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Wapping 25 years on
DATELINE: 1/2/11Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is top of the news again as it fends off accusations of hacking into the phone calls of hundreds or thousands of people. Public anger over the appalling standards of Murdoch journalism threatens to derail his bid to buy up the whole of BSkyB.
He has been dominating the UK media scene for 30 years, and the biggest single step he took was when he moved his four national newspapers to a new non-union plant and sacked 5,500 people, the whole production workforce.
This was in January 1986 and the year-long strike that followed has gone down in history as the Wapping dispute, one of the major events of the Thatcher decade.
The CPBF is marking this 25th anniversary with a public meeting in London, which attracted 200 people on January 25, and this Radio Free Press podcast.
Presented by former BBC political correspondent Nick Jones – who reported the Wapping dispute – it features:
ANN FIELD, former official with the print union SOGAT and a union activist on The Times;
JOHN BAILEY, a chapel father for the NGA print union at the Sun;
GRANVILLE WILLIAMS, the leading left-wing commentator on media ownership and regulation; and
TIM GOPSILL, editor of Free Press.Radio Free Press is a campaigning service, aimed at informing people who are concerned to preserve independent, diverse and accountable media in the UK. Please pass the link to the podcast on to colleagues, friends and fellow campaigners.
Last modified: Thursday, June 23, 2011
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Events & Announcements
World Press Freedom Day
More reporters are currently imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Only a matter of weeks ago lawyers failed to persuade a Turkish court to release a 76-year-old journalist from a Turkish internet news station.
World Press Freedom Day on Friday May 3, 2013 is being marked in Britain by a rally to highlight the dangers facing journalists in Turkey and in this podcast, Nicholas Jones speaks to Barry White, Organiser at the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom, and Sam Bamford, the TUC's policy officer for Eastern Europe and Africa about the importance of a campaign to highlight international press freedom.
The World Press Freedom Day rally is being staged by the National Union of Journalists at the NUJ head office, Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1 on Thursday May 2, 6pm-8pm.
DATELINE: 27/4/13
UK launch of EU media campaign
DATELINE: 13/3/13
The UK launch of a 'European Citizens' Initiative' calling for EU rules against concentration of media power will take place on Thursday March 21 from 11:00am – 12:30pm in Committee Room 4A at the House of Lords, London. Guest speakers will include actor and activist Hugh Grant (pictured), media consultant Claire Enders, Professor Steven Barnett, Barry McCall (President of the NUJ) and Marc Gruber (Director of the European Federation of Journalists).
A European Citizens' Initiative is an official petition, like a Downing Street petition. If it succeeds in gathering a million signatures across the EU, the Commission is obliged to respond.
This petition calls for the EU to act to protect media pluralism and press freedom.
CPBF Annual General Meeting
DATELINE: 1/3/13
Make a note in your diary
Saturday 13 July 2013 from 10.00am
NUJ HQ, 308/312 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1.
Leveson, media ownership, CPBF future work.
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DATELINE: 26/3/10
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MEDIA FOR ALL CONFERENCE
DATELINE: 26/3/10
Papers from the Media for All Conference
MEDIA MANIFESTO
DATELINE: 26/3/10
The media’s job is to inform and entertain us but we rely on them too to tell us what our rulers and representatives are up to. In the run-up to the Iraq war the government used spin and disinformation in the media to create panic and mislead people. The truth is coming out now, but we need stronger, more independent media to be able to scrutinise governments and make informed choices.
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