My first council meeting

As part of my news writing folio for college, an article has to be written based on a council meeting. So, on Tuesday just past, my class trooped along to the Kirkcaldy Town House where we sat in on a Regulation and Licensing Committee meeting.

The applications dealt with were mainly taxi driver licence applications and late licensing for venues. I will admit I found out quite interested if a bit worried about who Fife Council will give a licence to!

There was one guy who had numerous speeding offences and was caught using his mobile phone while driving.I was sure that he would be refused but no, he got his licence granted with a warning. (This means that although he has his licence, if he his caught speeding etc or comes before the committee again he will automatically lose his licence.)

The applicant that I chose to cover was a guy who was applying for a taxi driver licence but was up against police objection. The guy had speeding offences going back to 2008, was caught using his mobile phone will driving his lorry. He is also employed by a coach firm and needs the taxi licence to be able to continue working there.

He had a ready-made sob story ready for the councillors and eventually they granted him his licence for a year.

I’m still surprised about how lenient the council is regarding handing out licences. It seems that anyone can get one.  

When does their conscience kick in?

When the news first broke about the News of the World hacking into the phones of celebrities, I must admit I wasn’t too surprised. They’re a sleazy tabloid for goodness sake!

Fast forward a few months, and the paper has been shut down and the Leveson inquiry is currently in the news.  To me, the celebrities whose phones were hacked well, sorry but I have no sympathy for them. As my granny used to say “You live by the sword, you die by the sword”. I know that everyone is entitled to their privacy but they can’t seriously put themselves on the same wavelength of that such as the family of Milly Dowler and the McCanns?

Recently, Piers Morgan has been involved with claims that phone hacking went on when he was editor at the Mirror. Of course he denies this. Wouldn’t you? Another thing my granny used to say was “when rumours spread, there is truth somewhere”

Someone somewhere needs to take responsibility for this whole sorry mess. It’s dragging journalism, as a profession, through the mud.

When I sit in class at college, right above my computer is the NUJ Code of Conduct. Members of the NUJ are expected to abide by the 12 set of principles that seemed to be overlooked by the majority of newspapers and journalists today. I feel like posting them all a copy of these principles along with a copy of the Press Code of Conduct. When do their consciences kick in and the guilt takes over? Even in my class, articles have been written using shall we say, dishonest means. I couldn’t. I’d be wracked with guilt and couldn’t live with myself. Plus I actually want to be a journalist, not just play at it.

I want to be a journalist not just because of my love of writing but because I want to make a difference in some way no matter how small. (I originally wanted to be a music journalist but I’m kind of swaying towards investigative journalism.)

I remember back in first year when my law lecturer asked us if we would ever work for the Sun newspaper of similar tabloid. Everyone put their hands up. Not me. I like to think that I have some sort of morals and principles.

I’d rather end up working on the checkout at a supermarket then sell my soul to the devil and work where dishonesty and phone hacking becomes the principles that journalists follow. Maybe I’m a martyr or maybe my conscience would just kick in.


http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/

Shooting the messenger: journalism in Russia

You may wake up in the morning to a cup of coffee and the news or pore over the newspapers with a bowl of cereal. The media, journalism and our right to free speech are part of our daily lives and we take it for granted. With the exception of countries like Iraq, where conditions resemble that of a civil war at times, nowhere is the life of a journalist more dangerous than in Russia.


By speaking out against the Russian government, The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) may have you followed, intimidated or even murdered. According to the International Federation of Journalists, approximately 96 journalists have been killed in Russia in the past 12 years, although those numbers may be higher.


Nearly 70% of journalists working in Russia have been targeted in some way. That may include being followed, their apartments broken into, being assaulted and even murdered. Nowhere in Europe is life more dangerous for journalists than in Russia, and no newspaper there has had as many of its journalists killed as Novaya Gazeta, known for being critical of Russian government policy. Russia is ranked fourth in terms of countries with high death tolls of journalists with those reporting on politics and government corruption being targeted the most.


While the large number of journalists who are killed and attacked may reflect the country’s high level of violence, there is no doubt that many have been targeted mostly because of their work. During the first years after the fall of the Soviet Union, under President Boris Yeltsin, Russian journalism was exciting, tough and brazen. Then, during the process of privatization, the government bought up parts of the media landscape from TV channels to the most important newspapers.


Next came Putin as president of Russia. He declared the restoration of the Kremlin's political authority. The Kremlin proceeded to let companies closely associated with the government purchase one publishing house after the other. The result is that tough investigative journalism has now become a rarity in Russia. According to Vsevolod Bogdanov, the chairman of the Russian Union of Journalists, 261 Russian journalists have been killed since the fall of the Soviet Union. Only 21 cases have been solved.


One of the most famous journalists murdered in Russia is Anna Politkovskaya. A Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist, she was well-known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and President Putin. Politkovskaya made her name reporting from lawless Chechnya, where many journalists and humanitarian workers have been kidnapped or killed. She was arrested and subjected to a mock execution by Russian military forces and also poisoned while reporting on the Beslan school siege, but survived and continued her reporting. She was finally shot and killed in the lift of her block of flats, an unsolved assassination that still continues to attract international attention. No one can say for sure who killed Politkovskaya, but the Russian military officials who later found themselves in court because of her articles would have an obvious motive. The Russian government goes to great lengths to make sure the political system under which so many journalists are murdered, isn’t scrutinised.


A journalist who knows just how far the FSB will go to stop a story being published is Luke Harding. He was the Guardian's correspondance in Moscow and in his time there, he got a good look at the new Russia under Putin, focusing especially on corruption in the country. This British journalist however, began to notice things. His home was broken into. He received strange phone calls at weird times of the night. Email accounts were hacked. Harding now believes that with a story he actually played a minor role in, he had gained the attention of the FSB, the feared successor to the KGB. “My name was on the story that two of my colleagues back in London wrote. I only played a small part in it but after that, the sky fell on my head. I became an FSB target.” recalls Harding. After many instances of state intimidation, he was eventually expelled from the country earlier this year, making him the first Russian journalist expelled since Soviet times.

Could the intimidation of journalists be a direct consequence of having Putin in power, whether he’s Prime Minister or President? Harding certainly thinks so. “Putin sets the tone. What he’s done is restored this classic Russian authoritarian model and brought back old KGB habits and one of those habits is sort of spying on journalists, just like the 'good old days'”


The problem with journalism in Russia is not just censorship – that would be easy to deal with. The problem is the general circumstances in which Russian media workers as well as journalists from other countries, have to exist. Attacks on journalists are violating their human rights in being allowed to report freely. In over 170 judgements handed down since 2005, the European Court of Human Rights has found Russia responsible for serious human rights abuses in Chechnya alone. Journalists who report there and speak out against the government are in danger and should be included in these statistics.


Journalists in Russia are not unionised as they are in the UK and other parts of the world. There isn't a single organisation overseeing professional ethics. There is no one to ensure that they are safe while they do their job. Or rather, the system that should protect them, is the one that is killing them.


“People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think. In fact, one can even get killed for giving me, a journalist, information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it.”
― Anna Politkovskaya