While prosecutions of journalists are still “rare,” as the New York Times‘ subhead (3/10/21) notes, police arrests of and assaults on reporters have become increasingly common.
When Des Moines Register reporter Andrea Sahouri was acquitted on misdemeanor charges related to her coverage of a Black Lives Matter protests last summer, she declared (New York Times, 3/10/21) that the jury’s “decision upholds freedom of the press and justice in our democracy.” Amnesty International condemned the charges, and journalists feared that a conviction would be a game-changing attack on the press.
Sahouri’s acquittal still leaves a chilling effect on free speech. Of course, a conviction would have been catastrophic, but merely being charged is an injustice. For months she’s been in legal limbo, and other journalists have spent those months wondering if they’ll be next when they’re caught up in the mix at an anti–police brutality protest. Sahouri, and her newspaper, have had to waste their time and energy on meaningless charges.
And Sahouri, of course, is just one of the more prominent victims in the United States of this rising police repression of journalists covering social justice. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (9/4/20) noted:
Reported press freedom violations endured by journalists during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests alone outpace the annual rates reported by the Press Freedom Tracker. The rate of physical attacks on reporters in the US has spiked dramatically in 2020. The Press Freedom Tracker has documented 185 attacks on the media in 2020, up from 40 in 2019, 42 in 2018 and 50 in 2017, respectively.
Even Voice of America (3/11/21), which is US state media, and the Economist (3/13/21), a center-right publication, have noticed the decline in press freedom.
A journalist who was blinded in one eye by a police projectile during the George Floyd protests has a lawsuit alleging that the Minneapolis police specifically targeted journalists (Star-Tribune, 2/22/21). The ACLU of Minnesota is pushing a class action lawsuit for violence against journalists. The NYPD attacked AP journalists (New York Post, 6/3/20) during a Black Lives Matter protest last year. The NYPD has also sought to make it easier to strip reporters for press credentials in the wake of last year’s BLM demonstrations (New York Post, 7/15/20).
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (9/4/20) counted 60 arrests of journalists in the first two-thirds of 2020—mostly while covering Black Lives Matter protests.
But this isn’t a problem that began last year. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman faced absurd riot charges for her coverage of the uprising at Standing Rock (Guardian, 10/17/16; FAIR.org, 10/17/16), and another journalist was shot by a rubber-jacketed bullet while covering protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline there (Vox, 11/4/16). The Committee to Protect Journalists (11/11/11) documented police violence and arrests of journalists during the Occupy Wall Street protests.
In this context, journalists need to see the rise of troubling anti-protest bills around the country as anti-journalist bills. Take, for example, a bill in Kentucky, which was a hotbed of Black Lives Matter protests after the police killing of Breonna Taylor, that would make it a crime to insult a police officer during what police deem a riot (WJW, 3/5/21):
Any individual who “accosts, insults, taunts or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words” or makes “gestures or other physical contact that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person” could be imprisoned for up to three months.
A law this vague has a chilling effect on journalism. Is a reporter who overzealously reminds a police officer that they are entitled to stand near a police line, or protests being shoved too much, breaking the law? That we are even asking these questions, and fear that they won’t be answered until a journalist goes to court on these charges, is intimidating in itself.
Journalists don’t need to embrace the cause of a protest in order to cover it accurately and in full. But they do need to take a side in the fight over the right to protest, because the right to protest the police, the government or a corporation, and the right to cover the protest and the issues around that protest, are inherently related, as journalists are learning.
This is where journalists—and their professional associations and unions—are going to need to throw objectivity and neutrality out the window to protect press freedom. No, journalists should not, in good faith, be expected to employ the standard “he said, she said” tropes to cover anti-protest bills, excessive charges against demonstrators and the use of tear gas, acoustic weapons and rubber bullets against protesters. Police tactics are seemingly indiscriminate. Journalists should see these methods not as methods against a particular political movement, but against the public at large, which includes the press.
Sahouri’s acquittal can be met with a sigh of relief, certainly by her, her colleagues and family. But it’s a rallying cry: Press freedom is under severe attack in the US, along with protest freedom, and anyone who cares about the First Amendment needs to fight back.
