News organisations defy call to hand over TV riot footage

Source: irishtimes

MARK SWENEY

MEDIA: THE BBC and the UK’s commercial TV news organisation ITN have responded to prime minister David Cameron’s call for them immediately to hand over unused TV footage of rioters by arguing that the proper procedure of the police obtaining a court order must be followed.

Earlier yesterday the prime minister told MPs that the media has a “responsibility” to release footage to help police track down and punish those responsible for four nights of rioting in cities across England.

Liberal Democrat MP John Leach asked the prime minister during yesterday’s emergency session of the House of Commons whether he would “encourage media organisations to immediately release footage”.

“I will certainly do that,” Mr Cameron responded. “Everyone has a responsibility. Media organisations have a responsibility too, and I hope they will act on it.”

Under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 an order must be obtained from a judge to obtain unpublished material such as film and pictures. The judge is supposed to weigh the interest of the police in obtaining evidence against the public interest in a free press.

ITN said that despite the drive to swiftly identify looters the government cannot run roughshod over standard legal practice. “We expect any request will come from the police,” said a spokeswoman for ITN.

“When that happens, we will deal with it as per our established practice for handing over unbroadcasted material.”

A BBC spokeswoman said: “We have standard processes in place to deal with requests from the police through our litigation department, regardless of the subject matter.

Any request would need to be dealt with by the courts,” she added.

Fran Unsworth, the BBC’s head of newsgathering, said on Wednesday that the corporation would not hand over any footage without a court order.

“It’s a matter of principle for us, we don’t just hand over our rushes [raw footage] to the police without them going through a proper process which is via the courts,” Ms Unsworth said in an interview on BBC radio’s Media Show. – (Guardian service)