Over lunch at the Nucleo Sportinguista yesterday - an excellent fishy lunch it was too! - with a friend we discussed the sorry state of the modern world. America has avoided a total senate disaster for the Democrats but still the Republicans won’t give them an easy time. Europe is in an energy mess. The UK seems to be turning into something of a police state. Here’s a story I picked up from the Thursday’s Metro, concerning a journalist arrested while reporting on a protest:
“Hertfordshire’s police and crime commissioner, David Lloyd, finally apologised for the arrest of LBC’s Charlotte Lynch this morning, admitting that officers may have ‘got it wrong’.
But he insisted journalists should be ‘thinking about’ whether it was right to give the environmental group’s actions the ‘oxygen of publicity’.
Despite showing proof of being a member of the press, Ms Lynch was detained as she tried to report on the demonstrations. Documentary maker Rich Felgate and photographer Tom Bowles were arrested a day earlier for trying to capture footage of the activists climbing on the motorway gantries in Hertfordshire. They had their filming equipment seized and were taken to a police station, where they spent 13 hours. Three officers also search Mr Bowles’s flat that same evening while his daughter and wife were present. Like Ms Lynch, they too showed their press cards and explained they were there in a journalistic capacity.
‘I think we’ve just got to ask ourselves as a society if we are handling the Just Stop Oil appropriately by giving them the oxygen of publicity, Mr Lloyd told LBC’s Nick Ferrari today. Mr Ferrari stressed that what was happening on the M25 is ‘news’ and it is in the public interest to be reported on. He said: ‘I put it to you that you are far better versed in police affairs than I am, but perhaps in the news business I might just have the edge. ‘This is news – if you close vast tracks of a 116-mile orbital road because of one particular protest… that’s what we in the business call news.’But the officer doubled down on his criticism, drawing a comparison with how he imagined the press would report on a person trying to take their own life on a ring road.”
So, should the police decide what should be reported in the news? Should news reporters take a sort of lawman role and not report anything that might foment dissent? Are we in a dystopian science fiction story?
And then there’s the ongoing rumble of Brexit fall-out. Here’s the story of a young mother having problems getting a visa for her new baby - another Brexit benefit!
But, hey! the sun is shining here in Figueira. The sky and the sea are a beautiful blue. I guess I’ll go for a stroll and forget about the negative stuff.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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