Tuesday, November 21, 2006
A Sad Decline in Hack Bullying
I am shocked - do you hear me? - shocked by this story in The Guardian. And appalled. Shocked and appalled. Apparently only 40 per cent of newspaper journalists have experienced bullying. In TV and radio, the figure drops to a miserable 21 per cent. In my day, bullying and being bullied were essential aspects of our training. I dimly seem to remember an exam on the subject. Editors have plainly gone soft and are, therefore, nurturing a generation of whining, unbullied and unbullying hacks. I console myself, however, with the possibility that this article is not entirely reliable. It also tells us that 25 per cent of journalists working in PR have been bullied. Journalists in PR? Oh come on, even I know that's just an old urban myth.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
Is there nobody going to come out and say bullying is a terrible thing? Perhaps you all agree.
ReplyDeleteYou are a bit bullish, taunting even bullying, in your tone. It's not conducive to a frank exchange of views.
ReplyDeleteThis pugilist is at rest.
ReplyDeleteBullying is a terrible thing; second only to vanity.
ReplyDeleteBryan, so how were you bullied? I remember being sent out by my Glaswegian news editor with an empty notebook and told not to return unless I had at least half a dozen good stories, that puts a certain fear in you, does it count as bullying?
ReplyDeleteI did one day return from my off-diary calls with a murder story too which the police had kept quiet about! And now I'm a PR journalist, but that newshound feeling never diminishes.
Many thanks, Prime Minister, I too have seen more hard hitting material in Hello!. I try not to hit hard on the whole.
ReplyDeleteEllee,
ReplyDeleteMy first editor we called The Vilest Man in Britain after a Sunday People headline of the time. He was deranged and very nasty indeed. He once introduced me to a Sunday People executive so creepy that I did actually wipe may hand after shaking his. He later said of him, 'Never underestimate X.' This struck me then and now as incredibly funny as X was self-evidently beneathy all possible estimations. Such people made my life hell. Journalism has been shotting fish in a barrel ever since.
Don't presume to agree with me, Mr Appleyard. I am the Prime Minister.
ReplyDeleteI remember you.
ReplyDeleteYes, I do seem to remember somebody called X.
ReplyDelete