For anyone who regularly uses Twitter, #tottenham, #enfield and #londonriots will all be familiar trends from the past couple of days. On Sunday night, as the nation's capital once again erupted into riots, social media buzzed. There was, however, another trend which signified something quite troubling: #mediablackout. Why indeed was there so little live coverage from the traditional media?
The Met claimed it hadn't requested a blackout, and it might be too much to expect Sky News and the BBC to provide live television coverage from the word go. Logistics and limited resources mean cameramen can't be instantly on the scene. However, many like myself often rely on the live news feeds the BBC and others provide on their websites. They incorporate a wide range of sources, including social media such as Twitter, and can hardly be that difficult or expensive to set up. It was strange to see nothing of the sort from any major news agency.
Assuming the claims of a media blackout are true, how was it in the public interest? Whilst the traditional media remained silent Twitter was ablaze with people's reactions. Troublemakers continued to communicate through BlackBerry Messenger whilst the general public were kept in the dark about a genuine security issue. If there was a media blackout last night it was appallingly managed.
I hate conspiracy theories. They tend to be the half-baked product of someone with far too much time on their hands and too much faith in people's ability to cover things up. But either there was a ban on live coverage or our national media is so incompetent it can't report riots in the streets of our capital. Neither is an enticing prospect.
Living in the middle of Enfield, it wasn't a massive disturbance - and it was covered live on radio. By the time the film crews turned up, it had all moved on to Edmonton, and there was noting to see here. What do you want them to do, report that they were too late?
ReplyDeleteThe real issue is why things like the peaceful protest about community relations to New Scotland Yard two weeks ago was not reported at all - no wonder ppl think they have to riot to get noticed.
If you reread my post, I did acknowledge that you can't expect cameramen to be omnipresent, though it's another thing to at least acknowledge something's existence.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the peaceful march, I take it you're referring to the NBC blog at http://on.msnbc.com/opXFwB? I couldn't find anything to back it up (unsurprisingly if there was no coverage), so I'd remain careful about its veracity, but the sentiment seems sound.