BNP row prompts journalists' union to re-publish race reporting guide

The National Union of Journalists has republished its 'Race Reporting Guidelines' after newspapers carried adverts for the British National Party.

Regional publisher Archant has come under fire for its decision to carry advertising for the far-right party ahead of next week's local elections. The company later performed a u-turn, saying it would donate any revenue from the ads to charity.

Now, the NUJ has republished its guidelines, which later may have to include guidance to publishers on advertising too, according to equality officer Lena Calvert. She said: "It's very possible that we will have to take into account adverts. It seems that, if some organisations have thought this is the way to go, then we're going to have to add something in."

She added: "The union always had quite a hard policy on advertorials. We used to have huge debates about them as readers cannot always determine what's advertising and what's editorial. It's quite an ethical problem."

The Race Reporting Guidelines cover a wide variety of topics including immigrants, slang terms, racist organisations and travellers. The decision to republish also comes in the wake of a strongly-worded letter from NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear to Archant chief executive John Fry. In it, he called it an "incredible decision" to accept money from the BNP by some of Archant's local titles.

He added: "The decision to accept money from them is reprehensible enough, to try to argue it is to do with free speech sickening. The NUJ does not have a 'no platform' position. We believe in challenging vigorously all political parties... but advertising is different. The Newspaper Society's legal guidance requires that editorial content, not advertising content, should be fair and balanced. What adverts appear in a title is down to the publisher's decision, with no such restrictions. By accepting such adverts you can only damage the reputation of Archant and the titles the advert appears in."

Download a copy of the Race Reporting Guidelines here.

Hold the front page

Publisher to donate cash from BNP ad

Archant will donate revenues generated from controversial British National Party ads published in its London weekly newspapers to charity, the company said today.

The company issued a statement after some of its papers, including the Hampstead & Highgate Express, provoked controversy by publishing BNP ads for the May 1 Greater London Authority elections earlier this month. A number of Archant titles refused to run the BNP ad after protests from staff, although it is understood to have been published in 11 titles across London.

"Any revenues generated from the BNP adverts will be donated to local community charities," an Archant spokesman said.

"We ran advertisements from the BNP in a number of our titles including the Ham & High. The BNP is a legally constituted political party, advertising in the lead up to the May 1 elections in London," the Archant spokesman said.

"The content of the adverts didn't breach any laws or guidelines. In making the decision to publish we took input from our editors and balanced the liberal principles of free speech against the potential impact on the communities our editors serve."

Archant's announcement comes as the BNP said that it would not run the ad in any other of the company's publications, but planned to place it in other unidentified local papers. Some Archant papers in London's East End, a BNP stronghold, decided not to run the ads.

"In other areas we felt that it would be better to refrain from publishing," Morris said.

"The Hackney Gazette is one of the titles where the clear message from our local team was that carrying the BNP adverts was not in the best interests of the local community and our decision has been that we should not, therefore, carry the advertisement."

An Archant source said the ad would not run in this week's issue of the Hackney Gazette, published on Thursday, but could not say beyond that what might happen.

Mick Ferris, editor of the Hackney Gazette, declined to comment.

The BNP ad provoked local controversy when it ran in the Ham&High, last week, angering staff and readers.

The Ham & High editor, Geoff Martin, wrote an editorial in last week's edition criticising the BNP but defending free speech.

Media Guardian

Ham & High staff furious over BNP ad

One of the country's best-known local newspapers provoked controversy today by running an advert for the British National party.

Staff at north-west London's Hampstead & Highgate Express - known as the Ham&High - are furious at the paper's decision to take an ad for the far-right organisation, a source at the paper told MediaGuardian.co.uk. Reporters at the weekly paper, which has a liberal reputation, were not told of the decision to run the advert until after yesterday's deadline.

A number of titles owned by the Ham&High's parent company Archant have refused to take adverts from the BNP. But the source said the paper's editor, Geoff Martin, wanted the ad to appear to make the case for free speech.

"Nobody here, none of the journalists, are happy," the source said. "He [Martin] is taking advertising money from the BNP for the Ham&High. It's wrong. We wouldn't freelance for the BNP so we don't want our wages as employees of the Ham&High and Archant paid by them."

Residents of the wealthy Hampstead and Highgate areas are known for their liberal tendencies, and they are represented by the leftwing Labour MP Glenda Jackson.

The paper, with a history stretching back almost 150 years, has a large Jewish readership and today's paper runs a feature on the Jewish film festival. The BNP leader Nick Griffin has described the Holocaust as "a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lies and latter-day witch-hysteria". But recently the party has been trying to woo the Jewish vote.

The editor of BNP newspaper Freedom, Martin Wingfield, recently claimed on his blog that "there are an increasing number of Jews campaigning for the BNP and feeling very comfortable with their political choice".

Although the advert, published ahead of next month's local elections, was buried on page 26, Martin dedicated a column to the decision to publish on page four.

"To be able to tolerate those we vehemently disagree with is the hallmark of an open, egalitarian and democratic society, where freedom of speech and expression are sacrosanct," he wrote.

It is not the first time the paper has attracted controversy for featuring the BNP on its pages. In February last year, the paper became embroiled in a row with Labour councillor Theo Blackwell who criticised the Ham&High on his blog after a BNP spokesman was quoted in a front page story about parental objections to a local school's Halal meat-only policy. He accused the paper of giving the far-right organisation "the legitimacy it craves".

Martin insisted the paper was right to quote the BNP as it had been accused of organising intimidating calls to the school concerned.

Writing on his blog today, Blackwell said the paper's decision to run the advert was "a shameless pursuit of profit over principle" and called on local Camden council to "look again" at advertising and sponsorship with Archant titles.

Media Guardian