Laurie Penny

Pop culture and radical politics with a feminist twist

Occupy the media

Dissatisfaction with mainstream journalism is leading to a profound change in the way that protest is reported.

By Laurie Penny Published 23 November 2011 13:28

Of all the many outrages, anticipated and unanticipated, that I have seen perpetrated by American police against peaceful protesters and members of the public this week, perhaps the most chilling has been their harassment of journalists on the job.

As law enforcement cracked down on Occupy encampments around the country, a pattern began to emerge whereby officers moved in the small hours of the morning, held members of the press in police "pens" away from the evictions, and arrested them if they stepped out of line.

Supporters of the movement were quick to cry "censorship", and to point to a possible co-ordinated media blackout when the Oakland Mayor, Jean Quan, let slip in an interview that she had discussed how to deal with the protests on a conference call with other city leaders. The issue at stake here, however, is not merely the freedom of the press, but the role of the media in a time of profound cultural and political change.

In all, 26 journalists have been arrested while covering the Occupy movement to date. As New York State senator Eric Adams and attorney Norman Siegel put it in a strongly-worded letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Commissioner Ray Kelly this week:

Whenever a government interferes with the role of the press in reporting the news, questions pertaining to the appropriateness and legality of these actions arise and evoke extreme concern.

Holding the police to account has always been one of the toughest and most crucial roles of the fourth estate, and in New York, the path to honest reporting is particularly thorny, as the only press passes recognised by the New York Police Department are issued by the department itself to individual journalists, who are required to submit their work and attend police interviews in advance.

In Britain, press unions and employers provide accreditation -- but one of the first things I was taught in journalism school was to "be very, very careful what you say about the police. They can and will sue you, and they rarely lose a case."

Across the west, journalists have learned deference to police forces just as they have learned deference to the political establishment -- but over the past year, the objectives of the police and the press have been, for once, decidedly at odds.

Not so long ago, it was easy to tell at any given protest who were the demonstrators and who were the journalists. The latter stood well apart from any action taking place, smartly dressed and coiffed, and they would be the ones with the cameras and recording gear. The people made a noise and the press wrote it up -- or not, deciding between themselves and their editors what did and did not get to be reported as fact.

Now, journalists are just as likely to be young people in casual clothes, running in and out of the crowd, tweeting and blogging from smartphones and broadcasting from handheld recording devices. They look, in other words, just like the protesters.

Many of the members of the press arrested over the past month in America match this description, and a significant number of those harassed are members of small independent outlets, or freelance reporters broadcasting directly to their online followers.

The changing role of the press in an age of digital empowerment and civil unrest has been drawn in bold colours over the course of the Occupy movement around the world.

Not only is much of the best, fastest and most accurate copy and footage being produced by journalists who are not accredited -- and who therefore have to fear for their safety on demonstrations just as much as the protesters who have been pepper sprayed and beaten bloody this week. Many of them are not even journalists in the traditional sense. Increasing numbers are bystanders, interested amateurs, or members of the occupations themselves, shooting footage on phones and pocket cameras, writing up eyewitness reports on Twitter and Facebook.

There's another problem for the authorities: not only do more of the journalists look like protesters, more of the protesters behave like journalists.

You can bar every reporter from the scene of a camp eviction, you can pen them way away from the action and rip off their credentials when they complain, you can arrest every single person with a press pass, and there will still be recording, publishing and broadcast technology beyond any 1990s news editor's most nicotine-addled fantasies right there in the sterile zone.

The most striking thing about what look increasingly like co-ordinated media blackouts around the crackdown on Occupy protests -- staging evictions in the small hours of the morning, closing down transport routes and banning and arresting journalists -- is how roundly they have failed.

We still had images of an elderly woman in Seattle with her face red and streaming after being pepper sprayed by police; we still had video records of students screaming as UC Davis campus police officers tortured them with chemical spray during a peaceful sit-down protest.

The fact that law enforcement agencies were so obviously reluctant for such footage to be collected, even before they moved in, makes the crackdown on Occupy movements look really rather suspicious -- but it also shows that police no longer feel they can rely on a tame press to report their version of events.

