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FT APPOINTS GLOBAL DIVERSITY HEAD The Financial Times has appointed Priscilla Baffour, ITN’s former head of diversity and inclusion, to a new role of global diversity chief. She has also worked as a Channel 4 industry talent specialist and as a youth outreach and projects manager for Media Trust.


SITWELL JOINS THE TELEGRAPH William Sitwell has joined The Telegraph as a writer and commentator. This was shortly after the former Waitrose Food magazine editor stepped down over comments he made in an email to a freelance in which he proposed a series on ‘killing vegans’.


CONDÉ NAST INCURS £13.5M PRE-TAX LOSS Vogue and GQ publisher Condé Nast made a pre-tax loss of £13.5 million in 2017, down from a pre-tax profit of £6.7 million a year earlier. In its most recent financial report, the magazine publisher, which also owns Vanity Fair, Tatler and Wired, reported turnover of £113.5 million, down seven per cent year-on-year.


JPI MEDIA INCREASES NEWSPAPER PRICES JPI Media has increased the price of the i newspaper and some regional titles in response to falling advertising revenues and rising newsprint costs. The i’s weekday price rose from 60p to 65p from the start of the year. The prices of the Shields Gazette and Sunderland Echo, Lancashire Post, Blackpool Gazette, Hartlepool Mail have also gone up.


BRITON TAKES TOP JOB AT AFP AGENCY Agence France-Presse has appointed a British journalist as its global news director – the first time a foreign national has been given the 184-year-old French news agency’s top editorial job. Phil Chetwynd has been promoted from editor-in-chief of the agency where he oversaw daily output.


04 | theJournalist


MPs berate BBC over failure to acknowledge pay discrimination


The BBC has come under fresh fire from MPs on the digital, cultural, media and sport select committee over a lack of progress in establishing equal pay. Their investigation into pay at the


corporation was triggered last year when presenter Carrie Gracie (pictured right), backed by the NUJ, accused the BBC of pay discrimination. The NUJ has made a large number of equal pay claims on behalf of women at the BBC. Last October, the select committee published a highly critical report of pay inequality at the corporation. In January, the MPs published a fresh report


accusing the BBC of still failing to acknowledge the ‘structural problem that exists regarding equal pay’. They said it was “very disappointed that the BBC has failed to acknowledge that a pay discrimination problem exists”. The committee’s first report called for


targets to be set by December 2018, but MPs said “the BBC has failed to set specific targets for tackling discrimination”. Damian Collins, the Conservative chair of


the committee, said: “Our evidence suggests that some women at the BBC who work in comparable jobs to men are earning far less.”


Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary,


said: “This hard-hitting report on the BBC’s response to the select committee must be taken seriously by the corporation. “It has been told that it must comply with the law on equal pay and the committee took the BBC to task for failing to admit a pay discrimination problem, instead confining its remarks to references to the ‘gender pay gap’ and ‘fair pay’ as opposed to unequal pay. “There are still many outstanding equal pay claims that we are dealing with.” In response to the renewed criticisms, the


BBC said: “You only need to look at the significant reforms we’ve made to our pay and grading structures to see how much has changed, and we’ve also dealt with many of the individual pay queries raised with us.”


No Stone Unturned pair thwart silence move


The NUJ has condemned an attempt by the Police Service of Northern Ireland and Durham Constabulary to stop investigative journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey from commenting on their case while they are on police bail. The two have been on bail since their arrest in August


last year in connection with their documentary No Stone Unturned about the Loughinisland massacre. In March their bail was extended until September. The police tried to amend


the existing bail conditions to prevent the journalists from talking publicly about the ongoing police investigation


“


and witnesses. Lawyers for the two NUJ members successfully opposed the attempt.


Séamus Dooley, NUJ


assistant general secretary, said: “International awareness, cross community support and growing media interests in this violation of human rights is clearly proving embarrassing.” He said that the extension of bail until September was a travesty.


‘No penalty’ has been recorded against Neil Cameron, although he was found to have contravened membership rules by the National Executive Council.


Cameron had tweeted that Donegal-based blogger Phil Mac Goilla Bháin ‘made up stories’.


Mac Goilla Bháin cited the NUJ rule that members must


treat other members ‘with consideration and respect and not to take actions which threaten their livelihood(s)’. Cameron, a sports writer on The Herald in Glasgow,


Our evidence suggests that some women at the BBC who work in comparable jobs to men are earning far less


Damian Collins Chair, select committee


No penalty given in NUJ member dispute


provided no evidence for his allegation. ‘No penalty’ was applied


because Cameron’s comment was made in the context of a ‘social media ferment’.


TOMMY LONDON / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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