Right back into the wonderful world of whatever it is I do after a week off -- and what a week to be off!
It was interesting to watch news happening from the outside. From the inside, it appears a record number of reports had bad encounters, mostly with police, a few with rioters. I'm not talking about shouting matches, that's just part of the job. No, there were widespread cases of cameras being broken, of journalists being gassed, pepperballed, detained or arrested, a lot of it recorded as it happened.
It would seem a refresher course in the First Amendment and how to recognize press credentials might be in order for some Public Safety personnel. Daily Worker or Wall Street Journal, Fox News or CNN, just being there with a notebook, pointing a camera or a microphone at events is not, in fact, reason for getting shoved around, let alone handcuffed and hauled away. Yes, the Press gets away with a lot and yes, they do push limits -- that's their job. Only evil fears daylight.
I totally agree with your assessment of the media and the job they have to do. (No matter how annoyed I am sometimes by how they go about it)
ReplyDeleteBut even if someone doesn't care about the First Amendment, it's tactically, perhaps even strategically, pure stupidity to harass and attack press members. Even some of the most thuggish dictatorships around the world understand how that can come back to bite them.