"Tou will tear tbe unico apart. Ros The branch voted The Express chapel voted nimously to defend Cummings. The mult of the complaint is pending.
Hours of an organisational split in he NUJ regularly fill the columns of the ewspaper trade press, accompanied by unfare of editorial trumpets. In the wing as ine super-professional instige of urnalists, a bastion of the proprietors' and editors' press freedom, unction of never having called a strike i it 100-year history while routinely cabbing on the NUIS In the union a right-wing group bas Jus launched, subtly entitled Allied armalists Against Xiremism", Needless o say, it is not the extremism of the media ises they have in mind, but primarily hastle for the post-entry closed shop Get (with some reason) to threaten their Tyranny of the columns and air waves.
POTENTIAL THREAT The threat is a porcotial one. Fleet Street ournalists together with those who stall the newsrooms of the national broadcastatrial benefits of virtual closed shops while dutifully deilvering the editoria goods.
But the provincial and local press are matler. Here Journalists par compares unfavourably with that in other professional Jobs and extremely badly THE TRAGE LEC vorkers in the media. A job on a national paper was once the carrot to keep the provincials quiet, but Fleet Street's ecosomic crisis has largely put paid to that. And over the Aram of radicalised graduales has begun ten years a steady to fill the reports" and sub-editors" desks butside the metropolitan press.
The result has been mounting militancy over pay and conditions in the provinoes a militancy which has inevitably mean hat journalists have increasingly found themselves rubbing shoulders with the labour movement. ess easy to wield the hatchets beloved of Fleet Street's hacks Racism, as David Ross appreciated, is journalists outside the ranks of the far left are starting to break in practice from the bourgeois tumber are prepared to take sides against that this is reflected in the editorial columns.
As the Campaign Against Racism in Enc Media (CARM) records in its pamphlet In Black and White: Rocist Reporting and How to Fight Ir, much of the local press lays a prominent part in reinfarcing acit attitudes. Ter over the past tew months a string of local papers have produced anti-fascisc material that would grace the pages of the socialiat press.
No mealy-mouthed liberalism about the rextremes being as bad as each DUNG HEAP We are dealing, of course, with merely the tip of a gigantic dung heap. With ouls Britain stoically advance a view of society which snugly fits the interests of those who profit from it, shading their editorial sandpoints to address either our rulers themselves or the social democracy which serves to buffer them.
In themain, the media laud the status qu and lash out at everything that socialists light for, whether It be tho women, blacks and guys, pickets, the rights of the Irish people lo self-determination, a workers' solution 1o the crisis, or the advancement of revolution on a global scale While it would be absurd to argue that the mass media only reflect the views of n which the closed shop growing Margaret Thatcher or Jim Callaghan, it is the day the millions whose views are to the left of centre of the Labour Party rarely find a representative voice in the TV an Cotinuist Parties, British social- Unlike the No democracy has not had a daily paper since the Daily Herald ceased to eves tbe Heraid, financed by the unions. hacked right wing social-democratic poucies, which largely explains its precipitate decline Miss distribution of informaton gad pinion in Britain is a virtual monopoly if a few capitalist concern porations national; News International: nod Beaverbrook, now owned by Trafalgar House -control 64 percent of total daily news paper circulation, and a provinces a monopoly exists in all bu hree towns and cities. For good measure a handful of wholesale distributors ensure that only magazines reach the retail outlers Advertising welds a direct lick betweer Ene press barons and neir chums u lie City.
Financial increase five fold; that of the Daily Mirror three fold.
Commercial TV and radio feeds (and, The press barons plead [with some justification] that the National Union of Journalats' battle for now focussed on the Darlington strike [top| -press freedom. What they fear is more of the kind of coverage Journalists on the East Ender and other local papers are now producing against racism.
Westminster Press, chapel officers in the Nationel Graphical Association vored last weekend to remain on strike in support of the journalists, and the NUJ Executive voted 10 to 9 to reject mediation on any basis other than the right to a 100per percent closed shop.
unlike much of the national press, somely profits) off the same table. Yet the fact that the independent' BBC is, if anything, even more riebt wing than its press Freuch to the merits of Special Branch scrutiny of jab applicants, the art of and the siffocation of an omniscien Thouga bureaucracy.
The lubour movement is by no menis blind to this travesty of press treedom Predicters a or their action wit anything but contempt. That the majorit then revert to a decided; less Three cor- frame of reference is another nart of Reed Inter rarely pass without bricks being chucked at the press gang.
SOCIAL CONTRACT The labour leaders ChanCe While neuspapers. IC have had sold support from mass media for maintaining the -EnC Tavour of the Tory Party and the frequen attacks on individual union leaders casur have buel told the Royal Commision on Council told the the Press: *The facr that eight men contro While the union leaders have been doing their best to sell out the Darlingion strike against hand.
Orwellian
[ self-bensorship.
action revente critical nius for halance"
general seCTeLaTy SOGAT, have have their own local governeten weighting the movement itsell.
TUC Genera HIDE HI rurbing a hornets' nest. _ threatevis their monopoly of capitalist 90 per cent of Britain's papers means that SOCCE the concept of "freedom of expression or independence of editoria!' it somewhat The rain planks of the TUC's pobey, l IDE WHERE DETHE ERDOUL CANCE for: "A continuous check on the ownership and control (of the media) to preven and actively lo promate (its) dispersion'; the setting ! of a National Finance Corporation, whic and lease printing plant STEE representative interest groups with the venture': a continuous monitoring of all media output, to check distortions, etc and the capacity to redress any lack ol Although Individuals such as Bill Keys.
print union done some quiet paigning lately for the setting up of bour movement mars day co has union produced derailed proposals for a medin monitorine operation to be carried out b the ramme has remained placidis • LOT ALL LACE OCA gogic denunciations of Murdoch & Co - are doubtless aware that they risk di One probiem is that too much talk of workers in the Daily Mail's machine roar to a leading article headed For King and mass upsurge, control of the a major hattle front.
Association for Freedom' alrendy boasts that it has the means to publish a nations down, and we can be quite certale that military preparations have been made lo salecuard RHC. shidias and instailations.
REPUBLICA Bur deorivine the bourgeoise - or Indeed any part of the workers" move