After two failed attempts – broadly summarized as “you said it first”, and ” a bad boy did it and ran away” – to explain why EPUK was described as “not doing ‘upmarket’” in an NUJ publication, EPUK are proud to publish the NUJ’s latest apology in full, which we hope will finally draw a line under the matter.
In common with many other progressive working class organisations, the National Union of Journalists has eagerly moved forward into the twentieth century embracing the technology known as the “internet”.
Indeed the NUJ’s latest initiative, Quality Street, employs tools so cutting edge they have only been available since the last millennium.
However our attention has been drawn to the fact that in the May edition of NUJ newsletter The Freelance we compared Quality Street to EPUK, and claimed to quote from the EPUK website that the latter “does not do upmarket”.
The NUJ now accepts that no such description exists or has ever existed on the EPUK website. We further accept that to the best of our knowledge no such description has ever existed of EPUK anywhere except in material produced by the NUJ and the voices in our head.
This inconvenient fact has led some observers to conclude that the NUJ, in contravention of our own journalists’ code of conduct, simply invented this quote as a slur on EPUK in an attempt to justify the existence of Quality Street when many similar forums have already existed for some years. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact what happened was simply an error caused by the adoption of such advanced technology. The original text on EPUK recognised that organisation’s leading role in providing a voice for photographers who have long been ignored by those who traditionally claim to represent them. The phrase “doesn’t do upmarket” was intended for an unrelated profile on leading NUJ activist Chris Wheal. Unfortunately at the hot metal stage of layout the EPUK text was accidentally replaced by the text meant for the Chris Wheal profile, leading to the subsequent confusion.
The NUJ welcomes this opportunity to set the record straight, and apologises for any offence caused to EPUK members, who we recognise cover a broad range of the market, including many areas where the NUJ has no representation.
