BBC, ITN and Sky News give riot footage to police

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Source: The Guardian

The BBC, ITN and Sky News have handed hundreds of hours of unbroadcast footage of the August riots to police after being served with court orders by Scotland Yard.

The broadcasters were forced to hand over raw footage of the riots after the Metropolitan police obtained a production order earlier this month under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. The Daily Telegraph is also understood to have disclosed material to the police after being served with a production order.

Scotland Yard has put sustained pressure on all media groups to reveal video and picture evidence of the riots since the disorder across England seven weeks ago.

"It is very very rare that we are served with a court order to hand over footage like this," said a senior insider at one of the broadcasters. "We don't hand over material willy-nilly because it compromises the security of our journalists on the streets. Clearly we don't want them being seen as an evidence-gathering arm of the police."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/sep/22/bbc-itn-sky-news-riots

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1. Um - clearly there

is no longer even a pretence to a fourth estate in the UK.