If police in Ferguson treat journalists like this, imagine how they treat residents

[n2doc]

by Max Fisher

It looked at first like police in Ferguson, Missouri, were lashing out at journalists only incidentally. Everyone in their path seemed to be at risk of being teargassed, arrested without charge, or having assault rifles pointed at them without warning — so naturally the reporters milling around town were at similar risk. Increasingly, though, it is becoming clear that police in Ferguson are targeting journalists, using intimidation, arbitrary arrests, and physical force.

This has a much deeper and more damaging effect than just suppressing media coverage. Arresting and intimidating journalists are inherently political acts, guaranteed by design to generate attention. Much as when it's done in far-away conflict zones and authoritarian states, it's about making a statement. It's about demonstrating, to ordinary citizens even more than to journalists, that police believe they can exercise absolute control over the streets and anyone in them.

That police in Ferguson are targeting journalists so openly and aggressively is an appalling affront to basic media freedoms, but it is far scarier for what it suggests about how the police treat everyone else — and should tell us much about why Ferguson's residents are so fed up. When police in Ferguson are willing to rough up and arbitrarily arrest a Washington Post reporter just for being in a McDonald's, you have to wonder how those police treat the local citizens, who don't have the shield of a press pass.

On Wednesday, police in Ferguson roughed up and arrested Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery and Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post for failing to exit a McDonalds. According to Lowery's Twitter account, the two were "assaulted and arrested" because "officers decided we weren't leaving McDonalds quickly enough, shouldn't have been taping them." They were later released, but the fact of their arrest was enough to show how police would treat journalists in Ferguson.

Since those first arrests, police actions against journalists in Ferguson have escalated in severity and frequency.

more

http://www.vox.com/2014/8/18/6043247/ferguson-police-media-harassment

[procon]

1. It's not only the intimidation and arrest

it's confining journos to a fenced in area. The PTB say its for their "protection", but anyone old enough to remember the old time war correspondents who covered the Vietnam war know that journalism was never intended to be a safe spectator sport.

How can a reporter cover live events when they are not allowed anywhere near the center of action? I watched the big media trying to report from the media cage last night, but they were so far removed from the action that they were reduced to worthless speculation and passing on 2nd hand rumors gleaned from passersby. That is not "news".

I dunno... maybe the big media makes their reporters comply with these orders to minimize risk and avoid potential legal costs or protect their corporate image. Fine, let them stay safe and irelevant in their little cage while the true reporting falls to the intrepid videographers who are willing to take the risk to broadcast live streaming of the actual events as they happen.