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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

#71

Post by pixl97 »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #69
mdhh wrote: post #43

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative's data showed that even in 2019 the "The US scores for Safety from the State are disturbingly poor". https://humanrightsmeasurement.org/the-us-scores-poorly-in-h...

Funny fact: this organization is from New Zealand and amongst other issues, discusses the "right to work" in the US. Turns out that "right to work" means something different in NZ than it does in the US. In NZ it means "can actually make an honest living".

In the US you can generally determine what a law really stands for by putting 'anti-' in front of it.

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

#72

Post by pwinnski »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #35
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?

- Disturbing the peace - Resisting/obstructing an officer - Failure to disperse - violating curfew (journalists are exempted here) According to the report most charges are being thrown out. Do reporters have immunity to the first 3 violations in that list during a protest?

They should, yes. "Disturbing the peace" seems to be fabricated, and resisting and officer and failure to disperse should not be applied to journalists given our press freedoms.

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

#73

Post by nickff »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #30
BLO716 wrote: post #25

I'll dare to ask this, but what defines a "journalist" in the data points here? The Clark Kent types are the only ones I really understand that can live under that title - but with the advent of syndication and micro-journalism (to use a term I just made up) for regional markets that have no real local presence of classic journalism, interested to know what it means now. Here in Buffalo, could go many directions.

“While we recognize the importance and the rights of the private citizen who snaps a photo or video of an arrest, this site will only cover individuals who self-identify as journalists and have some track record of journalistic work.“ Looks like you’d have to produce some journalistic work in the past. Unclear if that’s a blog or having your worked printed in a major publication.

It's a completely circular definition (as far as I can see).

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

#75

Post by i_haz_rabies »

indigochill wrote: post #18

One line from the report jumped out at me as I was skimming it: > About half the journalists here are freelancers, who may lack the institutional support of a newsroom and the financial resources for a potentially expensive legal defense. I hadn't really thought of the value of legal defense from journalism institutions (as opposed to non-institutional platforms like Substack) before.

We will look back on the ruination of journalism as a profession as one of the most consequential changes of these last two decades.

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

#76

Post by macksd »

screamingninja wrote: post #62
Miner49er wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The police were attempting to intimidate and silence them is the honest answer. I'm not sure if any were charged with anything that stuck, because likely none of them committed any actual crimes. It's just police abusing their power.

> The police were attempting to intimidate and silence them is the honest answer. > likely none of them committed any actual crimes What makes you say that?

That was also my impression from several high-profile instances of journalists being arrested this year. Here's one specific example: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/us/minneapolis-cnn-crew-arres.... They're arrested for not standing where they were told, but at least from the portion of the interaction caught on camera, the journalists just seem confused about where they were supposed to stand and were willing to follow instructions.

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

#77

Post by 8note »

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.

The faq you listed says they would not count you in that case

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

#78

Post by adamsea »

anonfornoreason wrote: post #57
staplers wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live in Portland and watched many of these press people via Twitter. The reality is that many of these “press” are activists who document their activism and the activism of their comrades. They call themselves press, but they are press+activist. As a result they are often in the crowd of people throwing stuff at police, while screaming “hey you fucking fascist, aren’t you embarassed to be an authoritarian?” I am no…

> I am not saying that they are better or worse than traditional press, which I have a strong aversion to, I am just saying ...

So you’re saying you just don’t like the press, basically.

Except maybe the press that says what you like?

Because tbh everything you wrote just sounds like a lot of authoritatively-stated opinion.

Which tells me that you’re either uneducated about facts-, or, looking to shift the conversation away from facts.

For that matter, what’s wrong with activism? And activism against what, specifically?

You don’t even mention that. Just “activists”.

LOL I watch twitter too and didn’t see what you saw. Here:

https://www.opb.org/news/article/aclu-sues-portland-oregon-p...

https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2020/06/07/portland-reporter...

“ Video taken from a helicopter by WW's news partner KATU-TV around 11:45 pm on June 6 shows a person filming police in Chapman Square, until an officer turns to him, hits him with a baton and twice pepper-sprays him in the face.

... “‘As the man sputtered and spit and gasped, I, for reasons that I'm sure are clear, shouted to get the fuck off his neck,’ Farley recalls. ‘This is the moment a fourth officer approached, reaching for his baton.’

Farley says he believes officers targeted him because he was filming the arrest.“

Press-activists indeed.

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

#79

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

chrisrhoden wrote: post #68
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #58

I see some folks (and many journalists) astounded that folks wearing press badges and press helmets were arrested, which I believe to be a dangerous viewpoint. We don't want journalists to get special treatment for the same reason that we don't want politicians or judges to get special treatment and also for the same reason we dogfood our systems. Journalists need to have a representative experience in order to be ab…

First, the press credentials should probably grant some benefit of the doubt if the justification for arrests is something along the lines of, "I can't think of any reason you might be here except to cause mischief." I think what's shocking to people is that, traditionally, police have understood that they're somewhat more likely to be held accountable for abuses of power toward journalists. It seems likely that is p…

> ... traditionally, police have understood that they're somewhat more likely to be held accountable for abuses of power toward journalists. It seems likely that is primarily for the same reason that e.g. a tech company with a bad policy is more incentivized to fix it if it happens to stub the toe of anyone with an audience.

That's exactly what I see as problematic with it. When the only way to get google to fix something is by having an audience, that's really bad. When the only way to get society to fix something is by having an audience, that's really bad too.

There's an analogy to product reviewers. If the chef gives something different to the reviewer than they give to everyone else, the review isn't useful or is even misleading. When something happens to reviewers or journalists, it makes front page headlines. Until then, it just happens more quietly, which is dangerous. I'm just tired of the media not making a stink about important things until it happens to them, then suddenly this things is Import and and it Must Change Now.

> The other parallel I think folks are drawing is that abuses of journalists in particular is a common feature of dictatorships.

Totally agreed. I don't think we should withdraw protections from journalists. We need everyone to get the protection to see what's happening with their own eyes, talk about it, and post about it.

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

#80

Post by chrisseaton »

pwinnski wrote: post #72
tppiotrowski wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Disturbing the peace - Resisting/obstructing an officer - Failure to disperse - violating curfew (journalists are exempted here) According to the report most charges are being thrown out. Do reporters have immunity to the first 3 violations in that list during a protest?

They should, yes. "Disturbing the peace" seems to be fabricated, and resisting and officer and failure to disperse should not be applied to journalists given our press freedoms.

> "Disturbing the peace" seems to be fabricated

Aren't all laws 'fabricated' by legislators? But disturbing the peace is a law like any other, whether you think it's a 'natural' or 'fabricated' law. It's pretty ancient more like natural laws.

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