The NEU kept children and teachers safe during the pandemic, yet we are disgracefully slandered by the politicians who have truly failed our children by not funding a proper education recovery programme — here’s what is needed, explains KEVIN COURTNEY

TWO months ago as the Morning Star implemented remote working I outlined some of the challenges that the lockdown would pose for the Morning Star.
With people advised to stay at home, shop sales of the paper have fallen sharply as they have across the print industry. Hundreds of publications are making cuts and many have furloughed large numbers of staff.
The crisis hits a sector already in decline: newspaper sales have been falling for years and many proprietors have responded by cutting quality journalism, especially at local papers, where many have closed entirely and others have seen news teams merged into regional hubs, each producing a number of different local papers – denying many areas a genuinely local media voice with a serious impact on democracy at town and county level. The loss of local media jobs has also removed a route into national journalism for working-class people, meaning the editorial staff and opinion writers at national papers are more than ever drawn from the richest sections of the population.

Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO reports from the start of Kunming’s Belt and Road media forum, where 200 journalists from 71 countries celebrated a new openness and optimism, forged by China’s enormous contribution to global development

Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO reports on TUC Congress discussions on how to confront the far right and rebuild the left’s appeal to workers