WHEN the pandemic hit last spring, and unprecedented restrictions soon followed, it became clear that the immediate impact on the news industry was going to be stark. 

The NUJ successfully ensured that newsgatherers were classed as key workers, able to move around as necessary for their work, and we worked with the industry and government to solve problems and negotiate a boost of advertising revenue for newspapers.

Our officials and reps were inundated with industrial work, dealing with furloughs and lay-offs — as ever, certain employers were keen to use the crisis as an excuse for redundancies. 

We fought off pre-emptive attempts to cut pay and conditions without the appropriate consultation and staved off some of the job losses.

What the pandemic did lay bare was the precarious working conditions of our freelances, many of whom saw their work dry up overnight as theatres shut and sporting and other events were suspended. 

With other unions and the TUC, we successfully ensured financial aid for freelances and the self-employed — and went on to lobby hard for the millions of workers who found themselves cast adrift excluded from the government’s support schemes. 

The NUJ’s campaign for a Fair Deal for Freelances is demanding major reforms, meaningful protections for all workers and a right to collective bargaining for freelances.

What started out as a statement in response to the pandemic quickly morphed into a broader plan — the resulting report From Health Crisis to Good News — the NUJ News Recovery Plan tackles the many fault-lines that exist in our industry, ones that have been exacerbated by this crisis. 

Covid-19 demonstrated just how vital reliable trustworthy news and information is — yet it also exposed the industry’s fragility.

Our plan calls for meaningful intervention to transform a sector that has a vital role in the spectrum of essential public services. It offers practical ways in which it could be reconfigured in a way that better roots the industry in the public good. 

Critically, it makes clear any public funding and intervention has to be around key principles of conditionality — the NUJ’s plan is absolutely not about propping up the status quo that has often failed journalists and the communities we serve. 

Any public funding would come with the strings of providing public service journalism and creating diverse newsrooms which reflect all of their readership.

That is why our members have been taking part in a new literacy project, NewsWise, and visiting schools to help young people to understand news and how to source trusted news, plus make them believe that you can be a journalist whatever your background. 

One of the plan’s proposals is for free vouchers for online or print subscriptions to all 18 and 19-year-olds and tax credits for households with subscriptions to boost engagement and fight back against disinformation.

An overarching plank of the recommendations is the need for action to make the tech giants pay their way, something that I’ve been liaising closely with my counterparts in the US, Canada, Australia and with the International Federation of Journalists over this past year. 

For too long they have helped themselves to journalists’ content and repaid them by hoovering up all the digital advertising. 

We saw how the tech giants facilitated the spread of fake news and dangerous conspiracy theories surrounding the virus. 

Our public service broadcasters provided vital public health information, offered families forced to home school more BBC Bitesize content and a local radio initiative Make a Difference co-ordinated support for the elderly, housebound and those at risk. 

The thanks for this from the government is its proposal to flog off Channel 4, probably to a non-UK owner with no stake in nurturing home-grown talent and innovative programming.

The Recovery Plan sets out a range of short and medium-term solutions — from Jobs for Journalists tax credits; tax perks for online or print news subscriptions and local advertising; media literacy initiatives; community asset status for local papers, so companies can’t shut them down without meaningful scrutiny, and the chance for local communities to step in and take them over; funding support for new start-ups; better diversity and plurality; and calling time on the platforms’ free ride with sustainable funding through a digital levy.

The NUJ is calling for a Journalism Foundation to be set up to champion public service journalism, broker new funding channels and new models — including co-operatives and not-for-profits — of journalism. 

The union has also been monitoring the potential impact of surveillance technologies used in response to the Covid-19 challenge, guarding against a consequential impact on journalistic surveillance and targeting of whistleblowers.

One unforeseen consequence of the pandemic has been journalists finding themselves the targets of anti-lockdown protesters. 

Many of you will have seen the hounding of BBC journalist Nick Watts, but many more of our members have been exposed to abuse and threats of violence. This is all adding to a worsening safety situation for journalists. 

That’s why the NUJ supports proposals in a forthcoming broadcasting white paper to explore ways to set the same basic rules for video-on-demand services as traditional broadcasters, in terms of causing harm and offence, hatred and abuse, impartiality, accuracy, protection of under-18s and privacy. 

It is also why we are arguing that the tech giants need to take responsibility for the misinformation and bullying on their platforms.

I am proud of how members rose to the challenge, providing vital news and information in often difficult circumstances.

I am proud of the way the union, its officials, reps and members have pulled together to deal with the industrial consequences caused by Covid-19 and the effect on the wellbeing of members during the crisis. 

In times of trouble, people turn to their union and we had people joining as they saw their jobs and working conditions under threat. 

We’re still dealing with the effects of this crisis, but one thing certain is the case for a strong, independent and properly funded press that values journalists and journalism could not have been made stronger.

Michelle Stanistreet is general secretary of the NUJ.