2007-08-23

Report: Media G8way International Press Group

Phase 1: Getting things started

As part of the G8 2007 mobilisation, there were two press groups
associated with the radical left, Gipfelsoli Infogroup (literally
‘summit solidarity Infogroup’) and Campinski. Gipfelsoli is a solidarity
and antirepression infogroup that has existed for a number of years now,
which, already in the run up to the summit, disseminated press releases
regarding particular groups’ actions, state repression and police plans,
either on behalf of other groups or under its own name. The other press
group, Campinski, was formed during the preparatory anti-G8 camp with
the same name in August 2006, and decided to rekindle their activities
in early 2007. Campinski also distributed press releases of various
groups within the radical left mobilisation and increasingly issued
their own press releases too. Both groups also made themselves available
for interviews.

Our plan was to complement this work with an international dimension.
Only three weeks before the G8 summit was due to start a few companer@s
from different countries and radical left contexts decided to set up an
international press group that would act as an international portal or
press service to groups of the radical and autonomous left who wished to
have press releases about their positions and actions disseminated
and/or who were willing to give interviews to foreign language press.
For this, we needed to build a database of (reliable) international
press contacts. Our database at this point was an amalgamation of
existing contacts we and the groups around us had collected whilst doing
press work on other campaigns or summit mobilisations and the contacts
we obtained from companer@s all over the world.

It took more than a week until a first meeting with a bigger group of
interested people took place (fortunately there were experienced folk
from the G8 2005 Counterspin Collective willing to be involved again).
Language was a problem. We wanted our press releases, and those we
translated from Gipfelsoli, Campinski and any other groups, to be sent
out in as many languages as possible and to be made politically relevant
to as many different national and regional contexts as possible. This
meant having at least one person responsible for each language. Besides,
we needed enough people willing and able to translate from German into
English (from which most people were going to translate into all other
languages). We made some basic plans.

First we set up an email account and a wiki page. We knew we had to get
more people involved in this project, both people who would join the
group, but also people who would be up for giving interviews during the
protest events. Experience of the Counter Spin Collective showed that
such a list of interviewees was gold dust and needed to be worked on as
early as possible. As an outreach tool and to provide basic skills to
people, we organised an interview training workshop at the Convergence
Centre in Berlin. We made bilingual handouts on how to give good
interviews which we disseminated on lists and put up on websites. We
hoped to attract more people with the workshops, yet as these things go,
not many people had time to attend. Nonetheless, the handouts proved
useful for many people and we also offered more workshops at the
Reddelich camp in the days before the protests. Beyond techniques for
interviews, the training also involved a good deal of role play with set
questions that we thought were particularly difficult for people to
answer: the problem of representation and being quoted as a spokesperson
by journalists, the question of so-called ‘violence’ at protest events
and the problem of solidarity across action forms and political
perspectives, the latter two which would haunt us most throughout our
work in the following weeks.

Our second big problem was becoming evident: we had too little time
left. Particularly it became clear to us that we were running out of
time to discuss in any meaningful way whether it would be possible to
have a specific (political) press strategy beyond being an (albeit
important) channel for communication between protesters and the
mainstream press.

Phase 2: When things became a complex operation

To our delight, more people wanted to get involved. This was great, but
as yet there was still a lack of structure for people to access. It was
great to see people coming on board and deciding to create specific task
areas, either taking on specific regions, countries or languages, or
taking on technical tasks like setting up e-lists. It was beginning to
look like real international outreach was within the realm of our
possibilities.

Our unexpected success in collecting press contacts complicated the
entire operation (we had 4,400 on our database in the end). After
painful nights of manual insertion of mail contacts (no, there had not
yet been any csv files, and yes, there are now!) we decided to work with
one general English mailing list with all contacts, and fourteen further
lists according to the different languages could offer and contacts we
had across the globe. The Convergence Center in Rostock may remember the
sweat of our working nights!

The raids on houses and projects in Germany on May 9th was our entry
point. From then we started translating German press releases and
sending them out internationally. This was also when international press
interest in the G8 Summit protests started to heighten as time drew
closer to the events. It was at this point that we also set up a press
phone number, which journalists immediately began calling for
information and for interviews.

But for the action week itself things had to work differently. We knew
the requests would become more numerous and our group would be spread
over several locations. The plan was the following: To have ready in
advance daily advisories of what was due to happen each day (and was
public information). Our intention for the morning was to guide the
press in the right direction of actions. In the afternoon, we planned to
send out another press release which would be more of a commentary of
the day based on the German press releases.

In terms of division of labour, we decided that some of us had to stay
in the press office at the Convergence Center in Rostock, where the
Campinski group sat as well. From here, the e-lists were managed and the
twice daily reports sent out. Others would go to Camp Reddelich to
receive and deal with international press showing up at the camp
together with Carlos Kemper of the Campinski press group who was
reponsible for the German press.

