Doire Cormac @CormacDoire - Twitter Profile

about 8 hours ago

A thread on something from yesterday’s events in Scarva that I feel isn’t getting nearly enough attention. There has been plenty of discussion about the protests themselves. Plenty of discussion about individuals, groups, politics and blame. What I haven’t seen much discussion about is the treatment of journalists and media workers who were there to cover the event. Yesterday, I was stopped and surrounded on two separate occasions while carrying out my job. I was questioned, challenged and told I should leave. To be absolutely clear, I wasn’t intimidated. I’ve covered enough events over the past 3 years to know exactly what these situations are. I’ve been singled out before. I’ve been pointed at before. I’ve had people attempt to take cameras. I’ve had people try to block coverage. None of it is new. If being surrounded by a handful of people was enough to intimidate me, then I’d be in the wrong profession. The point isn’t whether I was intimidated or not. The point is that intimidation was clearly the intention. The purpose of stopping journalists, surrounding them, challenging them and telling them to leave isn’t to have a friendly conversation. It’s to make them uncomfortable enough to go away. That didn’t work yesterday and it won’t work in the future. I was told to leave. I didn’t leave. I stayed and continued documenting the event for hours afterwards. Like many journalists covering contentious situations, you find ways to continue doing your job. You take different routes, position yourself elsewhere and keep reporting on what’s happening. That’s part of the job. What shouldn’t be part of the job is the acceptance that journalists being harassed is somehow normal. Photographers had stones thrown at them. Other media workers were challenged, harassed and pressured to leave areas they had every right to be in. And the reaction is often a shrug of the shoulders and a “that’s just how it is.” It shouldn’t be. Nobody has to like the media. Nobody has to agree with every report, every headline or every journalist. But a free press has every right to be present at public events. We’re not there to participate. We’re not there to support one side or the other. We’re there to document what is happening and allow people to see events for themselves. What I find particularly strange is that many of the people involved in protests want attention for their cause. They want coverage. They want the public to know why they’re there. They want their message heard. Yet some of the same people then turn their frustration towards the journalists who are there to provide that coverage. It makes little sense. This isn’t about me. I’ll continue doing what I’ve always done. Yesterday won’t stop me attending the next event, and neither will the next attempt at intimidation. What concerns me is how normalised this behaviour has become. No matter who is protesting, what cause they’re supporting or what side of an argument they’re on, harassment and intimidation of journalists should never be accepted as simply “part of the job.” The right to protest matters. The right to report on those protests matters too.

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Doire Cormac

@CormacDoire

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