The kids don't have to wait any more for traditional news reporters to spin their message for them. A hostile tension has long been maintained between activists and members of what Americans call the "mainstream media" and the British term the "corporate press", who are seen to be fostering stubborn editorial bias under a veneer of "objectivity".

Natasha Lennard, a former freelancer for the New York Times who was arrested during the Brooklyn Bridge kettle on 1 October, wrote in an article for Salon that:

If the mainstream media prides itself on reporting the facts, I have found too many problems with what does or does not get to be a fact -- or what rises to the level of a fact they believe to be worth reporting -- to be part of such a machine ... I want to take responsibility for my voice and the facts that I choose and relay. I want them to instigate change.

More and more journalists, reporters and citizens sane enough not to write for a living are finding themselves facing a choice: do we accept and perpetuate the line handed down to us, or do we take responsibility for our own voice?

Distrust of the police, dissatisfaction with mainstream media bias and dissidents' hunger to control their own messaging is leading to a profound change in the way that protest is covered and reported.

Members of the public can record and upload their own footage without waiting for it to be collected by the mainstream press, and the network moves fast, leaving traditional media outlets rushing to keep up with the story.

The first videos of police violence against demonstrators at Occupy Wall Street in late September were recorded by a bystander and uploaded to YouTube. They went viral, changing the narrative around the fledgling occupation and forcing the mainstream media to respond to the public outcry.

Control of the agenda is no longer in the hands of the police or of the corporate press, and digitally enabled young people are forcing honest, capable journalists to up their game.

Tags: Occupy Wall Street

More from Laurie Penny

60 comments

Wed, 2011-11-23 18:34 — willoyen

so presumably you, Spud, have nothing against reporting from Waziristan by Jemima Khan, in spite of her daddy. She's been there after all.

Wed, 2011-11-23 18:42 — stevem1

Another borderline sociopath by the name of-Spud Middleton. What he posts is a sad reflection of a truly dessicated personality .

Wed, 2011-11-23 18:49 — willoyen

@ Spud
Willoyen
You're not worth bothering with sunshine.
- then why did you?
from which I think we can conclude...Willoyen is another public-school 'leftie' who...surprsie surprise...detests the working class. What else is new?
-then you'll be concluding wrong
life's a little more complicated than your simple outlook can grasp.

Wed, 2011-11-23 19:47 — Cel (not verified)

Maybe certain troll-like commentators here might be better off considering *why* so few journalists don't come from Oxbridge these days. Could it be because society is repressive in less direct ways?

Or maybe none of it means anything and the braying yahoos in government and the sycophantic non-entities that are their intellectual and academic enablers are our best hope. Who can say.

Very good article, Laurie.

Wed, 2011-11-23 20:50 — Norman Siegel (not verified)

Good story. You raised some excellent points. Bravo.

Wed, 2011-11-23 22:27 — Dickie1

"...as the only press passes recognised by the New York Police Department are issued by the department itself to individual journalists, who are required to submit their work and attend police interviews in advance."

Come off it Spud, credit where it's due. I had no idea about the above - whouldn't have thought such things went on in one of the world's apparent democracies -therefore it is quite an illumination report.

Fri, 2011-11-25 03:15 — stuart (not verified)

so those who laughed at me, and they know who they are, when i got battered with batons, tasered on the leg,thrown across the street by a water cannon still think the police are servants of the people,,,think again you fools,,the new world global police have had there orders to smash as many skulls as they can to anybody that steps out of line...

Sat, 2012-03-03 18:44 — Taggart

This is fundamentally mistaken. The agenda is 'still' very much in the hands of the corporate press - a press that reaches out to many who are NOT digitally connected to this new and elusive network of ideas. Most people in this day and age receive their news through the medium of television; and even by purchasing the odd newspaper. They do not have the time to scan through multiple videos by independent citizen journalists and then compare this to the systemic bias of mainstream media coverage. http://www.chancermusic.com/

Wed, 2011-11-23 23:34 — Chir0n

@Spud, things may not be as bad as they were during the miner's strike but they are certainly worse than they have been for a long while. The truth is that after along period of improving democratic standards, the last 20 years have seen things backslide and it is simply disingenuous to claim otherwise.

