Join us in welcoming Beckie Shuker to PINF as our new Campaign and Communications Manager. Beckie is a campaigner previously at Oxfam and Save the Children International, where she has worked on campaigns including ending child marriage, climate and economic justice and most recently on Gaza.
Today is my seventh day at PINF and this dispatch is coming to you from the sunny Community Newsroom in Govanhill, home to community magazine Greater Govanhill and investigative journalism platform The Ferret and my local hotdesk.
I've landed at PINF by way of Oxfam, where I worked on the Gaza campaign to bring about a ceasefire. My role was to galvanise public pressure, pushing the UK government to end arms sales to Israel and use its diplomatic power to stop the death and destruction in the region.
Reading back through PINF's previous newsletters in preparation for my new role, I was struck by my excellent predecessor's poignant reflections on the impact of the conflict in Gaza on journalists back in January of this year. We now know that at least 128 journalists and media workers have been killed in the last year, all but two at the hands of Israeli forces, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. The latest to be killed, Hassan Hamad, was just 19 years old.
There are myriad challenges facing journalism and journalists around the world. The most stark challenge, clearly, as Hani pointed out back in January, the fear of targeted or indiscriminate killing in Palestine, Lebanon, India, Afghanistan and many other countries around the world.
However, democratic spaces, the areas where people can have their voices heard and the and mechanisms by which they can hold decision-makers to account are shrinking everywhere, not least in the UK, according to social change organisation the Sheila McKechnie Foundation.
Arguably the main threat facing journalists in the UK is economic survival, as former Lincolnite editor Daniel Ionescu spoke about openly and compellingly on The Journalism.co.uk Podcast last week. As a result, PINF's Local News Map finds large areas of the UK are in news deserts, lacking any coverage from a local news outlet.
We can perhaps draw a link between decreased scrutiny of democratic functions, a population that's less trusting of news than ever before and the UK's vulnerability to societal division.
It's so easy to read about these huge, seemingly all-encompassing challenges we're facing and feel hopeless, but despite having just laid out this gloomy picture, I still choose to feel hopeful.
I'm struck by the parallels between journalism and campaigning, namely, giving people the confidence to engage in and shape their communities, ultimately making them better.
In last week's blog, Hani laid out the incredible work that PINF has already done in just four short years to support independent journalism. I feel incredibly excited to be joining a small but mighty organisation that's working hard to ensure that everyone in the UK can benefit from journalism that speaks to them, for them and with them.
I personally believe that strong, public interest journalism is a hugely important contribution to empowering people to be active members of their communities and in turn, defenders of democracy,
As a campaigner, I feel certain that by coming together and speaking truth to power we can stop the rollback of democratic rights and shrinking civic space that we’ve seen eating away at UK democracy for many years now.
All this to say: I'm excited to get stuck in!
I'm really looking forward to meeting many new colleagues at the Indie News Forum in sunny Glasgow tomorrow. If you're not a lucky attendee this weekend, please don't hesitate to reach out for a chat! My diary is wide open for discussions on journalism, campaigning, live music, hill walking and the best place to get a flat white in the Southside of Glasgow (the jury’s still out).