Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

freedom.press

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 527 posts

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

#301

Post by Manfredo_1 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #285
manfredo wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Right, they were violating an order to disperse or a curfew. Again, being a journalist doesn't bestow some special rights that lets you ignore the police when they issue an order to disperse or set a curfew. When people are looting and burning stuff down, the law has provisions…

Why are you ready to take police's words at face value, while completely dismissing the hard video evidence that directly contradicts it? This is giving me serious 1984 vibes.

This thread seems to be triggering rate limiting:

What "hard evidence" contradicts it? Can you provide evidence that no such dispersal order was given? Or that they were arrested prior to such order, or curfew?

In fact the source you posted doesn't even claim that they were arrested for filming. This idea that the reporter was arrested for filming seems to be entirely your own.

Your question isn't, "Why am I ready to take police's words at face value?" The question you're really asking is "why aren't I ready to take an anonymous internet commenter's claims at face value?"

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

#302

Post by jimmygrapes »

dgritsko wrote: post #122
hilbertseries wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On one side, the death of traditional journalism really has opened up folks' eyes to bias in reporting. Having one or two main-stream news sources really opens up the possibility for bias becoming truth. This is not what I see happening. Instead what happens is people see news they disagree with and deem it biased. So they find a news outlet that they agree with and decide that’s the real news.

So here's the dilemma I'm faced with. As someone who wishes to consume news that is as factual as reasonably possible, while also being aware that at least some bias is inevitable (no matter how well-intentioned the author may be)... how does one evaluate a news source for its trustworthiness, short of physically observing an event for yourself?

Others have given great responses, but one thing not emphasized enough is recognizing the type of language used. It failed for various reasons, but The Knife used to do a textual analysis of articles and point out the manipulative language used. A quick example off the top of my head is recent reporting on the US election (all paraphrased, but I bet you can find real examples easily):

"... baseless claims" "... without evidence" "... debunked conspiracy theory"

These may be factual in some (or all) cases, but it is manipulative language. It prejudices the reader without giving the reader a chance to even consider the claims or theory. There's much to be discussed about dis- and misinformation, but overall the truth emerges only in sunlight.

Also watch those adjectives. They love their superfluous adjectives.

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

#303

Post by honkycat »

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?

It is known as brigading. They see a post critical of police and the right wing people come in and do a bunch of posts to obscure the fact that BLM and the police accountability movement is extremely popular.

It is 100% planned and engineered. They know their talking points. They know what to point to in response to police accountability discussions. Change the subject to talk about random looters instead of the 99% of protestors who peacefully assemble and then are brutalized night over night.

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

#304

Post by stronglikedan »

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.

The sad part is that many people won't believe you, even though it's true, because it was intentionally excluded from the reporting of the major news outlets.

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

#305

Post by slg »

pc86 wrote: post #275
three_seagrass wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalist is not loosely defined. FTA: >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. Splitting hairs over the semantics of the word 'journalistic' is an attempt to discredit the study about authoritarianism being at an all time hig…

If you take a picture of something happening on your street and write a blog post about it, you are not a journalist. If you wouldn't be granted press credentials for something, you're probably not a journalist. If it's a side gig you don't intend to make a living doing, you're very likely not a journalist. There are plenty of instances where someone can fit into the article's definition of "journalist" where they pr…

Would you say people aren't software developers unless they are employed by a company to predominately develop software? Because your comment certainly reads like that type of gatekeeping regarding who is and is not a journalist.

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

#307

Post by abacadaba »

bjourne wrote: post #229
tristor wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a pro-authoritarian bent in the comments in this thread. What I see a lot of is people pointing out that the definition of "journalist" is very very loose in 2020, and that has an effect on the arrest stats. Many many many people have watched with their own eyes, live on video, what's been going on through the course of this year. We've seen CNN and ABC reporters shot with rubber bullets and accosted on l…

> but we've also seen a lot of "journalists" throwing rocks and molotov cocktails on live stream and doing other criminal acts. I'd like to see some evidence of that happening on scale. If there is no such evidence, I think, perhaps, your comment proves the parent's point.

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo

he has hundreds(?) of examples if you scroll, but to save some time here's one from portland police

https://twitter.com/PortlandPolice/status/128725192442150502...

Edit: ok searching "press" on the feed maybe like more like tens rather than hundreds with actual video evidence, but im sure i missed some

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

#308

Post by wnevets »

dagav wrote: post #257
wnevets wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

everyone loves to believe they think for their self, especially those who belong to teams and it is everyone else who are sheep(le).

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

#309

Post by Manfredo_1 »

aesclepius wrote: post #269
manfredo wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a strong argument to be made for police accountability and conduct. But this post seems to complete ignore the actions of demonstrators and the journalists (often self-proclaimed and self-employed) embedded within them. Look at the disparity between Portland and Minneapolis with respect to the rest of the country: New York has 20 times the population yet only half the journalist arrests. Portland has the same…

> Both the data and my lived experiences indicate a correlation between more extreme behavior among protestors and more arrests. I think there's a false attribution of 'extreme behavior' with 'protestors' primarily. feel there are a significant number of people who took advantage of the protests to loot and burn and generally cause chaos. It's worth noting that Seattle and Portland, are primarily Caucasian (67% taken…

This thread seems to be triggering rate limiting.

I'm sure plenty of people protested peacefully. But how is that relevant? Regardless of the extent of the overlap between people protesting and people rioting, an increase of the latter is bound to lead to more arrests even if the police's thresholds for making an arrest remain exactly the same.

The fact that there were more looters and rioters in the Pacific Northwest because of "general anarchy" is supportive of my claim, if anything: There were more arrests in Portland not because police became more oppressive, it was because there were more looters and rioters.

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

#310

Post by r00fus »

conductr wrote: post #293
bjourne wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we've also seen a lot of "journalists" throwing rocks and molotov cocktails on live stream and doing other criminal acts. I'd like to see some evidence of that happening on scale. If there is no such evidence, I think, perhaps, your comment proves the parent's point.

Is 117 arrests “at scale”? Cause that’s what we’re talking about. Normalize that for riot conditions and it just seems likely a journalist is more likely to get hit by lightening than be arrested. Please don’t do the math on that, elaborating for emphasis.

An arrest is merely an attestation, not proof. Police will charge you for anything they want, they don't have to justify it unless you contest it.
Post reply on HN