Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom (CPBF)
for diverse, democratic and accountable media
If we want peace, justice and sustainability we need land, money and media reform. Land and banking reform are the big ones, but we need media reform first; without it we'll never have the quality of public discourse needed to bring about wider systems change. As activist and author David Korten once put it: The key to changing the course of the human future, is to change the … [Read more...]
by Tim Gopsill One of the prevailing sounds of the summer was the call of the BBC news bulletin bearing the daily accusation of Labour Party anti-semitism, delivered in tones of feigned regret that the party seemed unable to bring the story to a halt. Of course the entire national press were at it as well, but wasn’t the BBC supposed to be different? Not any more. For … [Read more...]
by Julian Petley What has resolutely united such unlikely bedfellows as the Guardian and the Telegraph, the Mail and the Mirror? It’s the Cliff Richard judgement, and their objections to it are as wrong-headed and ill-informed as they are unanimous. Briefly, they are concerned that Mr Justice Mann “has decided that article 8 [of the European Convention on Human Rights], … [Read more...]
ReutersA report by Reuters documents many of the most horrifying cases of anti-Muslim and anti-Rohingya Facebook postings in Burma/Myanmar and reveals how Facebook’s response to complaints of hate speech on its Burmese site has been under-resourced and inadequate despite repeated warnings from independent observers, some delivered to Facebook executives at its head office in … [Read more...]
by Gary Herman Four decades ago, when the Campaign was launched, the media landscape in Britain looked very different. We lived in an analogue age that was before the arrival of giant global advertising machines like Google and Facebook. It was before the launch of smartphones that gave everyone who owned one a window on the internet they could fit into a pocket. It was … [Read more...]
by Tom O'Malley By the 1970s, with the ever-increasing power of television and the sharp turn to the right in the tabloid and quality press, there grew a powerful sense amongst trade unionists, the women’s movement, anti-racists, the gay rights movement and the Labour party that the media needed reform. As far as I know, the CPF, founded in 1979 was the first attempt in … [Read more...]
by Tom O'Malley In 1986 the Report on the Committee on Financing the BBC chaired by Alan Peacock was published. It laid out a future in which public service broadcasting would become an ever-decreasing element in a world of commercially dominated communications. With Greater London Council funding, the CPBF, along with trade unions, campaigned vigorously against the main … [Read more...]
by James Curran Seething union activists at a Nottingham conference in 1979 demanded to know from press workers what they were going to do about press lies and distortions. I was at the conference as a stray media historian, and joined the huddle of people from the press. We decided – rather defensively – to set up a reform group. We called it the Campaign for Press … [Read more...]
We want to thank the Unite GPM&IT Sector and Unison (Scottish Region) for the financial support to produce the final issue of Free Press. We received this statement from Tony Burke, Unite Assistant General Secretary: Unite and its GPM&IT Sector is sad to see the ending of the Campaign For Press and Broadcasting Freedom, after many years of working with the Campaign, … [Read more...]
by Granville Williams This final issue of Free Press (.pdf) looks at what the CPBF set out to do, what it achieved and also indicates what the urgent issues for media reform are now. Inevitably space constraints mean that there are gaps. We mention only a few of the books and pamphlets produced over the years by the CPBF. Free Press did special supplements when the US … [Read more...]