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Climate camp: BBC buys into police propaganda

Onlyme | 06.08.2008 13:11 | Climate Camp 2008 | Other Press | Repression | London

A BBC reporter buys into police propaganda and fails to report campers' side of an issue

From  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7544475.stm. Read paragraph 2 closely:

"Officers in stab vests and purple latex gloves question and search all visitors. Other police dressed in black coveralls search roadside ditches. Overhead, a police helicopter hovers.

"The sense of paranoia is compounded by the knowledge that on the previous day there had been violent protests on the site - a sheep field about two miles from the power station - which ended in nine arrests.

"That morning police announced that they had found a stash of weapons - including a knife and a "throwing star" in nearby woods - protesters deny involvement."

Please follow BBC complaints process over the said "violent protests" in reference to police being pushed back when they unlawfully invaded the site at 5am. You could also complain that the report is tardy in failing to report the seizure over 12 hours previously of bicycles and destruction of bike locks where police had told protesters to leave them.

Please note also that the BBC complaints process was recently revised to have shorter timescales, of only a few weeks, to elevate the complaint further if you get fobbed off at each stage.

Onlyme

Comments

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moon23

06.08.2008 15:02

Ok so it's not perfect, but actually the point of the protest is articulated very well and they have a large number of fairly sensible quotes from people that get the protests message accross in a positive light. It's just a shame they imply that there were 'violent protests' rather than people reacting in self-defense to a police invasion of the site.

moon23
- Homepage: http://moon23.wordpress.com/


Horizontal media.

06.08.2008 15:52

Well done, you've finally got national UK BBC coverage and by Julian Joyve too. Julian must be delighted, he doesn't often get his copy named and so prominently displayed. He of course covered the Heathrow camp but has mostly since then been doing fluffly minor royalty stories and plot spoilers for crap movies (the Golden Compass).

So let ye take stock and not be so dismayed.

Yesterday the journalists of the local Kent phylum expressed their amazement and quoted neighbours of the camp on their blog as being equally amazed that the climate camp wasn't making national news. Sure - it was getting to the pages of BBC Kent but not as far as St- Mary Meade or the dark satanic mills of middle on its uppers England. Yet a missing snake story had been counted newsworthy enough for its little bit of fame and infamy. The climate camp is now a story. OK - you're not exactly the type of people who are being held up as role-models for youth, but also it is very unlikely that Ninja mutants from Chatham are going to horde it through your camp un-noticed this side of the weekend. If it's one thing we all know now - it is you don't do oriental weaponry.

I'd be very pleased if I were ye. well done olé! your'e topping thousand on attendence, that's lots of vegan stew, had less than a score of arrests, no weapons found on site - improvised a camp without basic tools and no deaths through misadventure, no tear gas, no tasers, just the incessant buzzzing of a helicopter.

Or is it that you would prefer in depth BBC coverage of the sympathetic variety?
Kill your campaign with love and cuddles?

Now work on your media manipulation & make the weekend a story worthy of being told to the baby hobbits of the future.

nayland smith


BBC diary entry for the 9th

06.08.2008 18:48

Radio 4 (er...yes, sorry) is asking people to send in their diary entries for the 9th August. (something to do with George Orwell, ironically) Thought it might be great if masses of people send in their accounts of the big day of action on the 9th - warts and all - and see just how many people the BBC can actually ignore.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ipm/2008/08/mark_the_moment_saturday_9_aug.shtml

seepo