Mayday and the Media
It seems that yesterday’s May Day protests/celebrations/riots in London have given the newspapers a limited source of news. Relatively few violent outbreaks, arrests or smashed McDonald’s windows occurred. The media, therefore, have adopted a different tack.
Unable to focus on the ‘hardcore minority’, today’s papers seem to be attempting to mock and undermine the anti-capitalist protests.
An article in todays edition of the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) describes the protesters as ‘walking in a seemingly pointless circle’. Similarly, at the launch of yesterday’s proceedings the Critical Mass cycle ride spent’spent 20 minutes milling about’, according to the Guardian. Still, it’s nice to know that ‘onlookers mostly expressed sympathy with the aims of the protesters’. This kind of understatement is clearly a means of avoiding the discussion of any issues raised by yesterdays protest and an indication that the Guardian believes itself to be more productive, more astute and more political than the demonstrators.
The Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk), on the other hand, seems sorely disappointed at the lack of violence to report: ‘Officers with video cameras introduced themselves to the suspected ringleaders and made it clear that they were being watched. The number of anarchist and anti-capitalist protesters was far lower than last year. They chose to wander around the back streets of the West End in fluid groups, trying to evade their police shadows, rather than engage in a set-piece confrontation…. Sorry? Who was picking a fight with who?
Today’s reporting seems to have adopted a playground style - the school bully’s upset because the little kid didn’t fight back and the rest are adopting a ‘my dad’s bigger than your dad’ stance. News reporting should surely be above resorting to this kind of approach - it should, I believe, be an attempt (at least) to report news.
Of course, the productive value of this kind of protest is debatable. (Having said that, how many of us are going to vote in the London borough elections today? Elections? What elections?). What is less productive, however, is the failure of the media to discuss the background to this kind of demonstration. For a more accurate account of yesterdays events, visit www.indymedia.co.uk.