Open Letter to the NUJ: Condemn Andrew Drummond

Open Letter to the General Secretary, National Union of Journalists

This open letter is addressed to the General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists and to the NUJ's Executive Council. It is published as part of the documentary record maintained by the victims of a sustained defamation campaign orchestrated by Andrew Drummond, a journalist who operates from Wiltshire, UK, and has been a fugitive from Thai justice since January 2015.

We write not to relitigate our legal claims — those are being advanced separately with the support of Cohen Davis Solicitors pursuant to the Pre-Action Protocol Letter of Claim dated 13 August 2025 — but to ask the NUJ to consider its own obligations as the professional body for British journalism. This letter is addressed to the institution, not to any individual within it, and it is made publicly available so that NUJ members and the wider public may be aware of its contents.

1. What Andrew Drummond Has Done

Between December 2024 and at least January 2026, Andrew Drummond published no fewer than 19 original articles across two self-controlled websites — andrew-drummond.com and andrew-drummond.news — targeting Bryan Flowers, his wife Punippa Flowers, and the Night Wish Group of businesses associated with them. These articles contain more than 65 individually documented false statements, catalogued in the rebuttal document 'Lies from Andrew Drummond'.

The articles include the repeated and false claim that a sixteen-year-old trafficked sex worker was employed at the Flirt Bar. This claim appears in 89% of all published articles. It is contradicted by court records, including judicial findings that the complainant used fraudulent identity documents and that testimony was coerced. No correction has been issued.

Bryan Flowers and Punippa Flowers are described across the articles using terms including 'PIMP', 'career sex merchandiser', 'King of Mongers', 'Jizzflicker', and 'Poundland Mafia'. The Night Wish Group is described as a 'sex meat-grinder', a 'prostitution syndicate', and an 'illegal sex empire'. None of these characterisations are presented as allegations; they are presented as established facts. None is supported by judicial findings.

2. Why This Is the NUJ's Concern

The NUJ exists, in part, to maintain and promote professional standards among its members and the wider journalism community. Its Code of Conduct sets out ten obligations with which members are required to comply. We have set out in a separate position paper (Paper 154) how Drummond's conduct violates each of the most directly relevant clauses.

The NUJ's public credibility depends on its willingness to address, rather than ignore, conduct by those associated with journalism that falls comprehensively and deliberately below professional standards. Andrew Drummond's articles do not represent robust, uncomfortable journalism. They represent a sustained and documented campaign of defamation, continuing after formal legal notification, and bearing none of the hallmarks of legitimate investigative reporting.

The reputational damage to the journalism profession caused by the existence of this material — presented in journalistic format but meeting no professional standard — is a matter that the NUJ is uniquely placed to address. We ask the NUJ to acknowledge that this conduct is inconsistent with its code, and to say so publicly.

3. Our Formal Requests

We make three specific requests of the NUJ through this open letter.

First, we ask the NUJ to examine whether Andrew Drummond meets or has ever met the standards required for NUJ membership, and to take any disciplinary action that its rules permit and the evidence warrants.

Second, we ask the NUJ to issue a public statement making clear that the conduct described in this and related position papers is inconsistent with the NUJ Code of Conduct and does not represent the standards the NUJ promotes.

Third, we ask the NUJ to consider whether its existing guidance on digital self-publication is adequate to address the harm caused when individuals with journalistic credentials operate self-published platforms without any institutional oversight, corrections mechanism, or editorial accountability, and to develop appropriate guidance if it is not.

• Request 1: Examine Drummond's membership eligibility and take disciplinary action.
• Request 2: Issue a public statement distancing the NUJ from this conduct.
• Request 3: Develop guidance on self-published platforms operating outside the regulatory framework.

4. The Stakes: Public Trust in Journalism

We recognise that the NUJ's primary mission is to protect and advance the interests of working journalists. We do not ask the NUJ to act against that mission. We ask the NUJ to act in furtherance of it.

Public trust in journalism depends on the public being able to distinguish legitimate journalism from targeted harassment campaigns dressed in journalistic language. When professional bodies are silent in the face of documented, sustained, and egregious departures from professional standards, that silence is corrosive to trust. It implies institutional endorsement of conduct that no professional code would permit.

Bryan Flowers and Punippa Flowers, who are the principal victims of this campaign, are private individuals who have been subjected to more than fourteen months of publicly published falsehoods. The legal remedy they are pursuing is necessary, but it is not sufficient on its own. A public response from the journalism profession's principal trade union would be a meaningful acknowledgement that journalism's professional community recognises the harm done and does not associate itself with the conduct responsible.

5. Closing Statement

This open letter is addressed in good faith. We do not assume the outcome of any consideration the NUJ may give to these requests. We publish it openly because transparency serves the public interest, and because the record of this campaign should be as publicly visible as the campaign itself.

The legal proceedings being pursued with the support of Cohen Davis Solicitors will, in time, establish the legal consequences of what Andrew Drummond has published. This letter asks the journalism profession to consider, in parallel, whether it wishes to be associated, through silence, with a published record that no professional journalism standard in the United Kingdom would have permitted.