And before you start harping on about historical perspective, I'm old enough to remember Tolpuddle.

Thu, 2011-11-24 00:47 — Bob (not verified)

So the conclusion to this article seems to be that people have smartphones nowadays and can upload the stuff they record on them to youtube. Errm...kind of stating the obvious a little isn't it?

Thu, 2011-11-24 00:55 — Your Father (not verified)

"Come on love, you don't really mean this lets go back to the kitchen now..."

Fri, 2011-11-25 08:07 — Luddite (not verified)

stuart: In Britain you have every right to demonstrate, but you don't have a right to riot.... Water-Cannon! when were they used? Global police.. stuart: Your the kind of individual that believes in all manner of conspiracy theories, there's no conspiracy here the simple truth is we have run-out of money.. and all the rest is bull-shit..

Thu, 2011-11-24 01:10 — Abdoujaparov (not verified)

OK Chir0n, nice line; but Spud is, as usual, on the money. I too remember the truly brutal, state-sanctioned reaction to the miner's strike (in Laurie's world, the word 'profound' should be dropped somewhere in here...). What's happening today is, in comparison, coddling.

Thu, 2011-11-24 01:15 — Nixon is Lord (not verified)

"challenging the narrative"?
Seriously? People I know who've gone to State U. would be ashamed to write something so bloated and pretentious.
You need to celebrate your diversity!

Thu, 2011-11-24 07:28 — Luddite (not verified)

Penny: I hope you don't think yourself a journalist, you often type pure-tripe... "first things I was taught in journalism school was to "be very, very careful what you say about the police"..... Miss Penny... I thought the political-left loved the police, after all every state you create becomes a police state.

He's an article you could write. 'Why with the worst crisis in western capitalism' is the political-left floundering with only the usual suspects on the streets, and most of them are just terrified there's going to be an up-turn and they may after find jobs..... It's interesting what's just happened in Spain... with a landslide victory for the conservative-right.. Few people these days turn to the political-left in a crisis, because history taught us that's the scary option, it's starts with euphoria but ends often in madness and mass-murder...

Thu, 2011-11-24 07:41 — Stuart Eels (not verified)

Spud I hope you are still reading these comments don't let the bastards grind you down.

willoyen so full of himself that he didn't even get the irony of you quoting his last paragraph. People like him and Ms Penny have made sure there's no working class opposition to them by fucking up one of the finest education systems in the world.

Don't go Spud!!!!!!!!!!!

Mon, 2011-11-28 13:28 — M. Wenzl (not verified)

"Over the past year, the objectives of the police and the press have been, for once, decidedly at odds."

How do you explain the hacking scandal then, Laurie?

Thu, 2011-11-24 10:20 — Ian (not verified)

The fact is that Laurie writes quality articles and also attracts unreflected trolls, like Spud.

Thu, 2011-11-24 11:49 — crabstix (not verified)

Luddite, name one state created by the political left in the last 30 years. You sure as hell cannot include the UK in this because the political left has not had a look in here since before Thatcher.

Go on, name one.

Mon, 2011-11-28 15:39 — NYPD PRESS PASS (not verified)

Are you sure you should be a journo, you don't seem to know what happened at NYC, the NYPD shouted 'Who here is a journalist' then escorted those with their hands up away from the demo, some of them repeatedly showing their NYPD issued press passes.

Thu, 2011-11-24 14:40 — Fergus Pickering (not verified)

Read it AGAIN? Good God, it nearly killed me reading it once. I think the drift is we should all be governed by clueless teenagers and twentysomethings with wild eyes and uncombed hair.

Wed, 2011-11-23 13:41 — A meadows (not verified)

Stay In America Laurie ,then when you come back the U.K and see the police there, you can see how Un aggresive the British Police Are.

Wed, 2011-11-23 13:46 — JS Mill (not verified)

Not getting stuck in like you supposedly did in London Laurie?

Coward.

Fri, 2011-11-25 15:26 — Fraziel1

@ spud, no you are not out of touch, you just have decent standards. i think most of Laurie's articles are appalling. Embarrassing infantile stuff at times that NS should be ashamed to print.

