I’m still stunned and angered at what happened to my Variety colleague Ted Johnson yesterday in Minnesota. Despite being a credentialed member of the media, reporting on a demonstration outside the Republican National Convention, police didn’t make that distinction — and hauled him (and other journalists) in with the protesters. He was charged with “presence at an unlawful assembly.”
Unbelievable. My hat’s off to Ted for covering the protest and apparently risking a police record in the process. Considering everything that happened, his post on the arrest was pretty calm and cool.
But after he had a chance to sleep on it, Ted woke up Friday morning a bit more steamed. As he should be. Ted writes:
I’ve had a chance to reflect a bit on the insanity of journalists being arrested for just doing their job, which was to cover a genuine story at the Republican National Convention.
Our charge was “presence at an unlawful assembly,” which is described in part by Minnesota state statute as refusal to leave the scene when ordered to do so. As I stated in my earlier post, I never heard such an order given, nor did any of the journalists I was with. We were trying to get away from the line of fire of smoke bombs and flash grenades, and eventually fled to the Marion Street bridge, which looked like the only option out. It was there that we were informed that everyone was under arrest.
There’s still no answer to the question of why journalists, fully identified by their credentials, were detained, booked and processed, their means of reporting taken away. It was a story that the news media had a right to cover whether or not the protest permit ended at 5 p.m., or whether police gave an order sometime after that. We were covering the story, we were not the story. It gives me a new, hardened and more cynical perspective on the security state that we are in, and how it is being used to justify what are ultimately restrictions on press freedom.
Freedom of the press, 2008.
