Fellowship with Channel 4 News. The fellowship is in memory of the respected foreign affairs producer who died in 2016.


PAUL FOOT AWARD GOES TO EMILY DUGAN Emily Dugan, a reporter for BuzzFeed, has won the Private Eye Paul Foot Award for Investigative and Campaigning Journalism for her Access to Justice campaign. The judges praised her persistence in reporting the human cost of the degradation of England’s justice and legal aid system.


RUSSIAN REPORTER FREED AFTER OUTCRY Russian police have dropped all charges against journalist Ivan Golunov after an outcry in the media and among journalists’ unions about his arrest for alleged drugs offences. Golunov is a reporter for the Meduza news website and has conducted investigations into corruption among Moscow city officials.


INDIAN ASSOCIATION ELECTS PRESIDENT Naresh Kaushik has been elected as the new president of the Indian Journalists Association in the UK. Naresh has been an NUJ member for more than 30 years and is a former deputy FOC of the BBC World Service chapel.


SIGHT AND SOUND EDITOR TO DEPART Nick James, editor of the British Film Institute’s monthly magazine Sight and Sound is stepping down after 21 years. He started at Sight and Sound in 1995 as deputy editor, moving to editor just two years later. He said he would pursue wider ambitions as a writer, but will continue to contribute to the magazine.


04 | theJournalist


BBC drops most free licences for over 75s


SOME 3.7 MILLION pensioners aged over 75 who receive a free TV licence will have to pay for it after the BBC, which was obliged to provide free licences by the government, scaled back its provision. Households with one person receiving pension credit will still be eligible at a cost of £250 million per year. The decision was made by the BBC board


after the corporation agreed to take on the costs of the benefit as part of the last licence fee settlement. In 2015, the government announced that the BBC would take over the cost of providing free licences for over-75s by 2020; this was expected to cost £745 million – a fifth of the BBC’s budget by 2021-22. That works out as more than its spending on all radio services, or about the same as on the bulk of its channels aside from BBC One, or on all its TV sport, drama, entertainment and comedy. About 1.5 million households could be eligible for free licences. The BBC said: “The new scheme will cost


around £250 million by 2021-22, depending on the take-up. The cost will require the BBC to divert some spending on programmes and services alongside continuing to find new


savings while expanding its commercial revenue to cope. The decision does, however, prevent unprecedented closures of services which would have been required had we copied the government’s scheme.” Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary,


said: “Dumping the BBC with the responsibility for a welfare benefit was a wrongheaded act of sabotage by a government that cared little about the impact on our public service broadcaster.“ The BBC’s annual report showed some


progress over eliminating its gender pay gap. Last year the gap went down to 6.7 per cent from 7.6 per cent in the previous year. Also one in five of the BBC’s top earners were from black and ethnic minority backgrounds.


IFJ backs the NUJ over snooping and pay gap


NUJ MOTIONS about surveillance of journalists and ending the gender pay gap were passed by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) World Congress in Tunis in June. The union highlighted the


need for campaigning to close the gender pay gap and secure equal pay, and to improve employment rights.


It also highlighted the need to strengthen the International Labour Organisation. Delegates voted to


coordinate a global strategy and campaign to end discrimination in pay and opportunities for women journalists. They also supported a Palestinian Journalists Syndicate motion


“


was reconfirmed as the IFJ’s honorary treasurer.


Photographers blow whistle on basketball Photographers at the


THE BRITISH Basketball Federation has joined a growing list of organisations that insist photographers provide free images to gain access to cover events.


women’s international friendly between Great Britain and Canada in Manchester in June were told they could have credentials only if they


gave the governing body free images. Natasha Hirst, chair of the


NUJ Photographers’ Council, said: “The NUJ fully backs the Basketball Journalists’


Dumping the BBC with the responsibility for a welfare benefit was a wrongheaded act of sabotage


Michelle Stanistreet NUJ general secretary


calling for greater efforts to raise awareness about the kinds of threats women journalists encounter, online and offline. Congress called on the new


IFJ executive committee to raise awareness of and build a culture to resist the surveillance of journalists and to promote technological and organisational approaches to avoid it. The NUJ’s Jim Boumelha


Association and the AIPS [Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive] Basketball Commission in condemning the BBF for seeking to exploit photographers.”


IMAGEBROKER / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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