Interesting footnote to Duncan Campbell’s piece on Comment Is Free (‘De Menezes taught the Met nothing’) on the death of a G20 protestor last week from Guardian contributor Stephen Moss.
Apparently the Guardian’s footage of Ian Tomlinson being knocked down by police officers (as was seen repeatedly on broadcast news bulletins last night) was rejected by BBC News at 6, who said it was seen as ‘just a London story’.
Was this the reason? Some viewers would argue this is valid and part of the BBC’s remit to better represent the whole of the UK. Or was it, as Campbell suggests in the piece, an unwillingness to implicate the police:
“Although the Guardian reported the death on its front page, almost all the coverage elsewhere ignored it completely or concentrated on a version of events that suggested that the police’s only connection with Tomlinson had been to try to rescue him from a baying mob of anarchists.”
Update: A BBC spokesman has told Journalism.co.uk:
“It’s simply not true to say the BBC News at Six turned down the footage. We didn’t run it on the Six O’Clock bulletin as we didn’t receive the footage until 7pm. We verified it and ran an extensive piece at Ten O Clock. It’s also been shown extensively across our outlets today.”
The video is now available to embed (HT @janinegibson):