Phase 3: Muddling through at Reddelich

And what an interest there was! The first two days before most other
campers arrived, Camp Reddelich held an open day for local people and
journalists. Many locals visited and journalists literally ran us over!
From dawn to dusk (and the sun rises early and sets late at this time of
year!), three of us walked at least twenty rounds over the large
campsite, each time with a different press team, showing and explaining
to them the playground, the barrio structure, the food kitchens, and
finding them interview partners. Although it felt a bit like being in
a zoo, the open day provided a good opportunity to sort out the more
amenable from hostile journalists, and make contacts with activists who
were willing and able to speak to the press. It also showed activists
arriving at the camp that there was a committed group of people trying
to keep a tab on the many and often irritating film crews and
photographers and would take care of them. It gave our work over the
next week quite some legitimacy. But legitimacy can also turn out to be
a burden: everyone started to approach us whenever anyone anywhere got a
camera out, be they friend or foe. We realized we had to draw some more
visible boundaries and began to be much more explicit about the fact
that we were not a ‘camera watch dog’ but the group dealing with
mainstream/corporate press. People taking personal photos, activists
wanting to make documentaries and people doing art projects would have
to self-organise.

As decided at the camp plenary meeting, from Saturday on no camera crews
or photographers would be able to be shown around the camp anymore. This
was done to prevent the camp being overrun with journalists and camera
teams and enable people to organise in peace and rest from actions
without having a camera in their faces all the time. Press would be
allowed to film and take photographs at the entrance area of the camp,
where the info-point and concierge were. Someone from the press group
would stay with them and ensure that people were aware that there was
filming of photography going on. We would also either give interviews
ourselves or find activists to give interviews. Whilst we were clear
that we were not spokespersons or press officers and that people were
obviously free to tell the press whatever they wanted to, our aim was to
stay within a consensus that neither we, nor others who were interviewed
would distance ourselves from any actions or activists so as not to play
into the hands of those forces bent on dividing the movement.

Our days began at 7am and ended around midnight. We spent all day every
day dealing with the press. A useful contribution to our existing
database and that of the future was that we made sure we noted the
contact details of all of the press representatives that came to the
camp. To ensure ongoing communication with people living in the camp,
one of us would always attend the plenary/spokes council meetings in the
evening.

Press presence remained a constant source of antagonism at the camp.
Naturally, attitudes amongst camp dwellers towards journalists ranged
from hostile to welcoming. As go-betweens of these two positions, we
didn’t always have an easy ride. We tried to remain flexible to the mood
fluctuations in the camp. At times, it became necessary to keep the
press at bay and we worked closely with the camp protection group to
assess whether at particular moments it may be inappropriate to have too
much press around. For example when people needed to chill after protest
actions, or if the cops were being particularly aggressive towards the
camp at certain times. In these cases or when we felt that there were
simply too many journalists and it was getting too much, two of us would
move outside the camp to receive and talk to the press there. At the
same time, we knew that the press would be a form of protection for the
camp too, for example if the cops tried to raid. Thus, we put together a
list of journalists to contact at any time day or night, if such an
event were to occur.

A final example of the kind of work we did was that, together with
Campinski, we were also able to assist the camp in translating and
publishing its press release regarding camp security. When after a camp
meeting, people decided that they wanted to send out a message to the
public regarding their position on what they would do if the camp was
attacked by cops (not to attack, yet to defend the camp infrastructure
and its participants), we were able to provide a supporting hand. At the
same time, this incident was also a good example of how, as an
international press group, we had to sometimes judge whether certain
information or actions were relevant for an international audience.
After much nocturnal discussion, we decided that the camp statement did
not need to go out to international press because it was too specific to
a less immediate audience.

Phase 4: What we leave behind

We know you all just want our cvs file with all those press contacts…

Before we tell you how to get it, a few reflections on our work. We
strongly felt that trying to build a structure for communicating our
message, or explaining our actions also through the mainstream press, is
an attempt to create cracks in their superficial storylines. This has
some really great potential. Having said this, what was not clear to us
was how to use this potential most effectively. Our vision of being a
bridge between journalists and radical activists and establishing
trustworthy contacts worked out rather well. However, in being mainly
“facilitators” we might not have had the space to work to make more
strategic interventions into the press discourse. Often, our efforts
remained merely at the level of getting a good quote in. Therefore, a
more established network based perhaps on some political principles for
press work might be just as, if not more useful.

Phase 5: After the summit is before the summit

A lot of discussions about the G8, the police operations and the

repression are taking place right now, at least in Germany. Political
trials are going to come, others of previous summits are still ongoing.
The next G8 Summit will take place in Japan in only one year. Lots of
reasons to go on with press work with a transnational perspective. If
you want to get involved in strategising, translating, building up more
contacts, please contact: g8-press-int@nadir.org