"The
inadequacy of press freedom protections was starkly exposed during the Trump
administration, when some of the largest street protests in American history
took place," according to a new report.
Jun 20, 2023
In recent years,
particularly since former Republican President Donald Trump took office in
2017, U.S. police have failed to uphold basic constitutional rights for
journalists covering rallies and other protests, a new report from the Knight
First Amendment Institute said Tuesday, with the study documenting a number of
physical attacks, unjust arrests, and suppression tactics used by police at
protests both large and small.
Senior visiting
fellow Joel Simon interviewed dozens of journalists and legal experts about the
resurgence of police violence against journalists in recent years—a trend that
recalls numerous "notorious incidents" that took place during the
civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, including the harassment of
reporters attempting to cover school integration in Little Rock, Arkansas and
the seizure of camera film from journalists in Greenwood, Mississippi as police
dogs attacked protesters.
In the 1980s and
90s, Simon wrote in the report, "violent police attacks on journalists
receded along with police-protester clashes, perhaps in part because many
police departments adopted a more conciliatory, negotiation-based approach to
demonstrators."
"The steady
growth of police militarization post-9/11," however, "helped fuel
further conflict with the press," Simon wrote.
In recent
decades the Department of Defense has supplied police departments across the
U.S. with "military-grade equipment like armored vehicles, rifles, and
grenades," noted the author, and a PEN America report on the protests that
erupted in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after the police killing of Michael Brown
illustrated how that change in law enforcement agencies' arsenals has
intensified police officers' treatment of journalists as well as protesters:
The actions against journalists, as well
as those against protesters, were "fueled by the aggressive militarized
response by police to largely peaceful public protests... This apparently
created a mentality among some police officers that they were patrolling a war
zone, rather than a predominantly peaceful protest attended by citizens
exercising their First Amendment rights, and members of the press who also
possess those rights." The number of reported abuses "strongly
suggests that some police officers were deliberately trying to prevent the
media from documenting the protests and the police response."
In Ferguson,
Simon wrote, researchers documented 52 alleged violations of reporters'
constitutional right to cover protests, including physical attacks and
aggression, obstruction of access, and 21 arrests.
The protests in
Ferguson marked a milestone in law enforcement's changing relationship with the
press, the report shows, followed six years later by a number of rights
violations during the nationwide racial justice uprising of 2020 in response to
the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
"The
inadequacy of press freedom protections was starkly exposed during the Trump
administration, when some of the largest street protests in American history
took place, including those against the Floyd murder," wrote Simon.
"During that period, police frequently assaulted, arrested, or detained
journalists at protests, particularly when enforcing dispersal orders, imposing
curfews, or deploying crowd control measures. In 2020, at least 129 journalists
were arrested covering social justice protests. More than 400 journalists
suffered physical attacks, 80% of them at the hands of law enforcement."
Photojournalist
Mike Shum described to Simon how "law enforcement turned on the
media" in Minneapolis four days after Floyd's murder, after Minnesota Gov.
Tim Walz (D) imposed an 8:00 pm curfew that ostensibly exempted the press:
That night police fired on a group of
journalists with rubber bullets, hitting Shum in the foot. "It was confusing
because we just kept screaming 'we’re press, we're press,’ but the bullets just
kept flying," Shum recalled. In a separate incident that day, police in
Minnesota fired on photojournalist Linda Tirado with what is believed to be a
rubber bullet, permanently blinding her in one eye.
Other
journalists were "pelted with pepper spray, tear gas, and other
projectiles as they ran to take cover" after police "formed a
skirmish line" to enforce the curfew. A photographer working with NBC, Ed
Ou, was "hit in the head with what he believes was a flash-bang
grenade" and then "blasted" with pepper spray by police who
ignored his pleas for medical assistance.
Outside the Twin
Cities, other journalists covering the uprising were hit with batons, beaten,
and shot with rubber bullets, as well as arrested for trying to report on the
protests.
The U.S. Press
Freedom Tracker—whose data Simon used to compile the report—found that
"hundreds of separate incidents" of police violence against
journalists took place in 80 cities across 36 states in the year following
Floyd's murder. Journalists in 309 cases said they were targeted by police
officers between May 26, 2020—the day after the killing—and May 26, 2021, and
44 of those cases took place in Minneapolis.
"Protests
have always been dangerous to cover, but we had never seen anything on this
scale," Kirstin McCudden, managing editor of the U.S. Press Freedom
Tracker, told Simon.
The report also
details the use of "kettling"—in which police contain protesters, and
in some cases, journalists, by surrounding them in one area—which was prevalent
during the demonstrations that erupted in Washington, D.C. during Trump's
inauguration in 2017.
One journalist,
Aaron Cantú, was reporting on the "DisruptJ20" rally when he was
trapped by the police officers' kettling tactic.
"He assumed
he could approach the police line and explain he was reporting on the
rally," Simon wrote. "But when he initially tried to engage with
police, he was hit with pepper spray in his eyes and temporarily blinded."
Police also
applied zip ties to Cantú's wrists "so tightly that his hands went
numb" and refused him access to food or a bathroom "during the more
than eight hours he was held in the kettle." Law enforcement also demanded
access to his phone and electronic communications.
"The nature
of journalism has changed, and the law does not appear to have kept up,"
Cantú told Simon. "In these dangerous situations, law enforcement is
deciding who is or who is not a journalist."
Cantú was one of
more than 200 protesters and journalists who were arrested at the protest, none
of whom were ultimately convicted of a crime.
"These
events could have played out differently. Police could have opted not to use
kettling, an indiscriminate tactic that detains everyone in a geographical
area, instead attempting to single out for arrest those who were violating the
law," wrote Simon. "Police might have made a greater effort to
ascertain if journalists were accidentally caught up in the kettle and to
release them if their role could be confirmed. Prosecutors could have made a
decision not to charge them, based on the fact that they were acting as
journalists and engaged in newsgathering activities."
In the report,
Simon called on police to refrain from interfering with or using force against
anyone engaged in newsgathering activity and exempt reporters from curfew and
dispersal orders.
"When the
general public is no longer permitted to remain at the site of a protest,
police can use indicators like a press credential, distinctive clothing marked
'press,' or professional recording equipment, to guide their determinations
about who is exempt from the order," he wrote. "When in doubt, police
should assume that someone who appears to be engaged in journalism is in fact a
journalist."
Other
recommendations include:
· State
legislatures codifying such exemptions into law and requiring police to
actively work to ensure journalists can operate at protests;
· News
organizations offering police training on upholding press freedom and meeting
directly with law enforcement agencies to establish a dialogue between press
and police; and
· The
U.S. Department of Justice opening investigations into credible allegations of
the mistreatment of journalists at protests to establish whether there is a
pattern of such conduct at police agencies.
Three years
after the George Floyd protests, and ahead of the 2024 election, Simon wrote,
"America remains polarized and broader policing issues are a source of
deep controversy."
"This is
the moment to tackle the historic challenge," he added. "The next
wave of mass protests could be just around the corner. So could America's next
press freedom crisis."
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