From Orgreave to Hillsborough, and now Bristol, the media has too often taken the police’s version of events at face value
After protests in Bristol turned sour last week, one account came out on top as numerous media outlets splashed on reports from Avon and Somerset police that injuries to officers included broken bones and a collapsed lung.
To the average reader, such headlines helped build an incriminating and unsympathetic portrait of protesters as anarchic thugs. Given this was a protest over the policing bill – a piece of legislation granting the authorities sweeping powers to ban any protest – the story of a beleaguered force struggling to hold back the mob was politically convenient. Controlling the narrative is a precondition to winning any political battle.