As for people saying we can't hold it against her that she went to Oford, that is fair enough but what we can hold against her is her regular references to millionaire tory cabinet members being out of touch with ordinary folk when she went to an independent school and then Oxford. She is just as out of touch with ordinary people as they are but somehow thinks she is not. Her articles show she clearly is.

Wed, 2011-11-23 14:36 — Jack7

Excellent article as usual Laurie.

Ignore the haters, and carry on with the great work.

Thu, 2011-11-24 15:28 — Dream Operator (not verified)

Another article that barely scratches the surface of the extent to which the mainstream media is 'bought off' by corporate sponsors. Rather than deal exclusively with this issue and rubbishing the idea that a free and independent press must rely on advertising revenue, Penny mumbles on about the tepid vagaries of media bias. We already 'know' that the media is biased and operates as a political tool of the establishment. The more important question to ask is 'how' it is able to do this, how it is able to manipulate the facts to suit a specifically corporate agenda. (Having just witnessed an advertisement for the infamous tax-dodger, Vodafone below, I understand the - how shall we say - constraints Penny is working under)

In all seriousness, why not write about the possibility of directly funded public media? Why not posit a solution to the terrible media bias that exists when profits are placed before honest, factual reporting?

You seem to blindly assume that digital media, and citizen reporting or logging of events, somehow obviates the systemic bias created by corporate media outlets. You say:

"Control of the agenda is no longer in the hands of the police or of the corporate press, and digitally enabled young people are forcing honest, capable journalists to up their game. "

I must say, I find this article very naive indeed. Until Occupy movements take seriously the threat posed by corporate media, there is little hope that its members will get their message across.

[Note: The above message is particularly important when one considers that OccupyLSX is providing FREE content to the Guardian's CiF section. Very nice radical fig-leaf for the Guardian that no doubt helps to maintain its radical visage. Also helps in the money making department. But shhh, let's not talk about that]

Wed, 2011-11-23 15:15 — Stuart Eels (not verified)

JS Mill

Whatever gave you the impressiion that she got stuck in in London?

She acutally reported the "Bristol is on fire" report last year from her home in London.

Lets hope her increasing time spent in the US is a sign that she's leaving these shores!

Wed, 2011-11-23 15:16 — Ellmore Disco (not verified)

My main problem with the media is that is largely dominated by Private-school-then-Oxbridge educated Londoners, who's interests and prejudices reflect their clique. The media, and I include the New Statesman in this, routinely ignore anything happening north of Peterborough, and often anything outside Greater London...

Fri, 2011-11-25 17:22 — Stuart Eels (not verified)

Luddite

I think little stuart means Mr divine and myself.

You see we just can't get our heads around an ex gangsta, big issue seller, girl guide leader who has been subject to a water cannon assault in N.I. burnt out of his house in the summer riots and tasered by mistake outside a pub in London telling other people on here that he has an iggy button.

I want exclusive rights when Hollywood makes a film about his life story, I've even got a title. Down with the Guides!

Come back Spud!!!!!!

Wed, 2011-11-23 15:41 — Fraziel1

@Ellmorer Disco, well said, as for Jim, what do you mean excellent article as usual? You must be reading different articles to me as the last few have been the immature rantings of an adolescent. Pitiful stuff at times. Got to agree with a lot in this one though, for a change. That's two in a row now which must be a record for Lauries stuff.

Wed, 2011-11-23 15:55 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

Oh my

...another "No shit Sherlock" special from Laurie Penny.

I don't know why I come on here...I really don't know. Sometimes I think to myself: "she means well" and that I should just ignore it all. But then I'm given to understand that she is allegedly radical in her writing and reporting, but if this is radical, then I'm the King of Bulgaria.

This isn't even news...it's not even a recent development...it's not even surprisng: it's very hard to look fair and proportionate when shifting someone who doesn't want to be moved...seriously try it sometime. You can only look incompetent or brutal, there's no middle ground.

