In the first of our Then & Now series exploring how reporting from major events has changed over time, Sophie Monks Kaufman compares the methods used by journalists to cover two important UK demonstrations.
1990: The poll tax riots
At 11am on Saturday 31 March 1990 close to 200,000 demonstrators met in central London to march on Whitehall against the Conservative Government’s plans to introduce the poll tax. What came later were some of the most violent altercations between protesters and police in recent history. Footage from what has come to be known as the poll tax riots can be watched below:
(warning: graphic scenes)
PJ Arkell a photographer who’s photos have been published in The Times and the Guardian was working on the day of the riots. He recounts the process of getting a photograph to the news desk:
“Photographers used to take their film and pass it on to a messenger, if they could find one, to go and develop. The minimum amount of time from taking a photo to getting it to the news desk was 2 hours.
“Now it’s much more immediate with the minute-by-minute television accounts, for example the scenes we’re seeing in Libya. I don’t know whether anyone’s any the wiser for getting the news earlier but there’s more of a sense of being there through modern technology,” he says.
2011: Lloyds TSB bank “bail-in”
UK Uncut is an anti-cuts organisation that formed in October 2010 after George Osborne announced public sector cuts. On Saturday 26 February its second ever “bail-in” took place in Lloyds TSB where protesters staged a school lesson with the speaker acting as headmistress and the attendees as schoolchildren. You can watch our video of the event below:
Jasper Jackson, a student on City University’s Investigative journalism masters, can be seen in the video making his own recording. Jasper has attended over 30 protests since he began documenting the London protest movement in October 2010. Each one has been written up for his blog Direct Reaction
As well as a video camera, he brings a smartphone to each protest in order to live 
He says: “In terms of information gathering it’s very similar to how it was 20 years ago. You still go up to people and make friends but this is also a tool for self-promotion. These people are my audience so I always mention my blog. This is a classic new media thing. My audience isn’t a captive one that will buy my paper.”
The photograph used as the featured image for this post is attributed to Flickr user lewishamdreamer. You can view his photostream here