Court sees TV film of demonstrators

Press, 13 February 1982, Page 6

Court sees TV film of demonstrators

PA Auckland More than 30 minutes of previously untransmitted television film was shown during a depositions hearing in the District Court at Auckland yesterday.

The Auckland televison news editor, Roderick Colin Carlyon, appeared to answer a summons requiring the Broadcasting Corporation to procure television films taken in the vicinity of Eden Park on the afternoon of September 12. He produced the already transmitted film and more than 1000 feet of off-cuts, both transcribed on to a video tape cassette. Earlier in the hearing, in which 25 people faced charges, Judgb Callander had declined an application from the corporation asking the Court to set aside the summons.

The defendants face joint and individual charges of taking part in a riot, being

members of an unlawful assembly, riotous destruction of a police car, assault on policemen, and injuring with intent to cause bodily harm. Mr C. M. Nicholson. Q.C., who had appeared for the corporation, had said that it was prepared to procure only film which was transmitted to the public, unless ordered by the Court to do otherwise.

Mr Carlyon said that the off-cuts were the product of the work of cameramen in and around Eden Park, in other parts of the city, of Mt Albert and on the Auckland Harbour Bridge.

He said he felt that he had not been able to comply strictly with the summons which required films taken in Marlborough Street and Walters and Onslow roads.

“I believe it would have been quite mischievous to attempt without proper reference points in any shots to edit what unidentifiable or

possibly mistaken shots which I personally thought were not taken in the streets specified without an intimate background knowledge of the area almost house by house . . . ,” he said.

Mr Carlyon said he would have difficulty saying exactly where some of the footage was shot.

Several defence lawyers and defendants cross-exa-mined him.

He was asked whether, from a layman’s point of view, it would be reasonable to describe the off-cuts as an “illogical mish-mash of film clips,” because they were out of sequence chronologically, in action and frame to frame.

Mr Carlyon said it would be reasonable to say that.

The Judge remanded the 24 defendants, who appeared on bail, to Monday. A warrant has been issued for the arrest of a woman who has not appeared. .