There’s a suggestion you were rolling towards the police in your wheelchair
The BBC’s hardly covered itself in glory regarding the student demonstrations, disappointingly following the same pro-police, anti-protestor line as most of the right-wing press (as compared to The Guardian and The Independent, both of which have offered more balanced coverage), but this may well be the nadir. On YouTube is a clip of a BBC interview that includes cerebal palsy sufferer Jody McIntryre being dragged from his wheelchair. Of course, justification is required for such actions, so the BBC master interviewer comes up with:
There’s a suggestion you were rolling towards the police in your wheelchair.
What. The. Fuck? What next—“you were breathing air meant for the police, so they had to render you unconscious by smashing you with a baton”?
GAH.
I feel the same about the Beeb’s pro-poilce stance.
It’s very worrying how easily government and media assume that demonstrations such as this should be totally peaceful.
Neither of them ever seems -even for a minute- to invite the thought that some of the demonstrators actually ARE that frustrated.
It’s also interesting when you get the full details of the ‘injured’ figures. It can mean anything, from a ‘proper’ injury through to a minor cut. I’ll be the protestor injured figure would soar if people used the same criteria.
And, yes, there’s no reason why demos should always go flawlessly; it clearly doesn’t help that the police at the moment in London clearly want to make things violent either.
[…] 15, 2010. News, Opinions, Politics A couple of days ago, I reported on the BBC’s interview with cerebal palsy sufferer Jody McIntryre, who’d been dumped out of his wheelchair during the student fees demonstration. Along with […]