Awesome video – relatively uncut and showing how the police, once engaged to clear the car, start stretching their authority by exercising a move-on order by pushing protestors around. And also proving the lie about slashed tyres in the Murdoch press. But then, Uncle Rupert was there as well, so dramatising a harmless protest doesn’t come as a surprise.

Even a low-level politico like Doyle will most likely have a bulletproof car, sturdy enough to carry some protestors without causing damage. Most low-profile tyres are still drivable even without air as a standard safety feature. A minor inconvenience, being held up by a legitimate and basically peaceful protest get exaggerated into the most terrible tyre slashing, violent mob in the last 25 years.

I heard similar things about the G20 protests in 2006, The Age reported about the most violent day in Melbourne since a long time. I spotted accidentally the few people harnessed with the riot gear that soon smashed a police vans window. They had more difficulties getting through the sizeable amount of protestors than causing the incidence the media spotlighted. Hours of peaceful, creative and empowering protest were wiped out by potential agent provocateurs.

Is there a pattern? It just looks like that there’s a kind of template for reporting protest in the commercial media. Eye witness accounts usually weigh less in the perception of the general public than mainstream media propaganda. But now, with the ability to film, edit, comment and upload a different perspective of events the distortion in reporting becomes more obvious.

A paranoid mind might wonder whether deflating the tyres was a spontaneous idea or happened according to plan. But as long as false claims can be disproven by video evidence, the rat question doesn’t matter much.