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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

#251

Post by Miraste »

mrlala wrote: post #172
user764743 wrote: post #144

Reading the comments in this thread and I am amazed at the sudden pro-authoritarian shift seen on HN lately, what's going on?

No idea but I agree. Part of me thinks it's 'intellectual elites' here that simply can't fathom not working at a FAANG job making 250k+ and don't understand the problems most people have. And if you aren't working at one of those you must be the ultra silicon valley entrepreneur trying to do the next big thing because money. Probably downvoted for this but whatever, I think it's the truth. When I first was on this si…

HN has never been a forum for geeks. Y Combinator is an investment company focused on profit, like any other. It and (much of) the HN readership extract that profit from technology, but the money ultimately supersedes the tech. This is worth remembering when reading HN threads on regulation or open source software.

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

#252

Post by war1025 »

echelon wrote: post #210
mattacular wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is pretty conservative on average.

I'm shocked, but I get a sense there are more conservatives here than ever before. Or maybe they were always here but now find themselves less prone to self-censorship. I've been reading HN since the late 2000s and only noticed this post-election. It always seemed as if HN was incredibly liberal. Now there are conservative-leaning voices and opinions cropping up everywhere that are being upvoted as top comments. I'm…

I think the Trump era emboldened a lot of normally quiet conservatives to be more outspoken in their views.

Particularly in the tech scene, you can get the feeling that everyone is very liberal, and so you better just be quiet and keep to yourself.

Personally, I saw so many people completely overplay their hands when it came to things Trump said or did, that it made me more comfortable having them downvote me through the floor and tell me nasty things because honestly who cares? Someone on the internet disagrees with me. Neat. I can disagree back.

Part of that is maybe just me being four years older though and really has nothing to do with the garbage fire that has been the news and media environment since 2016.

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

#253

Post by jimmygrapes »

outworlder wrote: post #220
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you assume that cops are racist? Especially when a lot of them are black themselves?

Because we have looked at the statistics.

Which statistics are these, please provide! They must be both very detailed and very massaged to get a result as generic as "cops are racist" (a mindset that requires significantly more information than provided by mere statistics to identify).

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

#254

Post by outworlder »

user764743 wrote: post #144

Reading the comments in this thread and I am amazed at the sudden pro-authoritarian shift seen on HN lately, what's going on?

We try to reason about the world. When the world appears to be unjust and we feel powerless to change, we (humans) tend to fabricate justifications for the actions of others. So that we feel better about themselves and we can move on thinking bad things won't happen to us.

This is how you see someone getting beaten during an arrest and people are like "but this guy was once arrested for such and such". The assumption being, since they are "bad" people, that's the reason why bad things happen to them. And, therefore, that won't happen to "me". This requires one to ignore the fact that force wasn't called for.

In this particular thread you see that: "they must have been doing other things rather than just filming" – while we have seen multiple, documented, instances of people doing precisely nothing.

We also see "No True Scotsman": "What exactly is the definition of a journalist?". Which would be fine if we were just trying to understand the methodology, but not "these weren't actually journalists, therefore, they shouldn't count and everything is normal".

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

#255

Post by shadowgovt »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #238
shadowgovt wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, US law makes little distinction, and with good reason---the easiest way to curtail freedom of the press would be to give government the authority to declare some citizen's aren't really press.

Most of them aren’t though. Portland has a ton of antifa kids running around with “press” signage who are also help organizing things, passing intel, or blatantly assaulting cops. Do that a couple times and “PRESS” means nothing. You should be upset with the rioters, not their victims.

Some of the rioters are victims, so I'll be upset with all kinds of people.

In general, it's somewhat irrelevant whether someone declares themselves to be press because there are scant laws that declare the press is allowed to do X while a normal citizen can't. The "PRESS" signage should, in theory, be a useful signal to law enforcement that someone isn't there to make a disturbance (this, of course, breaks down if rioters mis-apply the label, but the end result is they endanger the press more than benefit themselves, since the cops can arrest a person breaking the law whether or not they have a particular symbol on their uniform).

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

#256

Post by rsynnott »

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…

In that case, they should perhaps consider taking a job more commensurate with their abilities.

Policing is difficult. That's not an excuse for doing it badly. Anyone who can't do it properly should be retrained, fired, or in some of the cases which occurred recently, criminally prosecuted.

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

#257

Post by dagav »

wnevets wrote: post #245
austincheney wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people don’t play on a team.

Some people like to think they don't belong to a team. They're usually part of the enlightened centerist both sides are bad team.

That's just what people who belong to a team think. It's actually possible to think for yourself

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

#258

Post by Reedx »

outworlder wrote: post #220
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you assume that cops are racist? Especially when a lot of them are black themselves?

Because we have looked at the statistics.

This is worth a read for a nuanced, holistic look at the stats.

https://samharris.org/can-pull-back-brink/

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

#259

Post by [deleted] »

tomcam wrote: post #246

If you’ve been to some of these events, you’ll notice a large number of antifa people with handmade press passes calling themselves journalists, but also protesting peacefully by throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at cops, Burning buildings, preventing others from using their own cameras, hitting people, and breaking things. Those people are included in this count.

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by smnrchrds »

manfredo wrote: post #215
smnrchrds wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking the law like filming police violence for example: https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2020/05/29/minneapolis-protest... Watch the video and tell me how that arrest was justified.

What was the person filming arrested for? I know many in Seattle were arrested for violating curfews or dispersal orders, and proceeded to claim that they were arrested for filming. They weren't arrested for filming, they were arrested because they harbored ill-conceived views that declaring oneself a journalist exempted them from curfews and orders to disperse and proceeded to violate them.

> Jimenez could be seen holding his CNN badge while reporting, identifying himself as a reporter, and telling the officers the crew would move wherever officers needed them to. An officer gripped his arm as Jimenez talked, then put him in handcuffs.

> Police told the crew they were being detained because they were told to move and didn't, one member of the CNN crew relayed to the network.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/us/minneapolis-cnn-crew-arres...

If you can simply not imagine the police arresting someone for no reason, or for challenging their unlawful assertion of authority, or so they can beat up protesters more effectively away from the watchful eyes of the press, no amount of evidence is going to convince you otherwise. But please, consider that police misbehaviour is at the very least a possibility.

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