G20 'media's fault' says Scotland Yard

[Badger Kitten]

Lulz from the Times Crime editor.

Interesting tactic, blaming the media.

 

[_float_]

 

[Badger Kitten]

Can the police and the media trust each other?

There were six days of substantially false coverage about a man who apparently died of a heart attack as he walked home while a screaming mob of anarchists hurled missiles at the police officers who tried to help him. Any inquiry into this media misinformation will want to find out whether that was simply the hyperbole of ignorant reporters or the product of bad practice at the Metropolitan police, the City of London police or the IPCC.
It was the intervention of ordinary people with cameras who provided their own surveillance of the protest that first led to questions about that version of the truth. An investigation by the Guardian suggests that an inquiry may find evidence of officials giving an incomplete picture.

At 7.30pm on Wednesday 1 April, as Mr Tomlinson lay dying on the pavement near the Royal Exchange in the City of London, Sir Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, was several miles away at a party at Peelers restaurant, on the fifth floor of New Scotland Yard, to mark the retirement of the assistant commissioner Alf Hitchcock.

According to one guest: "He kept going out into the corridor, on his mobile. He looked very unhappy, stressed."

Four hours later, at 11.36pm, Scotland Yard issued a press release (see below), that, we now know, was seriously misleading - not because it included a direct falsehood, but because it failed to include the most important part of the truth, that Mr Tomlinson died after apparently being struck and pushed to the ground by a police officer.

 

[pk]

Cops versus media?

Bring it on. Plenty of stories buried at the request of Scotland Yard ready to be leaked. Dodgy coppers and bribery of press. Fuck me the Old Bill are really winning hearts and minds these days, eh?

 

[Fruitloop]

Although, probably a few journos with a skeleton or two in the nostril/closet too.

 

[_float_]

...Plenty of stories buried at the request of Scotland Yard ready to be leaked. Dodgy coppers and bribery of press...

So the mass media are going to own up to being clueless stooges and taking bribes?

Why would they publish that?

 

[butchersapron]

It's a co-dependent relationship. Large sections of the media were willing tools in the leadup to the G20, reguritating placed info and hyperbole exactly as required. It took the events surrounding Ian Tomlinson's death to be uncovered largely by non-journos to get them to be even slightly critical. This is nothing new though. It happens time after time and the next big event will undoubtdly see those same large sections of the media stepping right back into line.

 

[pk]

It's a co-dependent relationship. Large sections of the media were willing tools in the leadup to the G20, reguritating placed info and hyperbole exactly as required. It took the events surrounding Ian Tomlinson's death to be uncovered largely by non-journos to get them to be even slightly critical. This is nothing new though. It happens time after time and the next big event will undoubtdly see those same large sections of the media stepping right back into line.

No, I don't agree. I think something fundamentally changed in the nature of reporting after what the cops did at G20.

The media will first and foremost suck up to public opinion, or at least what they believe to be the public opinion - which at the moment is firmly against having a police force that murders people.

Added to that the simple fact that they stood by and let the RBS bank get trashed just so that the papers could get their riot porn photos, the co-dependency was there at the beginning but the police need the media more than the media need the police.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

The media and police are both up to their necks in shit. The police more so on this one though, so it's just classic playground deflection from apologists for bullyboy killers.