Police Are Taking Cues From Trump Treating Reporters as an Enemy of The People

While I object to the George Floyd protests because of the violence on the part of some of the protesters and the blatant disregard for social distancing, I equally object to how journalists are being treated by the authorities across the country in their coverage of this story.

This began on Thursday night in Minneapolis with the arrest of CNN reporter Oscar Jimenez and his crew on live television. 

On Friday night, Louisville PD fired pepper bullets at Kaitlin Rust and her crew who work for a local CNN affiliate live on air.

Saturday saw the arrest of CNN commentator Keith Boykin as he was taking pictures here in NYC along the West Side Highway. In Brooklyn, Huffington Post reporter Chris Mathias was arrested despite wearing a press pass. Meanwhile, back in Minneapolis, Ali Velshi was struck in the leg by a rubber bullet by state police. Tom Aviles, a photojournalist with the local CBS affiliate in Minneapolis, was also struck with a rubber bullet in the leg and, adding insult to injury, was arrested.

While must be a reasonable suspicion that race may have been a motive in these arrests (only Rust and Mathias are white) I believe there is something much larger at play here because I cannot think of an instance in American history when so many journalists have been arrested on American soil in such a short period of time.

On February 17, 2017, less than a month in office, President Trump saw fit to call the news media "an enemy of the American people". Trump has made this claim again and again with the desired effect. One in three Americans share this view and no doubt a healthy portion of this third of the American people work in law enforcement.

Given how freedom of the press is an essential tenet of the First Amendment, it is inconceivable to me that such a thing could have happened in the United States at this scale and that such a thing could be accepted by such a significant portion of the American population prior to Donald Trump in the White House.

When we consider these conditions I have an awful feeling this won't be the last time an American journalist is arrested on American soil whether for the duration of these protests or beyond. I also have an awful feeling that we will see an American journalist die on live TV. The danger here is that the more frequent the arrests (and deaths) the more likely a broader segment of the American public will accept it as a fact of life. This we cannot accept because if we don't have a free press we shall cease to be a free people.