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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

#111

Post by obelos »

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…

Impartiality is not a defining attribute of journalism. Having and expressing opinions (when not immediately involved in a scene), setting an editorial slant, and being embedded in events are not counter-journalistic practices. Journalists are “neutral” only in the sense that they seek to observe and not to alter the events as they unfold. In many situations this is not tenable in any absolute degree, but the independent journalists I've watched here in Portland over the past six months have overwhelmingly made their best effort of trying to stay out of the way of police and interact with people very much as reporters, taking in information and interviewing participants to solicit perspective and details.

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

#112

Post by xxpor »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #79
chrisrhoden wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

>When the only way to get society to fix something is by having an audience, that's really bad too.

That's just politics, i.e. how the world has always worked? Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.

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

#114

Post by adamsea »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #81

Its clearly a product of the riots this year. If you watch any of the live streams on youtube from the protests, its the most retarded thing ever. Literal convicts, just let out of jail, at the forefront of a civil rights movement, screaming how Black Lives matter, and how they are privileged white males. Tell me some of them were not being paid to be there. Because generally convicts are the least empathetic people.…

> Literal convicts, just let out of jail, at the for front of a civil rights movement, screaming how Black Lives matter, and how they are privileged white males.

The privileged white male convicts are running around screaming’Black lives matter.’ Got it :):):).

Lol but seriously yes I would say it makes a lot of sense for anyone to scream that Black lives matter.

That’s why we all were marching earlier and have signs up and stuff.

Because Black lives do matter, and all too often Black people in America are treated as if their lives are worth less because of their skin tone.

And you or anybody else who disagrees, has a problem with that, or wishes to believe that that’s not the truth, well, I feel no need to equivocate or reach for mutual understanding on this particular issue.

All of you folks who aren’t on board at this point can fuck off.

I know that many of you, years later, with the benefits of time, wisdom, and maturity, will look back with greater understanding than you have today. So for those of you with open souls please do reach out for good resources to better educate yourselves.

But yeah the white supremacist fellow-travelers (sadly an accurate description) can fuck off.

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

#115

Post by slim »

tines wrote: post #95
nickff wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How’s that? Seems like it’s just saying “we’re not going to treat you like a journalist if you don’t claim to be one, and you can’t claim to be one without having done any work before.”

journalistic work is actually well defined with methodolgy, ethics and authoritative institutions. it's not difficult to prove that some work is journalistic

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

#116

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

xxpor wrote: post #112
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... 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 some…

>When the only way to get society to fix something is by having an audience, that's really bad too. That's just politics, i.e. how the world has always worked? Squeaky wheel gets the grease and all that.

Right, exactly. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, so we need to make sure that wheel squeaks are representative of society's ills. When something bad happens to non-journalists, journalists need to squeak just as loud as if it were happening to themselves. Providing the same treatment to the media as everyone else is one way to encourage it.

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

#117

Post by pdkl95 »

nickff wrote: post #103
phalangion wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more of a "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck." If you call yourself a journalist and have a record of reporting on things, then by this definition you are one. But you can't decide you are a persecuted journalist because you got arrested.

Sure, but at some point you have to define how a duck walks and how it quacks!

You only have to define the behavior:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_typing

A journalist is someone that does journalism, just like a runner is someone that runs. The behavior "doing journalism" is simply reporting on something to an audience.

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

#118

Post by iNate2000 »

nickff wrote: post #101
tines wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How’s that? Seems like it’s just saying “we’re not going to treat you like a journalist if you don’t claim to be one, and you can’t claim to be one without having done any work before.”

> "this site will only cover individuals who self-identify as journalists and have some track record of journalistic work" They're saying that they use journalistic work as a standard of who's a journalist... that's circular.

How else would you define who is a journalist? How can one be a journalist without doing journalistic work?

Are you looking for a definition of "journalism"?

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

#120

Post by Bjartr »

nickff wrote: post #101
tines wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How’s that? Seems like it’s just saying “we’re not going to treat you like a journalist if you don’t claim to be one, and you can’t claim to be one without having done any work before.”

> "this site will only cover individuals who self-identify as journalists and have some track record of journalistic work" They're saying that they use journalistic work as a standard of who's a journalist... that's circular.

Where "journalistic work" means "has published an article or video that at least purports to be reporting facts, or something equivalent to that".

If you claim to be a journalist, but can't point to something you've published, then you're not included.

If you claim to be a journalist, and can go "here's three articles I published in a local newspaper (for example)", then you're included.

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