G20: Getting to the truth- the death of Ian Tomlinson RIP

[paolo]

At the moment, yes. As I said above I would question whether thats appropriate, unless they know it was a Met officer involved.

Guardian commentary said the officer has "MP" on his helmet meaning Met.

(I couldn't see clearly enough myself, and no idea what the letters mean).

But either way, if it was a mix of Met & City, then it would it more appropriate that it was neither investigating.

 

[Garcia Lorca]

Stephen Moss, staff writer at the Guardian just posted this.....




What the fuck?

I think a BBC bombardment is due....

wheres the best place to send our initial thoughts, any email ad in particular?

 

[cantsin]

I have watched it a dozen times now, the policeman has done nothing wrong.
It's not in a pub is it? It's the end of a day when the police had become under non stop attack from a minority of protesters, the police were in a crown/riot control situation. They were following their training
The whole incident will be on CCTV anyway.

can people plse start ignoring this piece of worthless shit, we're just mugging ourselves off getting involved , and there really are more imptnt things to be thinking about at the moment than this fuck with his crusty tissues and empty life . It will go away eventually if ignored , surely

 

[Barking_Mad]

wheres the best place to send our initial thoughts, any email ad in particular?

one of these

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/feedback/default.stm

 

[Barking_Mad]

From CiF

I witnessed Tomlinson being given CPR and when i saw the police's faces at the time you could tell they were responsible. They told us then that he'd been killed by a protestor throwing a bottle at him, and so the cover up began.

 

[editor]

can people plse start ignoring this piece of worthless shit, we're just mugging ourselves off getting involved , and there really are more imptnt things to be thinking about at the moment than this fuck with his crusty tissues and empty life . It will go away eventually if ignored , surely

Then lead by example and don't divert the thread any further by reposting his inane comments all over again, hours after he's said them.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Stephen Moss, staff writer at the Guardian just posted this.....




What the fuck?

I think a BBC bombardment is due....

You'll recall that the BBC at one point was actually saying 'police sources say Tomlinson was killed by hail of bottles' or words to that effect. Looks like there's something really fucking fishy going on with the way the Beeb are reporting the G20 protets. I guess they learned their lesson about going 'off message' after the beating they took over the Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly story and are now just obedient little whipped dogs.

 

[Barking_Mad]

BBC "Footage seems to show a man being pushed by a policeman"

Curious that they had cropped the video to remove the copper pushing him..........

 

[cantsin]

Then lead by example and don't divert the thread any further by reposting his inane comments all over again, hours after he's said them.

apols , late to the thread, and the guy drives me nuts with no discernible upside to his presence , but that's your call

 

[Roadkill]

You'll recall that the BBC at one point was actually saying 'police sources say Tomlinson was killed by hail of bottles' or words to that effect. Looks like there's something really fucking fishy going on with the way the Beeb are reporting the G20 protets. I guess they learned their lesson about going 'off message' after the beating they took over the Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly story and are now just obedient little whipped dogs.

This, I think. Thank fuck some other sections of the media aren't so supine.

That video is absolutely shocking.

 

[nick h.]

More4 News is getting stuck in. Their lead story: "did the Police cause the death of an innocent man...footage has emerged clearly showing him being attacked by police despite presenting no threat at all."

The bbc.co.uk story just says he was "pushed".

 

[Bernie Gunther]

BBC "Footage seems to show a man being pushed by a policeman"

Curious that they had cropped the video to remove the copper pushing him..........

Just looked, they sort of have the copper pushing him, but they've cut some of the stuff with the cops just standing over him looking at him on the floor they've cut out the bit where his attacker sort of stands at the back looking guilty with a mask over his face for a bit then slopes off out of shot, and they've edited in a lot of stuff putting the police PR case, the subsequent attempt to help him, although the 'hail' of bottles is now 'a bottle' and then cut again to those bozos smashing up RBS.

To me, the indications are that they're spinning it still.

 

[Treacle Toes]

BBC "Footage seems to show a man being pushed by a policeman"

Curious that they had cropped the video to remove the copper pushing him..........

Didn't show he getting whacked across the back of the legs with the banton either???

 

[dweller]

I'm getting more and more angry and upset about this. Today I was speaking to a very mild mannered middle aged man who went to have a look at the demo last week. According to him, he was knocked to the ground when the crowd surged away from police who were rushing them. He ended up with police officers kicking him in the side of his body and standing heavily on his chest. He is still in pain from the assault. What happened to poor Ian Tomlinson could have happened to him.
And now this video....

 

[paolo]

Looks like there's something really fucking fishy going on with the way the Beeb are reporting the G20 protets.

To me it's been inconsistent rather than coordinated. The live coverage seemed very balanced. Then when it later went to the 'highlights' stuff, it got packaged into more 'newsworthy' chunks (i.e. lots of smashy mob).

I'm not seeing a conspiracy, more that they're getting quite behind now on the breaking info. Guardian is trailing the blaze, and oddly with the Mail and Telegraph trying to keep pace (as at about 7pm-ish).

 

[Corax]

Newsnight breaking a massive unrelated story tonight, all VT.

