In this Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom podcast, Nicholas Jones discussed the media coverage of dissent during 2011 with two of those closely involved – Naomi Colvin, a leading supporter and organiser of OccupyLSX and Jason Parkinson, a video and print journalist who reported from Dale Farm and who is secretary of the London photographers’ branch of the National Union of Journalists.

This review of the gig appeared in musicOMH.com.

Photo by Aaron Gekoski

Sharks get a bad press, so bad that the fact that 100 million sharks are killed every year, that’s a 110,000 every hour, and a third of species are facing extinction is met with little international outrage.

Many sharks are killed as a by-catch of commercial fisheries using long line nets, however, it’s the increasing demand for shark fin soup,considered a delicacy in China and other parts of Asia, that has ensured that we’ve lost an estimated 90% of our sharks in the last 50 years.

It’s estimated that around 70 million sharks a year are killed for the practice known as ‘finning’, whereby their dorsal fins are sliced off, into the sea where the shark dies, slowly.

Over recent years, Mozambique’s waters have become a haven for shark fishermen, devastating shark populations, but also inadvertently, shark finning is poisoning local communities. This feature on finning appears in this months New Internationalist.

Four days of rioting and looting in London, Birmingham, Manchester and other major towns and cities was a testing time not only for the police and the courts but also for the news media.

Blanket coverage on television news channels was blamed by some for inciting continuing unrest and copy-cat crimes.  Widespread use of messaging services and social networking sites raised worrying speculation about the extent of state surveillance of mobile phones and the internet. 

Tabloid newspapers leapt at the chance to promote a tough law-and-order clampdown. Unprecedented exploitation of images captured on closed circuit television helped the police make hundred of arrests. Again the popular press were cheer leaders, publishing their own “rogues’ galleries” of potential suspects.

Nicholas Jones from the Campaign for Press & Broadcasting Freedom chairs a discussion aimed at examining the many issues involved.

He talks to a broadcaster, photographer and journalist with wide experience of the difficulties of reporting civil unrest: Alex Pascall, presenter of the radio programme Black Londoners and a well respected voice of the Caribbean community, Jess Hurd, chair of the London photographers’ branch of the National Union of Journalists, and Tim Gopsill, former editor of The Journalist who has written extensively on the way the media report protests and demonstrations.

25 years on- News International Dispute, commemorates one of the longest and most bitterly fought industrial disputes in the labour movement history. In January 1986, a 13 month  dispute began when Rupert Murdoch and News International, plotted to move production of his papers overnight from Fleet Street, the traditional home of national newspapers, to a new plant at Wapping in East London, sacking 5,500 workers in the process.

This lead to the strike by print unions at Murdoch’s papers, The Sun, News of the World and The Times, and a hundred ‘refusnik’ jounalists, who fought to save thousands of jobs and the rights of the workers. 25 years on, celebrates this struggle and former BBC Political correspondent, Nicholas Jones talks to a number of Wapping veterans for the Radio Free Press podcast, including the exhibition organiser, Ann Field, a 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, and Graham Dodkins, former library worker at The Times and co-author with John Lang of a new book, Bad News The Wapping Dispute.

 25 Years On: News International Dispute 1986-87 runs from 1 May-31 May at the Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green, London EC1.

www.newint.org

In August the NUJ campaigned successfully to win Charles’s release from detention at the Dover immigration removal centre. Since then he has been moved around different hostels in London waiting for the judicial review to decide his case.

For more information on the campaign for Charles visit www.nuj.org.uk

Article courtesy of the National Union of Journalists

John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination in Europe, said: “A complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion of those women who wear the burqa or the niqab as an expression of their identity or beliefs.  As a general rule, the rights to freedom of religion and expression entail that all people should be free to choose what – and what not – to wear. These rights cannot be restricted simply because some – even a majority – find a form of dress objectionable or offensive.”

The law, which must still be approved by the French Senate, prohibits the wearing anywhere in public of any form of clothing intended to conceal one’s face. Breach of the law would be punishable by a fine of up to 150 Euros and / or the requirement to complete a community rehabilitation programme. The law also provides for a penalty of up to one year imprisonment and a fine of up to 30,000 Euros for those who use force or threats to oblige others to cover their faces.

Advocates for the ban in France have characterised full-face veils as contrary to French Republican values, incompatible with gender equality and a threat to public safety.  States are obliged under international law to protect women against pressure and threats to wear full-face veils.  John Dalhuisen said: “Comprehensive bans are not the way to protect women against pressure and threats to wear full-face veils. They carry a risk that women who currently wear full face veils will become confined to their homes, less able to work or study and to access public services. Governments should instead be looking to strengthen efforts to combat the discrimination faced by Muslim women, both in their communities and in the broader societies in which they live.”

© WOMANKIND Worldwide / Reineira Arguello

It’s estimated that more than 260 million people worldwide are affected by caste discrimination and as ‘untouchables’, lower caste members are considered ‘impure’ and polluting to others. In Nepal, ‘Dalit’ means ‘broken people’ and is the name the ‘untouchable’s’ have chosen for themselves. Dalit’s suffer an apartheid of segregation, slavery and 90% of Dalit women live below the poverty line.
 
Durga Sob, who was born into the Dalit caste, is a founding member of The Feminist Dalit Organisation. FEDO campaigns to empower Dalit women and to fight against the brutal sexual and domestic violence, extreme poverty and segregation which is part of their every day lives. I wrote this feature about Durga which appeared in the New Internationalist.

www.womankind.org.uk