And I'll say this again...however much of a fuckin dinosaur it makes me appear. Laurie, if you think anything you've personally experienced, seen or even heard about during these protests, or last year's student protests, was brutal or fascistic, then you should have been around for the miners' strike when there was no camera in sight; it would've blown your fuckin mind.

Then again, even the miners could console themselves with the thought that "at least it isn't Peterloo". I hate to break it to you Laurie, but the police these days are pussycats, even compared to 25 years ago. You're not part of a new brutalised generation; you're one of the health and safety/consent form/risk assessment/box-ticking generation. The ones who needed a helicopter, special-forces back-up and a team of trained trauma counsellors to go on a school trip to the fuckin zoo. You've been molly-coddled all your life and it shows.

Wed, 2011-12-07 18:46 — Briar (not verified)

"In all seriousness, why not write about the possibility of directly funded public media?" We have one. It is called the BBC. I pay towards it every year and have no control over whether it employs braying donkeys like Clarkson or enthusiastic war mongers like most of the news teams. I would like to know why the public service broadcaster I pay for doesn't serve me, but instead serves the government and the global corporate elite.

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:00 — Pollik

Incisive article, Laurie.

I have long said that the internet and digital media have given protesters the tools they need to get round restriction imposed by the control freaks that are the current establishment.

For goodness sake, if the police are acting ethically and legally, where is the need to round up and kettle the reporters? When the authorities try to muzzle the media, you know something is very badly wrong.

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:05 — Pollik

@Spud OK you had it tougher (cue the "we lived in a shoebox" sketch")

I am not sure what you are trying say here...that the current level of police violence and cover up is acceptable? That you prefer sanitised news reporting? What?

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:07 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

Anyway, that's me done here I think.
If writing of this quality is 'brilliant, radical and dissenting' then either I'm out of touch or operating on an entirely different set of critical standards.

I'll just have to grin and bear it while Laurie rises to the top on the strength of her 'analysis'. I'll manage, we've had 40 fuckin years of Polly Toynbee's clueless drivel...Laurie might even be an improvement.

Just once though, why can't the media find a supposedly left-wing writer who's had a normal upbringing, a state education, worked a bit and knows a bit about the world. Seriously, if this artice represents the required standard, they really shouldn't be hard to find.

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:10 — Danny Fal (not verified)

@Spud Middleton for the win

I like Laurie as a person but damn Spud is so correct

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:19 — Steven Huttton (not verified)

@Spud Middleton I don't know why you come on here either.

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:21 — Ian5

Media falling all around..just had a phone call to say Murdoch junior gone from Sun and Times...so hope its true.

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:22 — Des Demona (not verified)

@Danny Fal
I have to disagree with your assesment of Spuds 'critique'

He has apparently entirely missed the point of the article - which is how new media is changing the nature and dispersal of news, not about different levels of brutality.

What did he expect her to write 'Although I wasn't born then I suppose the violence during the miners' strike might have been worse than that which I witnessed. Or going back further I hear the English were a bit rough with the Scots at Culloden - so that negates anything I have to say about levels of violence now?'

In fact Spud's 'critique' is actually a slightly embittered attack on Ms Penny's background and has little to do with the content or intention of the article.

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:25 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

" am not sure what you are trying say here...that the current level of police violence and cover up is acceptable?"

I'm saying it's improving...which is a good thing...no? You seem to be telling me there's room for improvement; to which I'd reply a) I know b) tell me something which couldn't be improved?

"That you prefer sanitised news reporting? What?"

I didn't mention news reporting. But as it happens I do like accurate reporting. Hysterical doom-laden predictions, rank exaggeration,Hariesque poetic licence and a lack of proportion due to historical ignorance, I can do without.
I'm also a bit scathing about this notion that before iphones, incidents unobserved by 'professional' reporters were lost to history.
"The kids don't have to wait any more for traditional news reporters to spin their message for them."

..."any more"? WTF does hse think used to happen? Does she think people just thought "Oh well, never mind, there's no professional journalists to 'make it real'"

There's a lot of metropolitan media conceit behind the writing of this article

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:28 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

"@Spud Middleton I don't know why you come on here either."

Were you that fat kid at school who sat at the back and could always be relied on to come up with the most monumentally predictable, pointeless and fuckin lame comment in every situation?

