Oh and FIT filming of press-card carrying pro's (which is routine), should tell you just how much the police are in cahoots with the press. But anyway, who can complain about the police photographing us when we photograph them?

Photorights admin

Neiljohn, I feel you have a slightly distorted perception that a lot of people maintain, especially on the indymedia axis, about the meaning and usage of the Press Card, and for that matter the relationship between the press and the police. It is almost never cosy as you seem to think, and never has been.

All that the press card is supposed to establish is identity of the carrier as a bona-fide member of the press. Police, like everyone else nowadays, are perfectly happy to be photographed when it suits them, and not very when it may create problems. Fundamentally pro photographers have no greater rights of access than non-pro's.

Many people who don't have one imagine that press cards have some sort of talismanic power to open doors, as proof of membership of the establishment freemasonry of the fourth estate. Having carried one for 25+ years, I can tell you it isn't like that. It is of very little use at all. It's just as likely to mark you out for special hostility.

Press photographers seem to be even more frequently subject to S44 stops than members of the public, because of 'big camera' syndrome. Apparently extremists and terrorists are known to burden themselves with 25kg of photo kit when not wearing explosive belts. That info is at least as reliable as the certainty that Iraq has WMD.

The point about the 'free' press is similarly misdirected conspiracy theory. The thing that makes so much media propaganda for the status quo is not Illuminati scheming but commercial pressures, especially advertiser influence. Media are no more or less than a product aimed at producing profit, they hone their coverage to sel copies and sell ad space. We don't need censors with blue pencils to enforce a party line in western capitalism, it obligingly gets created interactively by market forces.

This is an inconveniently circular proposition that refutes stereotypes. For instance the cult of celebrity and aspirational lifestyle that saturates our media is where the money is because lots of people like it, so lots of advertisers support it, there are budgets to pay for photos. It's crap, but a profitable generator of jobs and work for those who have the stomach. As a moral choice? Well, is it worse than working in a bank that invests in Zimbabwe or China, a clothes shop that sells Burmese T shirts, or supermarket that exploits Kenyean coffee growers?

Personally I think CJ has a lot to offer in its direct expression of peoples' views, but it has some blindspots - pro's can and do bring great craft and passion and committment to photography, as well as fuelling the Daily Mail and similar excrement. CJ also has some daft activist conceits where MSM and pro photographers are concerned. That cuts both ways, of course - some pro's are arrogantly dismissive of CJ. Neither are helpful perspectives, they are a divide and rule obedience to the status quo, and one it finds convenient. If we support freedom for amateur photographers we also support freedom for pro's and vice versa. Freedom of photographic self-expression belongs equally to pro and amateur, and we all confront similar problems which is why this site doesn't care to discriminate . It doesn't actually much matter who records our history, warts and all, and there is health in diversity.

Photorights admin

What is this country coming to - if the Home Secretary sees it fit to restrict photography in 'reasonable circumstances' what else is he going to deem restricted due to reasonable circumstances, whether locally or any where else for that matter.

Thought this was a free country! 'INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY' - well that's what I always thought - seems these days we are assumed GUILTY unless we can prove our innocence 'without a doubt'. Surely someone has to make a law before we can break a law! We vote them in - so we can vote them OUT!

99.9999% of us photographers are law obiding good citizens, and not up to something weird or illegal. Shame that the Home Secretary thinks he should restrict the majority - when the minority is probably tiny in comparison!

Absolute balderdash!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sack the lot of em!

It would seem the uneasy bedfellows are falling out again.

The 'Press Card' has been used as a tool by the Police to restrict the publics right to take photographs, often photographs that might support cases against the Police where 'public order' is being 'maintained', from the pressgazette: "The response by Commander Bob Broadhurst, in charge of public order policing, that “the job of FIT officers may, at a public order event, include interaction with photographers who, on production of valid forms of accreditation, will be able to continue with their work” does nothing to allay concern. Nor does his statement that they can take pictures “wherever operationally possible”."

The press community likewise has used the 'Press Card' as a means to access where the public cannot go, and to a degree to surpress citizen reporting to maintain the status quo. Citizen reporters are considered dangerous by Government officialdom as they cannot be controlled in the same way as the 'free' press...

Wake up and smell the bull shine, the smoke and mirrors have blinded you, the illusionist 'free' press (and the public) too long, even Bliar's Brainwashing Colusionists (the bbc) who only give a pretense of balance when pushed because they have to are being affected. Money, grubbymint and the colusionist press (http://www.medialens.org/ for further reading) surpressing the publics right to know, and now the press are complaining, what goes around comes around, 'as yea sow so shall yea reap', time the Press Card scheme was properly discredited, shown for what it is, a means to surpress and dealt with appropriately, before everyones rights are lost!

Coincidentally the Press Gazette carries an apposite article by Rupert Grey, a copyright and privacy lawyer at Swan Turton. This illuminates what law the Home Secretary and police are relying on:

But the police have an additional weapon at their disposal: common law powers to prevent and investigate crime. These entitle the police to prevent photographers taking photographs, or to confiscate their cards, if the police genuinely believe that in doing so they are, or may be, preventing crime.
The conduct of the police must, in the circumstances, be reasonable. This is a convenient fall-back position for the police: to prove their conduct was not reasonable places a very high burden on a photographer fighting for his or her right to freedom of expression under Article 10. As the judge in the Wood case remarked: “It is not the job of the courts to second guess the operational decisions of the police.”

It is well worth reading the whole piece here

Photorights admin