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7th
July 2005, The Scotsman
A WAVE of the press pass would normally be enough for a seasoned
journalist to skirt past the assembled police lines, but not
in Edinburgh this week. One thing that is noticeable is that
the media and journalists are not being shown any favours by
the police. The police have adopted a strategy of photograph
and search - and that means everyone: anarchists, protestors,
those caught up in the moment and the press. Form a queue please.
Then again, if mothers and babies have to wait in line why should
our intrepid newshounds be shown a greater courtesy?
Journalists will argue that they are there to report the news
not create it, but I wonder how many journalists have hooked
up with anarchist groups to report that "exclusive"
story. Except the format is so tried-and-tested that it really
isn't an exclusive. Just think back to before the general election
and the scandal of postal votes.
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Papers
raced each other to see who could illegally register the greatest
number of postal votes, to show that the system was broken.
We had already been warned by the election commissioner, Richard
Mawrey QC, of widespread fraud. Did we really need papers trying
to detect corrupt practices which had already been exposed weeks
earlier?
You will have seen this type of story about airport security.
Earlier this year a journalist managed to crawl under a security
barrier at Prestwick airport, cross a runway and spend several
minutes under a jet full of passengers bound for Florida. A
good story, yet only one of many about lax security at UK airports.
The real Prestwick story was the fact that the airport offered
not to make a police complaint if the paper killed the story.
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One
month later, trying the same formula, a News of the World reporter
landed in the cells after police rumbled him trying to break
into Edinburgh airport. The authorities must be sick to death
of such tactics and it is understandable, from their perspective,
that a journalist should spend a night in the holding cell.
Even if they are not ultimately charged, it will prove an inconvenience.
There is the argument that we need to keep the authorities on
their toes, that we need the media to expose the flaws in the
system. Of course we do, but what flaws are journalists going
to find this week with G8's security measures? If anyone is
foolhardy enough to try to get that exclusive by breaking into
the "red zone", then good luck to them. I would have
thought that the prospect of being detained indefinitely under
anti-terrorist legislation may have been deterrent enough -
and that's without taking into account the presence of armed
American forces. Even if their orders were to infiltrate anarchist
organisations they are still putting themselves at considerable
risk. If they were captured I somehow couldn't see the authorities
being sympathetic to the waving of press accreditation.
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