Mike Norton, editor of the Bristol Evening Post, and Steve Brodie, BBC Points West Home Affairs correspondent, join the panel for Hacked to Bits, the 2012 Benn Debate this Friday
HARD PRESSED:  This year Bristol NUJ expands its annual Benn Lecture into two events on the future of the media. Leading with the ground-breaking documentary Page One, the evening is topped off by some of the biggest hitters from the Leveson inquiry debating the
future of press regulation in Hacked to Bits: The Benn Debate 2012.  The event is co-produced with Bristol Festival of Ideas, supported by MediaAct and MediaWise.
Hacked to bits: Restoring public trust in journalism – the Benn Debate
7.30pm Friday March 16th, Arnolfini, Bristol.
Lord Hunt, chair of the PCC, will explain why he now thinks the PCCÂ can be reformed under a new name, and we’ll also hear from Christopher Jefferies about how he was hounded by the national press after the killing of Jo Yeates.
Steve Brodie, who has followed the Jo Yeates case, will look at the role of the police and the press in the controversy which followed Mr Jefferies’ arrest.
Other panelists include reformed tabloid writer Richard Peppiatt, Hacked Off co-ordinator Thais Portilho-Shrimpton, and the chair is national NUJ President Donnacha DeLong. Bristol NUJ has brought together a remarkable panel of nationally-known figures to debate these vital issues.
Lord Hunt – chairman of the Press Complaints Commission and former Conservative Cabinet minister
Christopher Jefferies – a happily retired school teacher until he was libelled by several newspapers over the Jo Yeates murder
Thais Portilho-Shrimpton – co-ordinator of the Hacked Off campaign against phone hacking, she has kept a close vigil on the Leveson Inquiry and knows many of the key figures who have given evidence
Richard Peppiatt – a former Daily Star reporter, he has spoken out about how he felt obliged to make up stories and how he felt the Star had an anti-Muslim agenda
Mike Norton  -  editor of the Bristol Evening Post; former Editorial Director at Northcliffe West & Wales; former editor of the Derby Evening Telegraph
Steve Brodie – Home Affairs Correspondent of BBC Points West, responsible for a wide brief covering crime, prisons, courts and emergency services across the West.
PLUS
Page One: Inside the New York Times – a documentary
5.30pm Friday March 16th
First showing in Bristol of this remarkable fly-on-the-wall film about one of the world’s great newspapers as it faces up to the challenges of a revolution in the needs of media consumers.
Pricing
Both events        £11.50        or £8.50 concessions and NUJ members.
Film Only           £ 6.50        or £5.00 concessions and NUJ members
Debate Only       £ 6.50        or £5.00 concessions and NUJ members
Arnolfini,
16 Narrow Quay
Bristol,
Avon BS1 4QA;
0117 917 2300
http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/events/details/1297
The Benn Lectures
Every year since 2005 the annual Bristol NUJ Benn Lectures have brought together the public, the Bristol media community and a guest speaker of national distinction, in a chance to debate the most pressing journalistic and political issues of our times.
Past Benn Lecturers include Bristol politician, writer and NUJ honorary member Tony Benn; Journalist of the Year 2008 Andrew Gilligan; Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown; and Nick Davies, the Guardian investigative journalist who revealed the phone hacking scandal,  and is also a Bristol Festival of Ideas book prize winner for his bestseller Flat Earth News.
For 2012 The Benn Lecture Marks a momentous year for journalism with a debate featuring leading figures from across the journalistic world.
 The Bristol Festival of Ideas aims to stimulate people’s minds and passions with an inspiring programme of discussion and debate, featuring figures of national distinction. It seeks to provide an annual festival of debate and discussion in May with special events through the year. Overall, it is keen to link arts and sciences. It does not shy away from controversial issues and speakers and seeks to engage widely in the city.
MediaAct is a comparative research project on media accountability systems across EU member states and the Arab world, using these as indicators of media pluralism. The UK part of the project is based at the University of the West of England with MediaWise.
MediaWise (formerly PressWise) is an independent journalism ethics charity based at UWE. Set up in 1993 by victims of media abuse, it operates on the principle that press freedom is a responsibility exercised by journalists on behalf of the public, and that the public have a right to know when the media publish inaccurate information.
