If you are familiar with British politics then you will be familiar with Femi Oluwole a law graduate and regular fixture with those obsessed by Brexit and the Remain campaign. Femi, he’s nearly always called Femi and never Mr Oluwole, in his hatred of the result of the Brexit vote has become somewhat of a figure of fun because of his rabid attachment to the cause of the European Union. More than 8 years after the vote by Britons to leave the European Union Femi is still bewailing this decision. In a way he’s a bit like one of those WWII Japanese soldiers who, living on remote islands, still believed that Japan was still at war, even into the early 1970’s. Some of those Japanese soldiers who spent their lives fighting a war that was long over were eventually brought back into society by commands from their now elderly commanding officers but I fail to be able to comprehend just what might release Femi from his delusion that the British people were wrong to reject a trade bloc that had become tyrannical and not reflexive of the views of those under their governance.

Femi doesn’t seem to have any visible means of support. I suspect that he gets appearance fees from the mainstream media and has a solid support base of others who are similar deranged by Brexit. He’s a ‘turn out for a tenner’ activist turn who the Establishment seem to like. However what he isn’t is a political journalist. Yes he’s written opinion pieces for various organs of the press but that’s not the same as being a political journalist or reporter. He’s not schmoozing around Parliament cultivating contacts or listening for gossip, rumour and innuendo or doing the same in the distinctly less glamorous work of reporting on local council activities. He’s not a person with solid political knowledge of parties or personalities or policy, he’s an activist for a cause, a quite amiable activist from what I’ve seen but certainly not a political journalist.

Femi was recently raging on social media about how he was being refused journalistic accreditation for the Labour Party Conference as the conference organisers didn’t believe he was a political journalist. It’s no great biggie to be turned down for a party conference press badge or a press accreditation for some other event, it happened to me when I was trying to make a name for myself and those who refused me quite rightly at the time didn’t think I had enough clout to get the amount of exposure and type of exposure that the event organisers wanted.

But I’m not Femi. I didn’t whine to my associates about refusal the way that Femi has done on social media. Here’s what he said:

Yes of course political parties mainly want their conference coverage to be from outlets that are friendly to them, this is basic stuff and this applies to ALL political parties, yes they’ll give access to journalists from unfriendly outlets but there are degrees of unfriendliness here. For example: The main left party in the UK will give accreditation to say The Daily Telegraph which is Tory leaning as it will at least hold to some journalistic standards and can be counted on having coverage that reaches a lot of eyes. Other publications might not be able to do that and so their accreditation request would be refused. Only someone who is incredibly naive would believe that their claim to be a political journalist should be believed just because they have made the claim. Any entity with a press office is going to want to only allow in those who will give either a positive spin on the reporting of a conference or who can guarantee lots of readers or viewers.

Someone who really does know about the process of training journalists, Alex Phillips, decided that she had had enough of Femi’s whining about his conference accreditation refusal and went full broadside on him.

Ms Phillips said:

But you are not a journalist.

Just as much as when I give myself paracetamol or patch up a cut I’m not a doctor.

Which newspapers, television networks or radio stations have you worked on as staff, not just a comment piece here and there? Where is your NJTC, or BJTC? Can you write shorthand? Did you pass relevant modules in Public Administration and Media Law?

Are you subject to OFCOM regulation? Do you own a copy of McNae? Journalists did and do all of those things.

Most paid to attend accredited journalism colleges and studied long hours, did BBC traineeships, sucked up the graveyards and overnights for regionals, agencies and newsdesks. You did not.

Do not diminish and discredit a profession that other people have sacrificed and worked for and still wish to hold in esteem, however hard that may seem, sometimes Feel free to speak and report and publish. But that doesn’t make you any more a journalist than Derek in Conway and his views on Liverpool FC.

Whilst I disagree with Ms Phillips over the issue of journalism college being the preferred route into journalism or her acceptance of the sometimes worryingly partisan OFCOM as an overseer of journalism (these have in my view created a cadre of somewhat uncurious and hesitant journalists sometimes afflicted by groupthink) she is correct in saying that Femi has not done the leg work to be considered as a journalist. He hasn’t done the shit work that everyone needs to do in order to be able to do whatever line of work they are doing and which especially applies in journalism where you are only as good as your last story and the reputation you have built up by way of those you have worked for.

What Femi is is an activist who wants to be seen as a journalist and for those who are in the hard edged business of promoting a political party’s narrative and getting the widest exposure possible, that is something that is clearly not needed by them. I don’t hate Femi, I think he’s wrong and his own worst enemy sometimes, but he just ain’t got the reputation required to be able to claim the title of political journalist. There are people in both the MSM and among the community of citizen journalists who by way of their work who can make this claim and make it with a lot more solidity and evidence that Femi can.