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Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

freedom.press

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Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#41

Post by Miner49er »

NDizzle wrote: post #37
Miner49er wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? It's still an attack on the 1st amendment. During the protests I was watching an aggregation of different livestreams on Twitch, many of them were streams on Facebook. Some of the journalists doing reporting on there likely only had a handful of viewers when they started getting streamed by the aggregator and then they had thousands of viewers. These types of journalists caught many of the instances of police bru…

What I'm hearing is that if I live stream myself performing a crime, and I'm arrested, I'm now a valid statistic for a journalist being arrested. Is that accurate? I strongly disagree with you, if so.

This is such a strawman. I doubt you can find evidence of any of the arrested journalists actually getting convicted of a crime from their arrest, let alone a large percentage.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#42

Post by chrisseaton »

postalrat wrote: post #40
umvi wrote: post #2

> The vast majority of these arrests occurred while journalists were documenting the historic, nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd and in support of Black Lives Matter. So basically, it's not a coincidence - police are more likely to arrest journalists that are attending anti-police protests. And it's sort of understandable. Imagine you are a police officer called to go to a protest where ever…

Maybe I'm wrong but it seemed like anyone could go in there with a camera and "journalist" written onto their shirt and behave like they don't need to follow orders from the police.

Why are the Police giving anyone orders unless they're committing a crime?

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#44

Post by zug_zug »

NDizzle wrote: post #37
Miner49er wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? It's still an attack on the 1st amendment. During the protests I was watching an aggregation of different livestreams on Twitch, many of them were streams on Facebook. Some of the journalists doing reporting on there likely only had a handful of viewers when they started getting streamed by the aggregator and then they had thousands of viewers. These types of journalists caught many of the instances of police bru…

What I'm hearing is that if I live stream myself performing a crime, and I'm arrested, I'm now a valid statistic for a journalist being arrested. Is that accurate? I strongly disagree with you, if so.

So you're conflating two things here

If people are actively engaged in protest (e.g. carrying signs), I agree they are not "journalists."

However, having viewers or not is irrelevant.

Also, let's not pretend even credentialed journalists weren't assaulted and arrested by police.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#45

Post by umvi »

zug_zug wrote: post #39
umvi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's right, just that it's understandable. To use a software analogy it would be like if for your job you were forced to help make a website for anti-software developers who hate you and your profession, and you are treated poorly while trying to do your job. That environment is not going to cultivate craftsmanship to say the least. The right thing to do is to dutifully and professionally execute your…

Well "understandable" sounds dangerously close to acceptable. Because it's foreseeable departments need to be extra judicious in which officers they send into emotionally charged situations, officers lacking self-control are going to do the country more harm than good in protest situations.

Indeed. I think it's important to humanize the police officers and acknowledge that they are people with emotions too though. Protestors can get angry and smash/burn stuff, police can get angry and arrest people and disperse crowds. People are people, and this situation is particularly tricky because the opposing parties do not like each other. In an ideal world only the cream of the crop would be sent to police these protests, but I would wager most police departments are understaffed and have to make do.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#46

Post by a3camero »

chrisseaton wrote: post #10
NDizzle wrote: post #7

What's their definition of journalist here? Journalists, at these protests, that were arrested? In other words, how many twitter followers do I need before I can identify as a journalist?!

I wonder if there's any countries that specifically recognise people as journalists? Like how police officers have a warrant and specific powers and accountability, could legitimate journalists be recognised, empowered and held accountable like that? Then it could also be an offence to impersonate them. Otherwise yeah a journalist is just some random person claiming to be a journalist and I'm not sure what could be d…

The Supreme Court of Canada in 2009 specifically recognized a defence related to defamation as being one that's broader than "journalists" in the sense of employed people who work for the news media, and here's their explanation:

"In arguments before us, the defence was referred to as the responsible journalism test. This has the value of capturing the essence of the defence in succinct style. However, the traditional media are rapidly being complemented by new ways of communicating on matters of public interest, many of them online, which do not involve journalists. These new disseminators of news and information should, absent good reasons for exclusion, be subject to the same laws as established media outlets. I agree with Lord Hoffmann that the new defence is “available to anyone who publishes material of public interest in any medium”"

Decision: https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/7837/index...

This explanation is an answer to the question of who's a "legitimate journalist", which is that it should be about what people are doing not who they work for. That's an idea captured in the above case, which reviews some of the laws of other countries on this subject too. It was in the context of defamation, but it's closely linked to your comments about accountability (since the everyday threat is lawsuits, not assault/arrest).

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#47

Post by staplers »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #27

Honest question: why were these journalists arrested? Do you actually have to commit a crime or can you be arrested as part of crowd control technique and released later? Did these journalists actually commit a crime? Will they be charged with something in court?

I watched a lot of live streams from local Portland journalists and they were arrested (wearing PRESS helmets) for no reason other than being near the protests.

After a while it became clear it was to deter them from returning to the protests the next day.

The Portland DA dropped all charges except felony rioting (lighting fires) for most protesters.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#48

Post by postalrat »

chrisseaton wrote: post #42
postalrat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm wrong but it seemed like anyone could go in there with a camera and "journalist" written onto their shirt and behave like they don't need to follow orders from the police.

Why are the Police giving anyone orders unless they're committing a crime?

Who said they weren't commit a crime? Many, if not most, were.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#49

Post by chrisseaton »

postalrat wrote: post #48
chrisseaton wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are the Police giving anyone orders unless they're committing a crime?

Who said they weren't commit a crime? Many, if not most, were.

When they complain about journalists being arrested... I'm guessing they are implicitly limiting that to non-criminal journalists.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#50

Post by NDizzle »

zug_zug wrote: post #44
NDizzle wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm hearing is that if I live stream myself performing a crime, and I'm arrested, I'm now a valid statistic for a journalist being arrested. Is that accurate? I strongly disagree with you, if so.

So you're conflating two things here If people are actively engaged in protest (e.g. carrying signs), I agree they are not "journalists." However, having viewers or not is irrelevant. Also, let's not pretend even credentialed journalists weren't assaulted and arrested by police.

zug_zug, these are the kind of journalists that are getting arrested "in record numbers(1)": https://twitter.com/zerosum24/status/1321971751648137216

If we really want to talk about journalists (and their sources) arrested and prosecuted, the discussion is probably about President Obama and his administration. Not so much 2020.

(1) since 2017 - funny that their data cuts off right there, isn't it?!

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