Matthew and his Feelings

Media Choreography and the Occupy LA Raid

futurejournalismproject:

Via Alexis Madrigal, The Atlantic:

During the Los Angeles Police Department’s forcible removal of the Occupy LA protest last night, they chose 12 reporters and photographers to represent the media as a whole. This is called a “media pool”…

…The LAPD deployed this old-school method in a decidedly 20th-century way. First, they didn’t select a single web-based publication or alternative news outlet. Instead they allowed the Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, AP, the big four television outlets, and a two radio reporters. Anybody not in that group — which would include reporters for every website not affiliated with a newspaper in Los Angeles, not to mention all citizens performing acts of journalism — were told that they would be arrested if they came too close to the eviction area…

…City police departments share a lot of information and if the LAPD’s strategy is seen as successful, expect it will be deployed again in other cities. More broadly, it seems plausible that government agencies will continue to buddy up to traditional media members, offering them exclusive access in exchange for agreeing to the exclusion of citizen journalists from important events.

I’d read that some journalists in the pool, having been told not to tweet, were doing so anyway. More power to them! (Of course, this likely doesn’t apply to journalists from outlets like AP that expressly forbid their journalists from tweeting news before it goes on the wire.) 

(Source: futurejournalismproject)