Reporting Dissent

After months of unprecedented dissent and acres of hostile press reporting, 2011 drew to a close with a mass protest which managed to work with the news media and defuse the impact of much of the ritual negative coverage. There could hardly have been a greater contrast between the angry, violent eviction of Irish travellers at Dale Farm in Essex and the eventual harmony surrounding the vast tented encampment which was established in front of St Paul’s cathedral in central London.

Nicholas Jones discussed the media coverage of dissent during 2011 with two of those closely involved – Naomi Colvin, a leading supporter and organiser of OccupyLSX and Jason Parkinson, a video and print journalist who reported from Dale Farm and who is secretary of the London photographers’ branch of the National Union of Journalists.