04.11.09
Look
out for updates on this subject
By Mark Watts
Investigative journalist Kevin Cahill today revealed what he describes as
“hanky panky” in the election for a new editor of the Journalist
magazine.
Miles Barter, the
campaigns and communications officer of the national union of journalists,
who was elected onto the “steering committee” of the far-left
faction, “NUJ Left”, last May, was also outed as involving himself
in Cahill’s complaint that a comment of his to the union’s website
was adulterated.
Cahill was quoted in an article on this website as endorsing
me in the election and referred to himself as being “an NUJ member for
36 years”. He went on to warn
of the dangers to the NUJ of political factions.
Writing on MediaGuardian, Cahill says:
“There was a good bit more hanky panky going on than Mark has yet revealed.
Someone at Headland House [NUJ headquarters] inserted a comment in my blog
entry there, making it appear that I had said I wasn’t a member of the
NUJ: I made no such comment.
“When I queried what was going on, that was amended to, Kevin
Cahill is not a member of the NUJ. In fact both were wrong. My sub had accident-ally
been sent to a colleague’s account, rectified on the spot by membership
as soon as discovered. The point being that someone at Headland House was
both using internal information and amending blog entries in order to discredit
supporters of Mark Watts.
“Now that goes a good bit beyond what Mark has reported. My blog
entry and another by another party, querying the corrupting of my entry, was
not posted.”
Tim Gopsill, the retiring editor of the Journalist, writes
a few hours later: “Twas I as editor (not Miles Barter if that's what
you're inferring [sic]) that amended your comment on the NUJ site.”
“It was nothing to do with discrediting Mark Watts supporters.”
“Kevin sent two posts at the same time one beginning, ‘I
am an NUJ member...’ Naturally, I looked him up on the computer, and
he had been lapsed for arrears of subs in 2006. Tricky one. I suppose I should
have posted his comments and then a separate one from myself pointing out
he was not a member, but, lazily, I guess, I just posted the second one and
added the parenthesis at the end (the membership or not of supporters being
an issue at the time).
“Within an hour or so there must have been some contact with
the membership department because his membership was restored after the discovery
of some error in the allocation of his subs and the second this was drawn
to my attention... I took it off (to be accused by Miles of ‘wimping
out under pressure from Mark Watts’). Apology to Kevin for the brief
slur.”
Gopsill files a further post
less than an hour later: “I must apologise to Miles Barter for quoting
his e-mail to me in my earlier posting. He tells me that when he sent it he
had not known that Kevin Cahill's membership had been restored and thought
I had removed the addendum to his posting simply because of pressure from
the Mark Watts camp. I accept this and say, sorry, Miles.”
Mark Watts – freelance journalist, broadcaster and FOIA
Centre co-ordinator – is standing in the election on the basis that
the new editor of the Journalist should be an independent journalist at heart
– not a politicised activist. He is not a member of any political party
or group.
Comment
on this article
Union staff campaign for ‘NUJ
Left’ candidate
NUJ extends voting period
following request
Four election candidates
seek vote extension
NUJ peer raises election issue
in parliament
Watts unmasks ‘NUJ
Left’ candidate in circular
C4 News anchor Jon
Snow backs Watts for editor
Former BBC political
reporter supports Watts
Top journalists back
Watts election campaign
More journalists
support election bid by Watts
Watts campaigns for independent
Journalist
FOIA
specialist in election for Journalist editorship
Journalistic background
of Mark Watts
Comments
on Journalist election (7)
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