Kjære Kristine og kollegaer,

Jeg heter George Macintyre. Jeg kommer fra Skottland, men siden nitten nitti (1990) har jeg bodd og arbeidet i Newcastle. Jeg har jobbet som journalist siden nitten sytti fire. Mellom nitten nitti åtte og to tusen og fem var jeg medlem i NEC i NUJ i UK og Irland, og i to tusen og tre ble jeg valgt til NUJs president. 24, mars i  fjor  ble jeg utnevnt til aeres medlem, av NUJ for mine tjenster for foreningen siden nitten sytti fem. I dag er jeg formann og sekretær i Newcastle NUJ.
 
Men nå er det best jeg fortsetter på engelsk - for jeg snakker bare litt norsk.
 
BRITISH journalism is facing many challenges but the key issue is one I describe as the two Qs – the quality of journalism and the quantity (number) of journalists now employed in the British media.
Of course, the numbers depends on your definition of a journalist. According to the Newspaper Society there is no problem – those of us who work in the industry know there are fewer qualified journalists being employed and that when one leaves they are seldom, if ever, replaced.

Norway has been fortunate. It did not, as far as I am aware, suffer 10 years without labour protection, in reality the derecognition of union rights - a situation that allowed newspaper owners and executives such as David Montgomery, installed by the banks to cut costs to the bone at the Mirror Group, to sap new staff of the confidence needed to challenge the impact of poor working conditions on the quality of journalism.

Media corporations – and chief executives such as "Rommel"  (as Montgomery was called by the Mirror journalists because Field Marshal Bernard 'Monty' Montgomery was on Britain's side during the Second World War) who subjected staffing levels at The Independent and the Mirror Group to what can only be described as "brutal surgery" – used their increased power to turn editors into accountants and newspapers into advertising cash cows. 

 Consequently UK journalists were unable to resist cuts in newsroom budgets and came under increased – and prevailing – pressure to give advertisers and sponsors unwarranted influence over news agendas.

Matters have improved slightly since the reintroduction of limited labour protection laws and the re-recognition (though not automatic) of trades unions. However, British journalists are becoming increasingly concerned at the continuing pressures on the quality of their work.

There is – some may say understandably – public concern over the quality of the media (recent opinion surveys suggest that trust in journalists has reached an all-time low, ranking us alongside politicians and way behind doctors and teachers) while concerns over job security and working conditions continue to take their toll among journalists.

When I joined journalism in 1974 the editor was god. The phrase "the editor's decision is final" did not just appear as a legal nicety on competitions, it carried a great deal of weight. Today the editor's decision may still be final but it is a decision influenced in many cases not by news sense but by business plans, advertisers, sponsors and, perhaps worse of all, accountants. There is no protection under British legislation for those editors who would stand up to the newspaper owners and put news before business/advertising revenue. I have it on very good authority that all editors from one major newspaper group were gathered together, informed what the company was expecting from them and told in no uncertain terms the choice was their’s – FIFO (fit in or fuck off).

In the eyes of management, the accountant is now indispensable. No longer do they just tell you that your budget was x and your actual expenditure was x+y, they now tell editors they have exceeded their monthly pagination and that so many colour pages or so many pages in total must be dropped from the next week's editions to balance this.

As an example of unwarranted intrusion into news agendas we need only look at regional development agencies set up by the British Government to create jobs and to publicise their successes through press releases and the publication of supplements.

If it ended here there would be no problem but I know of one newspaper where reporters say they have been told they must, when possible, include a quote from the regional development agency in all stories and that agency must always be shown in a positive light.

This results in newspapers dancing to the Government's tune.

Because the accountants, arguably the most powerful people in the media industry today, want to keep the money flowing into the company's coffers there is, in some areas, no investigative journalism into the affairs of the development agencies, only a blanket acceptance of what has been supplied by the agency's press officers. This takes control of the news agenda out of the hands of journalists and places it firmly in the hands of the Government and its agencies.

It is also a regular occurrence, more and more journalists are saying, for advertisers/sponsors of supplements to demand – and get - changes to edited copy, often restoring cut references to products and unsubstantiated claims of excellence.

Even Premiership football teams have had to get in on the act. Twice in recent years staff reporters of The Journal in Newcastle have been banned from Newcastle United's St James's Park because the team's management did not like the match reports. But this problem is not confined to Newcastle, it is one faced by newspapers throughout Britain and it is even more worrying for freelances who can lose their livelihoods if a regular source of income from football reporting is snatched away from them on a whim.

There was even an incident when one player assaulted a reporter from the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle, because he took offence at the way his performance was reported. The NUJ demanded an apology. United's management said they were sorry - it was a case of mistaken identity – the player had hit the wrong reporter.

Many Premiership clubs have also made repeated attempts to tell newspapers what to print – and repeatedly insist that match photographs should only be used to illustrate the report of the match and, after that, the club should be paid substantial fees every time the photographs are reproduced. To date such moves have been rejected.

Slashing editorial staff - and Montgomery is an expert at this – started in the late 1990s and this continues not only at Trinity Mirror but also at The Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Independent and all regional newspapers.

The effects cannot be overestimated. One morning regional title now has only three full-time night sub-editors and, at the time of writing, three general reporters. It also has only three district reporters – one covering 1,500 square miles and two countries (his beat crossing over into Scotland). Of course, we all know that with modern technology one person can produce a newspaper of sorts but at the end of the day the reader is the loser - being robbed of their money and cheated out of quality reporting.