“The best way to combat this is through solidarity,” said photojournalist Shay Horse, who was arrested and physically abused by police while covering the protests against Donald Trump’s inauguration (US News & World Report, 6/21/17). Horse added that “supporting each other when we do right by one another seems to me the best course of action.”
So, do elected ones in America support the First Amendment—-or not?
Let’s find out? Let’s have journalists , everywhere ask ” What is FREE SPEECH and do Americans still have it—or not? How do you now when you have it—–or has the First Amendment been arrested too?
When “She said, he said” needs to become “We say”
But don’t expect corpress courtiers to suddenly discover their communal voices.
Okay but … a lot of the MAGA charged with storming the Capitol and assaulting the police there are trying to play this card, ‘I’m a citizen, blogger journalist, I was just covering events’.
How would you address this issue, only protect accredited journalists which means they can do anything and alternative media has no protections or let anyone with a webcam go with the mob. Just saying that you need to provide some criteria or just say yeah, 200 MAGA’s were journalists.
We don’t even follow the intent of the first sentence of the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….”
What makes you think the rest of what it says in there is somehow more impervious to the same kind of ignorance?
If you want to understand how the extremists think about the language of The Constitution, go read a Community Gun Owners blog. Hands down, some of the most bizarre linguistic gymnastics and wild interpretations of the language of the Constitution can be found there.
I read one recently, where someone insisted there are no such things as “rights, god-given or otherwise….the Amendments or Bill of Rights are only an enumerated guide of written limits on what the government cannot do to its population…..”
Uh-huh…and that is from a bunch of Second Amendment vanguards….so yeah…
EDIT: Here is the exact quote:
“The 2A is neither a right or a privilege.
The second Amendment is in fact a Limitation* on actions the US Government can take. Which they have ignored for generations.”
*the word Limitation was underlined
If the Trumpsters really felt constitutionally justified in their deadly and destructive interruption of the ceremonial formality of the Congressional vote certification, and the courts agree that indeed such lethal behavior is Constitutionally protected, this means there is no limitation on actions the US government can take, written anywhere.
It appears as if we have entered an era where only the individual EGO, and psyche matters. Gone are the days of collective will. If anyone anywhere can believe whatever they want, and act in anyway they feel justified by an arcane, obsolete document written over 230 years ago, then we are in for one helluva ride.
Your comment might make sense if the insurrectionist actually said they were journalist …..at the time. When citizens claim status as journalist ….the arresting officer have plenty of options, as do prosecuting attorneys.
What this leaves out is the reality, demonstrated by the quiet peacefulness with which the atrocities against Julian Assange are greeted by virtually all US media, is that the media is not generally on the side of free speech. Individual reporters may be, but the media corporations they work for take it as a higher principle to defend the rule of–the ruling class.
Exactly, can’t even remember the last time, the so-called “voice of the voiceless” or vanguard of progressive news, ‘Democracy Now!” last covered the plight of Assange?
Well, Amy sure isn’t alone in agenda-driven cherry-picked obfuscation. Ari Fleischer is spewing CAP/ DNC lies, here, that he got away with on Democracy Now, on HR-1 without Janine once calling him on simply ignoring several REALLY SCARY poison pills; wildly increasing corporate donation limits, CRUSHING 3rd parties & independent candidates, using BS RussiaGate lies to silence dissent and any policies, corporate sponsors wish to disappear. The comment seems to have disappeared as well?
The solution here is simple. Make it a crime for any government official to violate a person’s Constitutional rights. As a crime, the conduct would have to be found by a jury to violate the person’s Constitutional rights. In addition, it would make those officials that flout the Constitution (because there is no downside to doing it) pause, if there was the possibility that they may end up in jail. It would also eliminate the argument that Constitutional rights are just guidelines.
I was wondering is solidarity really the only defense against this BS……could DOJ investigate leading to …… on wrongful arrest and criminal prosecutorial conduct….as in relief in the courts.
…also wondering who has standing for civil suit….damages ….because this was a crime and the offender has not even been charged or arrested…..mine are charges. Even the FBI could investigate? Denial of civil right