Under Current Affairs

If the bland diet of TV spectacle called “The News” leaves you feeling depressed, isolated, insulted and sceptical, then restore your sense of dignity and intelligence by tuning into Undercurrents, a truly superb video magazine series of alternative news.

Since it was set up by a small group of journalists and media-activists in Britain five years ago, Undercurrents has consistently produced award-winning, high-quality news videos and documentaries that seriously challenge mainstream definitions of current affairs. At a time of diminishing media democracy, the group provides a much-needed distribution outlet for the kind of social justice/environmental issues that get strangled, downplayed, manipulated and even criminalised by an increasingly corporate-controlled mass media.

To the tribal techno of Afro-Celt Sound System, the latest Undercurrents kicks off with “Global News”, a series of fast-moving clips from around the world. Thousands of Australians hop in solidarity with Aboriginal land rights protestors; huge demonstrations take place in Poland as EU funded roads destroy five nature reserves; masses in India halt the construction of 3,000 proposed dams – displacing 15 million people – by threatening to drown rather than let their homes be flooded. There’s even a ten-minute special on the efforts to save the Glen of the Downs, Ireland’s first national nature reserve, from the ravages of Euro-Route 1.

Next up is a highly informative and amusing piece on how to sabotage fox-hunts. (Despite overwhelming public support for a ban, 500 hunts still take place in Britain every week). Activists save foxes’ lives by copying huntsmen’s methods for controlling the pack, thereby confusing the dogs, and masking the fox’s scent with a spray made from water and citronella, a strong-smelling essential oil. Particularly effective is a tape of the pack in cry (the sound they make as they move in for the kill). The tape’s played on an ordinary Walkman, plugged into an amplifier and loud-hailer and broadcast across the fields, drawing the dogs towards the sound and away from the fox. The clip ends with some rather nasty scenes – when it comes to protecting their patch, the fox-hunting gentry are not so gentle, using hired thugs as well as the police and their own kind to beat up protesters.

In the next slot, hundreds of giant yellow tanks roll ominously across the screen. An apocalyptic soundtrack sounds the alarm. This is Germany, where since 1995, citizens have staged mass railway blockades against the storage of deadly radioactive waste known as CASTOR.

I used to think that military dictatorships only happened in “third world” countries and Northern Ireland. But as I watch 30,000 German military police – dressed in padded body-shield uniforms, black jack-boots and visors, adorned with helicopters, water cannons, German shepherds, truncheons and guns – invade the small German town of Arhaus, I realise that EU armed totalitarianism is much closer than we think.

In Arhaus last March, thousands of German citizens and international supporters defied police brutality by loudly demonstrating all day and lying across railway tracks to block CASTOR’s journey into town. The cops eventually pushed the train through, but the story has a happy ending nonetheless. In a brilliant example of how effective mass democracy can be, Undercurrents explains that in May 1998, following reports of high radioactivity, police refused to guard future CASTOR transports. All CASTOR transports have now been stopped. Meanwhile, mediated through channels like Undercurrents, this type of railway action is starting up against Sellafield.

Contrasting starkly with the unquestioned assumptions behind most mainstream media, Undercurrents sees the manufacture of news itself as a crucial subject for investigation. In a superb piece of investigative journalism, the team spent a year researching the extent to which the police in Britain control and manipulate the news. The results are disturbing, and should ring a warning bell to us here in Ireland.

In Britain, journalists who cover social justice and environmental issues have become candidates for police bullying and harassment. Undercurrents documents case after case of photographers and camera-people being intimidated and arrested for simply doing their jobs. Journalists’ press cards are no longer respected, and reporters at big events like road evictions get cordoned off into special police pens where they are unable to record the real action. Photographers’ and film-makers’ homes and offices are being raided, their equipment is being confiscated, and their pictures are being used by the police as evidence against protesters. In one particularly shocking scene, HTV producer John Williams explains how he has just been attacked by a policeman – hence his two broken ribs and the blood pouring down his face.

“What began as a few individual PCs shoving people around,” notes one photographer (who’s had to send his pictures out of the country to keep them from the cops), “now seems to have become a high level decision that this is the way news will be managed.”

“It’s a warning,” says another British photographer. “A way of putting off journalists from going to these events. And the easiest targets are the freelancers, because they’re not on a clear contract.”

During his investigation, Undercurrents journalist Roddy Mansfield was also harassed by the police. He has been arrested six times in the past two years for reporting on newsworthy events. On one occasion he managed to film his own assault and arrest, but the cops erased that part of the tape. However, they forgot to switch the microphone off while they did this, inadvertently providing Undercurrents with the first hard proof that police are erasing tapes and destroying evidence.

These attempts to black out the news makes alternative media like Undercurrents all the more important. Why not buy a copy between a group of friends, and organise a showing of real news?

There are nine different Undercurrent news videos. They are available by post for STG£13.95 each. Call the hotline on 00-44-1865-203662, or write to 16b Cherwell St., Oxford, England OX4 1BG.

E-mail: [email protected] and www.undercurrents.org

An Alternative Ireland

• An Irish Undercurrents is in the offing, loosely affiliated to its British counterpart (which was actually co-founded by Dublin journalist Paul O’Connor). Like its British counterpart, Undercurrents Ireland wants campaigners and video-makers to contact them with footage of social justice, community and environmental events. They’re also looking for protests, cover-ups, scams, positive actions, wacky happenings and other stories that generally don’t make it onto RTE News. They have a good range of camera equipment, editing facilities and expertise, and can train video activists and community groups in effective use of equipment. They also screen Undercurrents at the ILAC centre library in Dublin. Contact Joe Carolan at the Community Media Network on (01) 830 0499/838 7466.