Into this kingdom of depleted staff steps the PR man as king. Resource-intensive journalism is always the first victim as public relations machines and vested interests intrude into newsrooms. It is easy to say that good journalists will not succumb to the pressures of the "hidden agenda" of political parties or advertisers/sponsors but, more than once, stories have reached the sub-editors word for word – including notes to editors and contact numbers - as sent in by the PR agency or organisation press officer.

Too few staff means such stories cannot be rewritten or balanced - again betraying the trust the readers have placed in us. PR companies and big businesses can, and often do, set the agenda without important, probing questions being asked of them.  The lines between editorial and advertising have been blurred putting not only newspaper quality and credibility at risk but also placing democracy itself in question. Are we citizens or consumers?

The internal pressures on editorial budgets I mentioned earlier, the convergence of different types of media – print, podcasts, text messaging and online editions – without significant or proper training and increased competition are only part of the problem.

The main areas of concern – which I believe could arise in Norway if Montgomery sheds the guise of a respectable pan-European newspaper owner and once again dons the cloak of the Tyrant that is so well-known in British journalism – are:

· Reduction in the status of journalism and decrease in the confidence of journalists
· Reduction in the scope of editorial coverage
· Pressure to integrate advertising and commercial objectives into editorial work
· Falling circulation (when I joined the Newcastle Journal its circulation was around 90,000 now it is nearer 46,000 but it and the centre are making much larger profits both in global figures and per employee)
· Less investment in professional training (in so-called trickle down training favoured by many managers one or two people are shown how to do a job and are then expected to show the rest of their colleagues what to do)
· No extra payments for extra skills

Traditional working practices such as the protection of sources are also coming under serious attack from new anti-terrorism legislation and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act – with police, government offices, corporations, advertisers and special interest groups wanting to know who journalists are talking to and why. Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act if police demand your encryption key this must be supplied and heavy fines imposed on anyone warning their sources that the police can decode messages between you.

Another major challenge facing today's journalist is that almost all modern journalism is underpinned by a corporate setting that limits and – ultimately – influences what journalists do by establishing a dominant culture based on business, commercial and consumer interests, not democracy, participation and citizen.

Most of us here today might not always be sure about what is at the heart of the mission of journalism, but we'll agree that is our basic business is to find out, communicate accurately and be trusted. It is, therefore, crucial that in the context of the ascendancy of the corporation's global power, journalists should re-establish confidence in themselves and their collective strength to maintain standards and quality.

In the United Kingdom, the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct is part of British journalists’ contract of employment. If we breach it we can be dismissed. The National Union of Journalists has its own Code of Conduct and has been arguing that the PCC code should include a conscience clause. It is our belief that if a journalist is asked to carry out an assignment they feel breaches the PCC code and leaves them open to dismissal, they can refuse to do it without fear of reprisal or disciplinary action. This has been refused both by the PCC and Society of Editors who insist that no one would be asked or expected to do anything in breach of the code.

One macabre interpretation of this was the introduction of the "Death-Knock" League at one British evening paper. Dismissed as a piece of harmless fun by the Editor, reporters were awarded points for the amount of information collected on death knocks – for example, three points for full details and a collect photograph; two points for full details but no photograph; and zero points for anything less. Reporters were warned that relegation – possibly to a less important beat - was a very real possibility.

We, as journalists, must insist on the right to be included in the editing process, to help establish internal structures for dialogue on standards, to have access to training opportunities for all staff (including freelances and journalists working on online editions and websites), to have a say in anti-discrimination policies and recruitment strategies. Included in this agenda should be standards of editorial independence (respect for codes of conduct and freedom to act according to conscience) as well as mid-career training opportunities coupled with targeted awareness-raising on key questions – such as human rights reporting, tolerance and conflict issues, stereotyping, and so on.

But, colleagues, it is the issue of new media that has once again started exercising the minds of major media players. Faced by digital television, mobile news, internet and free newspapers, they see this as the next area where they can expand. They have had time to learn from the pitfalls of the dotcom craze, and now hope to establish news services that help fill the growing gaps in local and community news services which opened as a result of their cuts in resources.

Both Trinity Mirror and the Daily Mail and General Trust plc have spent millions buying up internet advertising sites, and soon they may look towards consolidating content that appears on the web.

Peter Sand, Director of the Press Association Editorial Centre, believes that "the journalists who thrive will be driven individuals who can find compelling content and have the skills to deliver it via print, video, podcasts, the web and SMS messaging. The key lesson for journalists, as it was in the '80s and '90s, is to simply gain the skills needed for the next stage. Quickly."

As journalists we accept these are major challenges that must be faced if our industry is to embrace the future and move forward. However, while the major companies are still working out how to make money from these, it is important that journalists – and not just accountants – take part in any debate on ethics and the principles of new media journalism that will form the agenda for change.

While journalists face these and many other challenges, the greatest will be to ensure that all journalists are properly trained in, and adequately paid for, any new skills they develop otherwise the downward spiral of poor quality and ever decreasing staff levels will continue.

But not all is gloom and disaster, colleagues. The National Union of Journalists has launched its Journalism Matters campaign. Not reported in the Press, this campaign has won considerable support from Members of Parliament, members of the Welsh Assembly and in the Scottish Parliament.

It has seen newspaper executives such as Trinity Mirror's Sly Bailey grilled by MPs and assembly members who demanded to know why her journalists were not asking more probing questions of them, the Government and the business  community as a whole.

The campaign has many key issues, but colleagues I leave you today with the three – in my view – most important challenges facing journalists today:

· Getting good, quality journalists on the job in the community: reporting about the community, for the community and with the community.

· Asking the questions of politicians, police and big businesses that the communities in which we work want asked – not just churning out advertising pap (check what this is in Norwegian)

· Winning back the trust and respect – so needlessly squandered by our employers - of the communities we serve.