Politics, at its most pathetic, is the Downing Street pack screaming at Prime Ministers, ‘Will you resign?’. At its best, politics and political journalism build up an unanswerable case against a miscreant and take a scalp.
The scenes at Clapham Common, last night, were shocking. I have, however, worked in TV news for long enough to know that the cutting room is a minefield. As with vox-pops, the selection and rejection of pictures and voices is one of the most powerful editorial forces in a newsroom.
I wasn’t at Clapham Common last night, nor were most in the mass-ranks of social media. Suffice to say, what I saw on social media and on network TV news bulletins appears to have painted a picture of predominantly peaceful protestors who were, nevertheless, in breach of the law of the land.
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