(4 Jun 2020) EXPERT: POLICE AGGRESSION AGAINST JOURNALISTS NOT SEEN SINCE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA
A senior faculty member at a top U.S. journalism institute says the level of police aggression against reporters at protests across the country haven't been seen since the late 1960s.
Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute of Journalism says "you'd have to go back to the civil rights movement to find something similar."
"Journalists were subject to a lot of brutality by citizens, but also by police," Tompkins said. "They were a heavy target. They were seen as being one-sided, anti-police ... But in a couple of generations, we've never seen anything like this in the end."
New York City police officers surrounded, shoved and yelled expletives at two Associated Press journalists covering protests on Tuesday. Both journalists were wearing AP identification and identified themselves as media.
Police in Louisville, Kentucky, apologized after an officer fired what appeared to be pepper bullets at a TV news crew, and a journalist in Minneapolis was shot by a rubber bullet.
In Washington, D.C., police struck an Australian cameraman on live television on Monday. The incident occurred on air as Channel 7 reporter Amelia Brace was covering protests near the White House during the network's Sunrise morning program.
Channel 7 video of the incident showed police rushing protesters before a police officer struck camerman Tim Meyers as Brace shouted "Media!"
Tompkins said also contributing to situation is the fact that "it's being documented so much, not just by journalists, because everybody's got a camera.
"The very core of this whole protest is documented by a citizen with us, with a telephone," he said. "It's not that they haven't been going on. It's just that you haven't been able to see them in the same way that you're able to see them now in full HD quality and almost instantly."
He said police would do well to realize that "having journalists there witnessing good police work is their single best defense against accusations of overresponse."
"We're not there to make them look bad. We're not there to hold them up for public ridicule," he said. "We're there to document what's going on, the excesses of police, the excesses of protesters, but also the peaceful demonstrations and the heroic and peaceful, thoughtful work that police officers do. We're there to document it all."
He said when journalists aren't able to document police actions, "it opens them up for public criticism of overresponse."
"So I don't understand why police wouldn't want journalists there when they're doing such good work and important work," he said.

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