The Metropolis

The revolution will be tweeted, because Tottenham sure wasn't televised

Josh Hall | Sunday 7 August, 2011 19:58

Fiona Garden photo

The inability, or unwillingness, of conventional news media to accurately report on public order situations has become abundantly clear during the past nine months. From Millbank to J30, mainstream media outlets have apparently found it impossible to discharge their duty of honesty to their viewers and readers. But few events have demonstrated as disturbing a disconnect between news reports and eyewitness accounts as last night’s Tottenham riots.

I wasn’t in Tottenham yesterday. I was at a festival, without phone signal, and came home to pictures of burning buses and riot shields. I got home at about 11:30pm, and flicked between News 24 and Sky for the next five hours.

By around midnight, presenters were talking about ‘containment’. There was a sense of danger passing, of violence dissipating. The BBC’s ‘man in the field’, who had been broadcasting from the same spot for some time, sounded relaxed; people were milling about around him, trying to get in the shot in much the same way as one might expect drunk fans to do after a football match. Guardian journalist Paul Lewis, when asked if the “disorder” had been “contained” replied, “I wouldn’t use that word. Quite the opposite” – but still the BBC continued to play footage recorded earlier, while half a dozen monotone interview clips played on a loop.

Then, remarkably, as London was in the midst of potentially the worst violence it has experienced in two decades, the BBC thought it appropriate to cut away in favour of a half hour propaganda film about the Olympics. Baffling.

Had I just been watching television news, I would have presumed that the violence had stopped by around 1am. The only indication of the degree of tension that remained came when the BBC reporter and his cameraman were apparently attacked while trying to film the windows of a police car being smashed. “We’ll leave it there,” the presenter in the studio said. No subsequent mention of the incident was made.

I wasn’t out last night, but many of those who were decided to tweet what they could see. A quick perusal of the ‘Tottenham’ hashtag made clear that the impression of ‘winding down’ being given on the news was entirely inaccurate. The sense of receding threat painted on the television was replaced by one of escalation, and of growing violence.

It rapidly became clear from Twitter that even before the BBC and Sky stopped broadcasting live, their correspondents had been nowhere near the action. While the BBC’s reporter pottered around at the north end of the High Road, Carpetright was ablaze. According to Paul Lewis, “youth in military balaclavas” were stopping cars on Lordship Lane. Tottenham Hale Retail Park was being looted, and the violence was rapidly spreading.

The mainstream media has a rich history of wilful blindness. Anyone who has attended a demonstration will be aware of their frustrating inability to accurately report things like attendance figures – and its sinister refusal to talk about the frequently illegal behaviour of the police. As a minor but recent example: there was what appeared to be a systematic program of stop and search in operation in central London during the 30 June march, almost exclusively targeting young people wearing black. Such practices are common, and they are indicative of a general and palpable increase in police harassment of activists and demonstrators – and yet they go completely unmentioned by the major broadcasters.

The causes of this blindness are manifold. It is undeniable that many working in the broadcast media tend to be ideologically aligned against protesters, and that this prejudice seeps into their output. But often the causes are more prosaic. In virtually every protest I have attended, I have seen the bulk of the press pack at or behind the police lines – not in the crowd. There are exceptions, of course, of which Paul Lewis is one. But there remains a general sense of cooperation between the press and police – or, at the very least, an unwillingness on the part of the press to challenge or (god forbid) ignore the limitations placed on their movements by the Met. It is because of this weakness that we get such poor quality journalism. With each misreported public order event, the mainstream media becomes more dangerous, less trustworthy and, whether it realises it or not, more collusive.

As I write, I can see officers in blue riot gear massing behind Bethnal Green police station. I’ll be trusting Twitter, not the BBC, to tell me what happens tonight.

Josh Hall photo

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