I finding it deeply worrying that the police are still doing this kind of thing:
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has hit out at the Metropolitan Police after photographer Carmen Valino said she was stopped from doing her job despite identifying herself as a journalist to police officers in Hackney on Saturday. Valino said she was photographing the crime scene from outside a police cordon. 'A police sergeant approached Valino telling her that she was disrupting a police investigation and to hand over her camera,' reported the London Photographers' Branch of the NUJ.
C'mon, Coalition, if you really believe in Big Society and civil liberties, turn this around.
I did a fairly big piece on this. If you know anybody on Twitter with a list of photojournalists I'd be happy to RT it along to them.
Of course Dave Lee didn't deem my comment at all worthy or relevant to publish on his blog post; but it was saved and copied into the article. Then again he does work for a government(ish) company which has censored much great work in the past, so we can hardly castigate him for carrying on the noble tradition.
If shooters unified in an online group and set a day or couple of days in which a thousand and more of them photographed police officers/vehicles/stations obtusely, and then aggravated massive attention through a tonne of calls to newdesks, blogging, getting journos to tag along to the action, and then putting the starker consequences a select few went through for 'aiding terrorism' then this deluge would have an effect on government attitude. Perhaps it would go a long way to getting the hopelessly broad Counter-Terrorism Act heavily revised to omit the slight against photographers?
As it stands though they're in no hurry to repeal the 13 years worth of regression in the whole freedoms field that went on under the intrepidly authoritarian New Labour. They aren't exactly going to take the mantle and carry it on; but they'll need a lot of prodding to reverse it.
If you're up to help speculate Adam then I've a few ideas. This thing has been on the statute for almost 18 months - of course this is all hypothetical conjecture and I'm certainly not 'aiding terrorism' in mentioning thoughts on the idea. Not at all. No. Not advancing it. Not a bit.
Pete, editor at www.dirtygarnet.com