The Thirty Third Blog Of Trig - The Guardian International Development Journalism Competition 2012

A friend who has gotten into journalism work recommended me to enter a competition hosted by The Guardian the other day. He himself entered the competition in recent years and was one of the selected few to get published and win an all-expenses paid trip abroad to cover a story. I was interested and jumped to the website to have a look (http://www.guardian.co.uk/journalismcompetition), to read that entrants had to write 650-1000 words on one of 16 specified humanitarian themes or issues in the world. At the top of the page, the sponsorship money from Barclays Bank and GlaxoSmithKline advertised their brands proudly, bringing to my attention a disconcerting but not unfamiliar sense of hypocrisy.

To further emphasise the cause of my attention to these sponsors I will first list the themes available to entrants, which are: Filling the skills gap in African health care systems; Giving birth - the most dangerous thing an African woman can do?; Poverty and HIV: a lethal combination?; The legacy of HIV: the people left behind; How can financial inclusion improve the lives of poor people?; Why does it take images of starving children for the world to act?; Is education the greatest weapon for change in the developing world?; A human right to choose?; The contraception conundrum; After emergencies, how can communities move from short-term disaster relief to long-term recovery?; What steps need to be taken to end extreme poverty and reach economic security?; Advancing women's rights in fragile states; How are people in the global South responding to climate change?; Malnutrition: The Hidden Crisis; The vital role of healthworkers in reducing child mortality; Growing the future: how can farming attract more young people?

Now: Barclays. I have a fairly negative opinion of banks, for their indiscriminate investments into global corporations responsible for everything from oil spills, to high-tech weaponry, dangerous chemicals and by-products, sweat shops employing children at slave wages, planned product obsolescence, fraudulent financial activities and tax dodging, money laundering, funding of mass-murderers, but also for the very fraudulent structure of the banking system itself, the basic reality of the creation of money and its' intrinsic value, all the way through its' life until it hits the peoples' pockets to end up back in another bank, and as a result of all this and more, for their encouraging of the upper extreme of the 'capitalist' way of thought, in direct contradiction with the ideals that inspire charity and humanitarian activism.

The day after I was shown the competition I found an article shared on Facebook entitled, "Barclays accepts shame award for its role in causing hunger across the world".
This article, by the 'World Development Movement', an anti-poverty campaigning organisation, described how two of their campaigners (picture above courtesy of 'World Development Movement') went to Canary Wharf to present an award for Barclays Capital’s 'irresponsible corporate behaviour as the UK’s lead player in food speculation'. The site goes on to say:

The World Development Movement estimates that Barclays made up to £189 million from speculating on food in 2011. The bank is the biggest UK player in commodity markets, and claims to be in the global top three. Massive influxes of speculative money in food markets have been driving sharp price spikes, sending the cost of food soaring beyond the reach of the world’s poorest people."

"Barclays is making millions by speculating on food, but speculation is driving prices up, squeezing household budgets here in the UK and pushing millions into hunger and poverty worldwide. Not a penny of this speculative money is invested in improving agriculture, and it benefits no-one except a few wealthy investment bankers. Food is a basic human right, not just an asset class, and we need tough controls to prevent banks like Barclays pushing its price beyond the reach of millions of people."

I stick 'Barclays crimes' into Google and see what comes up. There's a lot. One of the first results is from 'Burma Campaign UK' . They say the following:

"Barclays Bank has agreed to pay a $298m (£190m) fine for breaking US sanctions against several dictatorships. The bank had been charged with breaking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act between 1995 and 2006. The countries involved were Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya, and Sudan."

"Have Barclays helped arm a dictatorship (Burma) which uses rape, torture and slave labour, and stands accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity?"

So Barclays Bank gives The Guardian a few £Million for sponsorship of their 'International Development Journalism Competition', and what does that do? It creates the false image that Barclays is an ethical, considerate organisation that cares about the people of the world and wants what's best for everyone. This is the opposite of the truth. Bear in mind also that I have only slightly touched on two tiny aspects of Barclays' £1.5Trillion asset empire (note: £1.5 Trillion is what 1 million people on £40k a year earn in just under 40 years; if all of Barclays' 146,100 employees earned £40k a year it would take them 256 years to earn that much, saving every penny - #simplemath).

As a final note, the aforementioned WDM explains how Barclays' "£1.5 billion investment banking bonus pool could pay for school meals for two years for the 23 million primary age children who attend school hungry across Africa." - but Barclays really does care. It says so on their website.

Let's have a brief look at GlaxoSmithKline. As with the banking system, I have a lot of negative impressions of the pharmaceutical industry, or as the theorists call it, 'Big Pharma'.

Typing 'GlaxoSmithKline crimes' into Google quickly yields such distressing headlines as, "GlaxoSmithKline fined over vaccine tests that killed 14 babies."

Just below that an article from 'The New York Times'  states, "The British drug company GlaxoSmithKline said Thursday that it had agreed to pay $3 billion to settle United States government civil and criminal investigations into its sales practices for numerous drugs."

The website 'Natural News' goes on to say that, "after being exposed for illegally marketing drugs, paying off doctors to promote dangerous drugs, and manipulating scientific data to get dangerous drugs approved, GSK has essentially been pardoned by the US government in exchange for $3 billion."

The website 'Corporate Watch' tells us that, "GlaxoSmithKline owns dozens of chemical plants all over the world. The chemical plant they own in Ulverston is marked by it’s carcinogenic emissions and repeated violations of environmental regulations."

The list goes on and on. In 2011 the company raked in approximately £43Billion in revenue.

I tried to convince myself to enter the competition, but I couldn't do it unless it was on my terms, so I decided to scrap the themes and write a brief critical piece on the hypocrisy of an 'International Development Journalism' competition sponsored by such organisations as Barclays and GlaxoSmithKline, and this is that piece. Took me about an hour.

This is the 'Thirty Third Blog Of Trig', signing off.