Photographers were allegedly banned from taking pictures at two London by-elections and have accused the council of behaving like an ?old Soviet republic?.<\/p>\n
Photographers at the East London Advertiser<\/em> claim they were stopped from photographing counts amid fears that they would take the ?wrong kind of pictures?, according to reports.<\/p>\n ?The Town Hall vetoed a request from the East London Advertiser<\/em> to take wideangle shots of the count for the by-elections for Bethnal Green?s Weavers ward and Millwall ward on the Isle of Dogs which were being carried out in the Excel Centre in neighbouring Newham,? states the newspaper?s website.<\/p>\n The paper claims it was told that ?the size of the room is the problem ? we can?t have too many people in here?.<\/p>\n It believes that the health and safety issue was a ?smokescreen? and claims that the council also rejected requests for photographers to take turns in the room.<\/p>\n The newspaper accused the council of behaving like an ?old Soviet republic?, according to a report in journalists’ trade publication Press Gazette<\/em>.<\/p>\n Tower Hamlets Council told Amateur Photographer<\/em> that it had given the paper plenty of advance warning about the ban.<\/p>\n In a statement it said that photographers were able to access the count room for the announcement of the election result and that a ?pool photographer? was able to supply images of the count in progress.<\/p>\n It added: ?In order to effectively manage the count and to minimise disruption or disturbance to count staff, press photographers were not able to access the room before the announcement.?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photographers were allegedly banned from taking pictures at two London by-elections and have accused the council of behaving like an \u2018old Soviet republic\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":324,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"product-category":[],"class_list":["post-26004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-news"],"yoast_head":"\n