MAY DAY MEDIA WATCH

Previous mass demonstrations by the EDO group have barely made it into the national media – but now with protest and policing up there with swine flu in the national media agenda – the likes of the Telegraph were speculating wildly about the possibility of activist-celebs Marina Pepper and Nicky Fisher.

Both the local Argus and plenty of the national media were geared up for a repeat of the G20, hoping for plenty of juicy scenes of anarchists versus police that could be played out over the TV and papers gloriously free of any sort of context and perspective. 

It’s worth pausing to take a look at the reporting (to use the term loosely) by the local Argus. Giving generous space to Sussex police, they’d chosen their take on the event before it happened with three front pages in the 10 days preceding the demo.

This week, they selected (and blatantly made up) facts to justify headlines like ‘Shameful!’ and ‘City Brought to Standstill’, with the usual old standbys brought out - a random passer-by saying that it all looked a bit scary, and the moral force of a mother who claimed her kids were frightened. 

Even the more reasoned analysis offered by the Argus’ Andy Chiles on Thursday did precisely what it accused Smash EDO of, namely being ‘riddled with contradictions’. He failed to see the connection between the arms trade and EDO/ITT’s Brighton factory, which produces ‘electrical components rather than any weapons’, following EDO boss Paul Hill’s lie in the Argus last week. In a first public defence of his company’s business, Hills stated "We make things that ensure the safe carriage and release of weapons from aircraft." As this week’s massacre of up to 200 civilians in Afghanistan by a Predator unmanned aerial drone showed, this is often far from true.

Chiles criticises the ‘mass of red and blackclad people with covered faces’, for their ‘daunting’ appearance - without trying to come up with an explanation for this - whilst acknowledging that this group caused only ‘minor vandalism’ and was absent in the chaos towards the end of the afternoon. A few selected quotes and slogans from protesters are offered along with unsubstantiated claims that some passers-by were ‘clearly intimidated’.

His analysis does at least negate his paper’s sensational headlines. One wonders what the Argus headline would be following the bombing in Bala Baluk this week.

The Telegraph devoted much of their article to police statements and injuries, ignoring the more serious and numerous ones of protesters, whilst the Daily Mail were plain wrong, claiming that ‘the American Express building, (and) police stations’ were targeted.