22 Jun 2009

Protesters' depserate attempt to gain newsworthy coverage

The Telegraph ruins political careers.

The Guardian sticks to ambiguous attacks on the police

In an obvious attempt to gain readership back after the Telegraph's recent domination of the Press, the Guardian has produced a neatly spliced footage/interview sample that puts them thoroughly in the Protester's camp.

The nature of this article, while raising many valid points about police actions at protests, is one sided sensationalism. Convenient revisionism of a event no one really remembers because it was so quiet and banal within the many protests that summer.

The last comments on the video can be decided in a court if the Police breached PACE legislation. But the video as a whole only clips the necessary points to uphold the protester's arguments. We see the officers chaining the protester's ankles, but we cannot ascertain if she was being raucous and whether they had probable cause.

Do The Guardian expect the public to suddenly down tools and renege all police officers countrywide? Perhaps they were hoping to gain more coverage akin to the Ian Tomalinson video, hence they had the same voice over artist. But the Tomalinson video was just footage, clearly identifying poor execution of police powers. All I see in this one is evidence of police failing to identify themselves. And a few witness statements denouncing their behaviour with carefully selected footage.

But, lets be honest, if the Guardian hadn't published this story we would hear nothing about it. Like the Tomalinson affair, and the De Menezes and so on, the matter will be swept under the carpet and dealt with on a suitably notorious day like August 27th when no one is interested in a small police complaints review if Diana is on the front page. Credit where credit is due, but the Guardian still wins no awards for biased reporting.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Hi, thanks for commenting. I moderate all comments before publishing, hence your comment will not appear immediately! But I will get to it sooner or later!