A way forward

By Kirsten Berg

During the cold winter months, the issue of police-press relations while covering the Occupy protests quieted somewhat. Cities have quietly dropped charges against some journalists, though others still await trail for alleged offenses. In some incidents across the U.S., journalists have contemplated legal action, but thus far no concrete challenge has seen its day in court.

That is not to say that the issue is dormant for police departments and journalists. In New York, for example, the outcry of media condemnation of the treatment of reporters during the November raid led to some changes in the department, though it is yet to be seen if these are effective or simply artificial moves by the administration.

Organizations such as the NYCLU and New York Press Club are also contemplating taking legislative, legal or other action to remedy the problems that the media has faced, but representatives said they are waiting to see how the situation progresses and to gauge support for such moves.

And they are not completely without recent precedent.

Just this October, three Democracy Now! journalists arrested during the protests surrounding the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul announced a settlement over what they claimed were unlawful arrests as they were trying to cover a protest.

Although charges were eventually dropped, but the journalists eventually sued the police deparcotments and Secret Service for violations of their first amendment rights to gather information, unlawful search and seizure, false arrest, assault and negligence of the officers and their supervisors.

The St. Paul police, in explaining theirs and many other reporter arrests made that day at a press conference while the convention was still going on, said that police officers were unable to make “fine distinctions” between reporters and other members of the public and that the fact that just because someone is a journalist did not “give them additional rights to commit any crimes.”

Their suit was eventually settled after the evidence gathering in the case was completed, but before the case went before a judge at trial, with $100,000 total in compensation to the three journalists and a commitment from St. Paul police to undertake additional training and possibly new policies. The Reporters Committee has helped prepare materials for the training presentations, although many of the details of this have yet to be fleshed out, according to Azmy.

The case highlights that reporters have rights when covering police activities, and at a time when there seems to be a nationwide problem with police officers not distinguishing between members of the public and the press, it is an important message to law enforcement personnel who may have never been informed about these issues, he said.

“I think about an officer who in one of the depositions said that he arrested [one of the journalists] because she crossed the threshold of what they thought was okay. It was very revealing. Part of the democratic process is that police shouldn’t think they can give orders when they feel like a journalist is simply being intrusive or annoying,” he said.

It was no coincidence, he added, that the journalists and their lawyers first announced the Minnesota-based federal settlement at a press conference next to the Occupy Wall Street encampment in New York City in October: They wanted to send a clear message to the nation that the rights of dissenters and of the journalists who cover them are protected.

In the same way that the protestor seemed to define many news stories in 2011, the new year seems poised to be another year with public protest in full force. And with an enduring occupy movement and a level of public frustration that could channel into the massive demonstrations expected outside this summer’s national political conventions, it is inevitable that police will have to continue to deal with the protestors and the press.

The question remains, however, if the peppered but tangible trend of strained police-press relations will continue into the new year.

Azmy says that for him, protecting the press in these situations means fighting on more than one front of the First Amendment.

“We’ve been interested in protecting First Amendment rights, and we know that you cannot meaningfully protect the rights of dissenters and advocates for social change, the protestors, if you don’t also advocate for the rights of the journalists who cover these demonstrations,” he said. “Whether or not law enforcement is on our side on this, it is critical for democracies for these protests to be heard and covered.”