 

[paolo]

Newsnight covering now

 

[Divisive Cotton]

The BBC at the moment have completly non-sensical title: "Footage shows G20 death man push"

 

[kenny g]

The BBC bulletin news has been a fucking insult. I am pleased that I stopped paying my licence two months ago. I don't watch live TV any more and save 12 squid a month.

 

[Corax]

Mealy mouthed bullshit on Newsnight too.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

To me it's been inconsistent rather than coordinated. The live coverage seemed very balanced. Then when it later went to the 'highlights' stuff, it got packaged into more 'newsworthy' chunks (i.e. lots of smashy mob).

I'm not seeing a conspiracy, more that they're getting quite behind now on the breaking info. Guardian is trailing the blaze, and oddly with the Mail and Telegraph trying to keep pace (as at about 7pm-ish).

The contrast between their live coverage and the studio comment along with the editorial behaviour culminating in

stephenmoss

07 Apr 09, 9:57pm (1 minute ago)
Staff Staff writer

When the Guardian offered this astonishing footage to the BBC News at 6, apparently the response was "No thanks, we're not covering this, we see it as just a London story." Great news sense down there at TV Centre.

source above

... suggests to me that the issue is editorial policy. Basically it looks like the people who define the news agenda and the editorial slant are behaving in a supine manner and that the journalists are still capable of doing their jobs.

 

[agricola]

At the risk of defending the BBC, please bear in mind that they have both of the major political parties in this country gunning for them to an extent (thanks largely to Murdoch's influence), are subject to far more political interference than any of the other media outlets are - witness the strange Parliamentary criticism earlier in the day where the BBC was criticized for doing what successive Governments have demanded it do, for example - and are, post-Kelly, apparently terminally afraid of any story which, however justified (as Gilligans report was), will cause the powers that be to jump on them, with no redress.

 

[maomao]

3 minutes on Newsnight about 'kettling' not a peep of the video. I think people should start considering withholding license fee over this. Every other news agency seems to be leading with it.

 

[Lakina]

You'll recall that the BBC at one point was actually saying 'police sources say Tomlinson was killed by hail of bottles' or words to that effect. gs.

Reminds me of 7/7 when immediately after the shooting of charles de mendes the Met chief declared that they had killed one of the terrorists.

 

[paolo]

Newsnight slot, just done, seemed fairly conducted. Several repeats of the key bit of the footage. Line of questioning to the MPA member was generally empathic.

Not seeing any BBC conspiracy here at the mo.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

At the risk of defending the BBC, please bear in mind that they have both of the major political parties in this country gunning for them to an extent (thanks largely to Murdoch's influence), are subject to far more political interference than any of the other media outlets are - witness the strange Parliamentary criticism earlier in the day where the BBC was criticized for doing what successive Governments have demanded it do, for example - and are, post-Kelly, apparently terminally afraid of any story which, however justified (as Gilligans report was), will cause the powers that be to jump on them, with no redress.

True. They're still rubbish though.

R4 are being much more direct with this by the way - they're clearly saying "an officer is seen hitting him with a baton on the left leg then pushing him over", whereas on the telly, they're saying "now it does look like a police officer is involved here...".

 

[Bernie Gunther]

At the risk of defending the BBC, please bear in mind that they have both of the major political parties in this country gunning for them to an extent (thanks largely to Murdoch's influence), are subject to far more political interference than any of the other media outlets are - witness the strange Parliamentary criticism earlier in the day where the BBC was criticized for doing what successive Governments have demanded it do, for example - and are, post-Kelly, apparently terminally afraid of any story which, however justified (as Gilligans report was), will cause the powers that be to jump on them, with no redress.

Well quite. Which is entirely consistent with the behaviour which we're seeing. Chomsky and Hermann describe the process at work quite well as 'flak'

The thing is, the public can also generate 'flak' and I believe that the disgraceful way the BBC are trying to spin this, presumably to avoid offending the government, deserves a really intense barrage of 'flak' ...

 

[paolo]

3 minutes on Newsnight about 'kettling' not a peep of the video. I think people should start considering withholding license fee over this. Every other news agency seems to be leading with it.

TBF, Newsnight normally runs around stories where they can get heavyweights on and give it a going over.

It's possible that this one - the Guardian Vid - caught them on the hop.

That aside, it does deserve something more in depth.

 

[paolo]

R4 are being much more direct with this by the way - they're clearly saying "an officer is seen hitting him with a baton on the left leg then pushing him over", whereas on the telly, they're saying "now it does look like a police officer is involved here...".

Will be interesting to see if the 'TV' Beeb change their approach to the story tomorrow.

 

[Lakina]

I've just seen the video - very sad. Looks to me like he pissed one of the cops off, and they decided to take a chop at him. That hapened quite a bit on the day from what I can see. Cop probably didn't mean to seriously hurt him. On the other hand that bloke who thumped that guy at Sainsbury's could make the same excuse, but still got sent down. However, I suspect it will be hard to prove that the blow caused the heart attack. It might have been responsible, but I doubt it can be proven.

Personally I'd cross the road to avoid aggrevating cops in a situation like that -there are some real thugs in the force and if you give them a slight excuse they'll take a pop.