RCFP-led media coalition highlights concerns about attacks on press rights at LA protests

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a coalition of 60 news and press freedom organizations are urging federal, state, and local officials to ensure that authorities responding to protests in Los Angeles are properly trained on journalists’ right to report on law enforcement activity.
In a letter sent on Friday, the media coalition cites multiple reports of journalists being injured and detained while covering the Los Angeles protests against immigration raids, including reports of possible targeting, which would violate the First Amendment.
“While we also recognize the important role of law enforcement to protect public safety and crowd control, the right and ability of the press to document law enforcement and other government activity safely and effectively is foundational to self-government and has long been recognized and protected by the courts,” the media coalition argues in the letter, which is addressed to U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and other officials.
The media coalition’s letter highlights several best-practices for interactions between press and law enforcement at mass demonstrations, which were born out of a convening of police leaders and journalists, spearheaded by the Reporters Committee and the Police Executive Research Forum.
The letter also underscores the importance of protections for the press in three areas:
- The constitutional right to record and document government activity in public;
- Recent caselaw in California requiring law enforcement responses to protest activity to be tailored in a way that permits meaningful news coverage of those responses; and
- The importance of a California law that expressly allows journalists to enter and remain in certain areas that are otherwise closed to the public during protest activity.
“[I]n the five years since the mass demonstrations of 2020, courts and policymakers have provided valuable guidance to better protect journalists covering these events and at the same time advance law enforcement interests,” the letter concludes. “We urge you to ensure that your personnel in the field are trained on that law and those best practices.”