Pointing to individual instances of reporters being arrested obscures the broader picture: level of unrest unprecedented in decades promoted curfews which many disregarded and were subsequently arrested. A slim minority of those were journalists.
To put this in perspective, 117 people categorize as journalists (the majority were self employed) were arrested in 2020 as per an earlier HN post [1]. Contrast this to 3,000 total arrests in LA county alone. And that figure for LA is from early June. As I pointed out, journalist arrests are disproportionately concentrated in areas that saw widespread rioting [2].
The idea that police in the US are targeting journalists is unsubstantiated. Journalists are putting themselves in positions in which any normal person would be arrested, and the police are treating them like any normal person.
1. https://freedom.press/news/2020-report-journalists-arrested-...
Which is exactly why we expect journalists to have special protection, and thus why we track violations of these norms. And things are clearly getting worse.
The point isn't to find an excuse for the police here, it's to recognize that a problem exists and find a solution.
I don't. Freedom of the press is the freedom of anyone who has one to publish, not special freedom of media or journalists as a privileged class.
In fact, I find the suggestion of such “special protection” to be aristocratic and not merely outside of but contrary to the idea of press freedom.
I am concerned about activity designed to prevent people from engaging in journalistic activity or retaliating for them so doing, I am not concerned about journalists being subjected to the same treatment as everyone else unless that treatment would be unacceptable if they weren't journalists (and, in that case, the objection has little to do them being journalists, though if the wrongs are concentrated on journalists, it starts to look like deterrence or retaliation against journalistic activity.)
No, we don't. Journalists aren't some elevated caste that are privileged above normal people. And besides, most of the journalists arrested were not employed by a news organization. Anyone can call themselves a journalist.
The "problem" seems to be that journalists are treated like normal people. The thing is, many do not see a problem with this.
That's simply not true, and the whole premise behind the linked article makes that clear.
And the weird thing is that you'd clearly agree, IF the journalists were covering something you wanted covered. The only reason I see that you're fighting like crazy over this is that the US journalists in question were covering a protest movement you opposed.
What I do oppose are people violating curfews or orders to disperse and falsely claiming that they were arrested for journalistic activity while omitting the fact that non-journalists in the same area were also arrested.
I literally linked an event upthread where a journalist was arrested for exactly that. I suspect the reason you really aren't sure what I'm saying is that you aren't reading what I write.
> Huang was filming a handful of men who had gathered outside the hospital making anti-police statements.
> Huang said she followed deputies who were chasing one of the demonstrators after the small group dispersed. She began recording the protester's arrest when the deputies shouted at her to “back up," she said.
> Sheriff Alex Villanueva refused to apologize for Huang's arrest and accused her of "crossing the line from journalism to activism" by coming too close to the scene of the protester's arrest.
> "In the heat of the moment, when these protesters are calling or chanting for the death of the deputies in the emergency room, she picked the worst time possible to try to get an up-close of the deputies making an arrest," Villanueva said during a news conference on Monday. "And that's on her."
Note that Villanueva's original statement about this incident (that she had no credentials and did not identify herself) was a straight lie, again given clear video evidence. So I don't understanding why you're deferring to him here. Again: watch the video. It is ABUNDANTLY clear that the police knew she was a journalist and that they knew she wasn't part of the protest, and that they were punishing her for trying to record their actions. It really is.
Is it really so hard to admit that, yes, cops do bad things sometimes, that we should track that via objective metrics like the linked article, and that this year they've done more of them?
The video is less than a minute long. Both the police's account and the Buzzfeed article claim that Huang was with a group of people making "anti-police" statements (according to the police's account, these included death threats) outside of a hospital treating a pair of officers who were shot in an ambush. What happened between that and Huang's arrest is not captured on video.
Yes, police do bad thing sometimes. But targeting journalists isn't one of them. This incident is not an example of that. There is no indication that Huang wouldn't have been arrested if she wasn't a journalist.
It seems like the only thing that would appease you is if the police immediately ceased arrests when people claim to be a journalist. This is not feasible, because anybody can claim to be a journalist and the police have no immediate way of validating these claims. What they can do is proceed with the arrest and release the person if their claims of being a journalists are discovered to be true. Which is exactly what happened here: Huang was released and charges against her dropped.
See: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/josie-...