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:34 — Spud Middleton (not verified)

"He has apparently entirely missed the point of the article - which is how new media is changing the nature and dispersal of news, not about different levels of brutality"

I'd read it again if I were you. It's fundamentally about brutality. The rest is pure fanatasy. Another attempt to inculcate the idea that a new informed 'samizdat generation' is changing the nature of the world. It's all down to 'the kids', apparently...and their creativity. Laurie believes..."that children are our future". But as the magnificent Alan Hansen once told us "you'll win nothing with kids."

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:42 — Des Demona (not verified)

I don't normally engage with you Spud as I've seen you and Mr Devine derail too many threads with your attention seeking nonesense.
Suffice to say - I think you need to read it again and see that there is about one paragraph in the whole article specifically mentioning police brutality.

And as you must actually see that I don't know why you are wasting time arguing otherwise?

And unlike you - when I say I'm done, I'm done.
Enjoy.

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:43 — Edmund (not verified)

@Spud you know, I think you're right - you are out of touch.
84 year old women being pepper sprayed, a pregnant woman being sprayed to the point of miscarriage. Seated uni students being casually sprayed in the face by armed riot cops. These are shocking images. They are shocking events.

You're saying you've seen worse? Well it's not a competition. I'm sorry that you are desensitised and that is causing you to mock and belittle people who are feeling an appropriate sense of horror that peaceful protest are being broken up by violence in so-called democracies.

They are shocking images that are being captured where they wouldn't have been captured in the past.

" WTF does she think used to happen? Does she think people just thought "Oh well, never mind, there's no professional journalists to 'make it real'" "
- erm, obviously not, don't be naive, but the significance of creating a message is the power of that message on people who weren't there and don't know. You can tell people that cops were pepper spraying peaceful protesters, but it's only when you see pictures like this:

http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/full/2011/11/19/192897-us-davis-p...

and this

http://static.hypervocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/download.jpg

can you see how unambiguous the whole thing is. And that's not for the benefit of those who were there - it's for the benefit of the public, the sceptics, the haters and the desensitised.

Wed, 2011-11-23 16:51 — notpicnic (not verified)

"play 'corporate' publishing power" is indeed a big theme of #OWS-movement:

http://pear.ly/1AAf

so is "play police brutality"

http://pear.ly/2M9v

Wed, 2011-11-23 17:09 — Buckskins (not verified)

Spud, you can be the one person in here that can make us laugh. Please don't deny us your intelligent comments and input. Ignore the idiots, it's all you can do.

Laurie, you are getting more difficult to defend by the day.

Wed, 2011-12-07 22:10 — Dream Operator (not verified)

@Briar

The BBC is one of the most corrupt corporate media players the world has yet known. Our very own Pravda. And it is not an independent player: just look at who sits on its board of trustees. Also consider the fact that its funding is controlled by the government - who can threaten it unless it tows the official party line.

I am thinking about media that is funded directly without the middle-man, in this case the government. This new form of media provision would require that people give money directly to media organisations who they believe are providing the most honest coverage. Take Wikileaks as an example: it is funded by direct donations and immediate public interest in its operation. So we need a media that responds to this form of demand.

Several other examples exist of this type of media platform: DemocracyNow, Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Real News Network - to name just three. The goal, it seems to me, is to remove corporate and government sponsorship of the media. It is within reach, but people like Penny refuse to discuss this issue.

Thu, 2011-11-24 20:28 — Tesco Shelf Stacker (not verified)

@ Fergus Pickering - Lol superb! My thoughts too. lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Vq8ri61tw

Thu, 2011-11-24 20:52 — BadDog (not verified)

Glad you are out of hospital and on the mend.

Great article, thank you.

Ignore the haters. Keep up the good work.

Fri, 2011-11-25 22:03 — Mark (not verified)

"In Britain, press unions and employers provide accreditation -- but one of the first things I was taught in journalism school was to "be very, very careful what you say about the police. They can and will sue you, and they rarely lose a case."

You mean like the made up stuff you published a fortnight ago about Water Cannon being 'in the plan'?

Funny.