As Climate Camp set up on Blackheath in South London I got hold of a copy of the code of conduct that journalists were asked to sign if they want to stay on the camp outside of media hours (10am-6pm) and it makes for fascinating reading.

Most of it reinforces the camp’s existing media policy such as asking for everyone’s permission when taking a photograph. The code says ‘When you want to take a picture or a video and it includes people, always, always ask first. If you can’t ask don’t take the picture.’

The camp’s organisers claim that all decisions are made with consensus from everyone. But reading through the minutes of the national meetings before the camp, the code of conduct is only ever mentioned in passing. There is never a discussion about what it should be and what it should contain.

So what has resulted is the media team’s moral view on what the press should be allowed to do being imposed on everyone at the camp and on journalists. We do not allow the police to impose their moral view of what should be photographed on us, so why should journalists subscribe to the media team’s views?

Are they supposing that if the police were to raid the camp we wouldn’t be able to photograph it unless we asked everyone defending the camp their permission first? I spent all day photographing people setting up the camp, I didn’t ask a single one for their permission and no-one asked me not to take their picture.

In an interesting twist, this year’s camp is on common land, unlike previous years where they have squatted someone else’s land for a week. So the argument is no longer that they have no right to impose rules on land that doesn’t belong to them, but that they have no right to impose rules on land that belongs to everybody.

Their right to be on the land is equal to mine and any other member of the public. Just because they’ve put a fence up does not give them the right to restrict access or impose restrictions on access.

The final bizarre section is entitled ‘Understand our community’ and states:

Anyone who is responsible for violence, intimidation, harassment or unwanted sexual contact will by their behaviour exclude themselves from the camp.
We reject any form of language and behaviour that perpetuates oppression, however unintentionally: for example a racist or sexist joke, or interrupting someone on the basis of unspoken privilege.
Stealing and other breaches of trust, including informing on camp activities, will also exclude the person responsible from the camp. All allegations will be treated seriously but with an awareness that they can be divisive, especially if unsubstantiated.
Perhaps they copied and pasted this section from something they were going to hand out to campers because I certainly don’t think it can apply to journalists.

No interrupting? I’m not sure broadcast and radio journalists will be able to be follow that one for more than a minute interviewing someone. And the idea that journalists would steal, use violence or sexually harass someone on the camp are so far fetched I’m not going to discuss them.

I find the last point particularly insulting, I’ll assume they mean ‘informing’ in the sense of passing the police information that was given in confidence, rather than informing people by reporting – as is our job. Not giving unpublished material over to the state is an issue that journalists go to prison for.

In any case the campers needn’t worry as we’ve already to agreed to a code of conduct – the NUJ Code of Conduct. And that is the only code I agreed to as I covered Climate Camp for the week.

I agree. I was happily taking pictures of the set up, leaving cards with people so they could download later. Then that twat gets up at the “House Meeting” and says “no pictures without permission” and that’s it. I talked to some organisers and they said that that comment was his opinion and not the camps but they wouldn’t say what camp opinion was.

So. I take a picture of 400 people sitting down and I need permission from all of them? Nope. I don’t. By their own admission it was public land I don’t need releases from them. In any event I was so pissed off with their “Holier Than Thou” lefty hippy BS that I left. Feck ‘em..

The idea that photographers should not be able to take pictures in public, as a breach of an individuals privacy, is in turn, the crumbling of the keystone to civil liberites. It’s one thing if a celebritiy tries to hinder photography of themsevles or family, but completely another to apply this to the general public.

If you remove the right to public photography, you remove the one defense of democracy and freedom. A journalist is someone that reports events to the general public, not an employee of Rupert Murdoch. The photojournalist is the proof of the written word. Without journalists and especially without photojournalists, there is no one watching to report events as they happen. All you get is biased views of engaged parties. A journalist should always strive to obtain an independent obsevation, without this, no will know what really happened.

Currently, journalists appear to be defending the protestors actions and condeming the police actions. This is the reason why the Police are taking a very distant stance. Take away the journalists and the Police will have no one to watch their actions and report.

In response to the Climate Camps ‘code of conduct’, I was there too, taking pictures, and was amused by the opening meeting beginning with the statement that all this is possible due to the laws of ‘Common Land’, then ending with ‘ask permission to take pictures’! There appears to be a general threat that you will be made to leave the camp if you break the code. So common land has been demarcated with new laws in place. Not just a common law but a dictatorship, one that is back by oppreshion and threat of expulsion. Amazing how in just a few hours, common land became home to an opprehive dictatorship.

The laws of common land are such that if the land is not left in the hands of the common people, then it must be returned to the crown or state, in which case, that fenced off dictatorship in Blackheath is no longer common land, as such the campers are trespassing and can be legally removed. Ooops!

I was asked on two occassions not to take pictures. It made me think about protestors, I have been one and will be again. When a protestor, protests in public, are they not making an assesrtion to their support of a cause or action, in public. They are visually signing their name to that action or cause. If they do not want to be counted, amongst that number, they surely should not be there? If it’s the case that these people are concerned with later identification and association with events that are or may be illegal, then surely they should not take part in those actions, or not be party to the public side of the camp.

If you don’t want to be associated with protest action, don’t protest, if you do support a cause and want to protest publicly, expect to be recorded as doing so.

If all the press left the Climate Camp, the camp would have been gone by Saturday, and no one would have heard why or how…

Heard about this from a few people, sorry to see you treated this way. We have a right to photograph in public, the camp was public. It's a real sickner to see camp organisers trying it on the same way the police did a little while ago. I took hundreds of photos and didn't ask anybody's permission. Those that objected I told to fuck off, worlked well for me !



Regretfully Indymedia editors anreclose friends of many of the Climate Camp organisers so any posts critical of the camp have been hidden, I expect this will go the same way.

Good luck mate

It seems unlikely that Marc Vallee would want this on Indymedia, as his last complaint about Climate Camp's media policy (yes he does this every year) exploded in his face when posted to Indymedia.

The idea that Mike H went around the Climate Camp telling people to fuck off when they complained about his taking pictures is laughable. You can bet your bottom dollar he's a lying troll who wasn't anywhere near climate camp.

Mark Vallee thinks that the movement he makes money out of, owes him special favours. It doesn't. And if he thinks he has the right to take pictures of unwilling models, then he can expect the occasional kicking.

Of course, he could always prove his radical pretentions by involving the cops - the kick is no-ones responsibility but that of the person who gave it to him, when asked. Why he expects Climate camp to take responsibility for the actions of an individual is anyones guess - especially when he doesn't take responsibility for his own.

Cops are paid employees who are on duty - they have no right to stop people taking photos of them - members of the public cannot be forced to submit to being photographed, unless they've been arrested by a cop. Simple as.

So you are all in favour of us taking photos when it suits your media agenda but not when you decide you don't want it. Sound like any other group you know ?

There are not private rules for you, there is the law, a public space is a public space, you don't get to fence off some common land and declare your own rules. The land is as much mine as it is yours.

Climate Camp without media coverage is just 2000 people in a field.