GB News is to demand answers after reporter Dougie Beattie and his crew were pepper-sprayed and attacked by riot police while covering a protest in Dublin.
Hundreds of people gathered last night and disorder broke out following reports that a resident at a hotel housing migrants had allegedly raped a 10-year-old girl.
Speaking live from the scene, Dougie told GB News viewers and listeners: “We have just been attacked by the police themselves. We did what we usually do.
“We get between the lines, and then we let the police go past the lines, but the Garda Síochána kind of thought it would be better to pepper-spray us and then actually smash in to the camera woman, and then smash in to the camera, knocking us to the ground and pepper-spraying us through.
“In all my time as a reporter doing this in Northern Ireland, I’ve been in many riots, and I have never, ever seen the police attack the media. They have done that this evening, as well as another photographer.
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“And if you’re watching those pictures, you can see the constable making the conscious decision. He looks at me and then comes forward and openly attacks us.”
He added: “This really kicked off in Dublin tonight. There was about 2,000 people here. There’s a police vehicle has been burned. Water cannon is out, and the TSG themselves are having a hard time putting this down.
“The people of Ireland at this stage have said, ‘no more, we want rid of these immigrants that are here’.
“And of course, this is a presidential election weekend in Ireland. On Friday, the people here go to the polls to choose a new president for Ireland.
“This is not a good look for them at this minute in time, and it’s definitely not a good look if the police service of the Republic of Ireland decides to openly attack the media.”
Asked about exactly what happened, he explained: “He pushed the camera clean into my face. That was only after his colleague had managed to push the person that was using the camera in the first place into a metal fence.
“We did identify ourselves as the media. Our back-watcher was in there. He also identified us as the media and they continued to go on ahead, they pepper-sprayed us and then attacked us, openly assaulted us in the street as we were trying to report on what was going on.
“It is the first time ever. Either these officers are very young because they just assaulted somebody, or they do not want this story to get out. One of the two.”
A video of the incident can be seen here: https://x.com/GBNEWS/status/1980731295475839376
