'I’m getting shot': attacks on journalists surge in US protests

Journalists working in conflict zones and authoritarian states have been warning for years: reporting is becoming more dangerous. What little protection a press pass or camera might have afforded in the past has meant less than ever on the battlefields of Syria, in small-town India or on the streets of Hong Kong. This was the week that trend burst into view in US cities.

Reporters in Minneapolis, Louisville or the dozens of other places that witnessed protests and riots in the days after the alleged murder of George Floyd were not killed or prosecuted, as they increasingly are elsewhere in the world. But they were blinded, beaten, maced and arrested by police in numbers never before documented in the US.

Linda Tirado, a photojournalist, was shot with a “less-lethal” round while covering protests in Minneapolis on Saturday, permanently losing vision in her left eye. Michael Adams, a VICENews correspondent, lay down when ordered to do so by police, holding a press pass above his head. He was still pepper sprayed in the face. Kaitlin Rust was broadcasting on WAVE3 News in Kentucky when an officer appear to take aim before hitting her with pepper balls. “I’m getting shot,” she cried live on air. Police later apologised.

These were just some of 148 arrests or attacks on journalists in the US between 26 May and 2 June recorded by the Guardian in collaboration with Bellingcat. The figures are based on known incidents and the true total could be higher.

“It’s been shocking to all of us because of the scale of the violence,” says Robert Mahoney, the deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, an NGO. “We’ve now recorded more than 300 press-freedom violations in the past week of which the majority are attacks, physical assaults … and I hate to use the word unprecedented, but it is certainly something no one has seen probably since the 1960s when you had the civil rights movement, and violent repression of protests in which journalists were also caught up.”

The majority of cases appear to show police attacking journalists who were clearly identifiable as members of the press. In seven out of 10 cases (106 of 148, or 72%) analysed by the Guardian, journalists were attacked when their credentials were visible or after they had identified themselves as media workers.

The vast majority of the attacks occurred in the first days of the protests, with over a third concentrated in Minneapolis. Attacks on the media were reported across 24 states and in Washington DC. Denver, Colorado and Los Angeles recorded the most attacks outside Minneapolis, with 10 incidents each.

In Washington DC, where protesters were forcibly dispersed to clear the way for President Trump to pose with a Bible at St John’s Church on Monday, there were nine attacks by law enforcement on journalists in the three-day period covered by the data.

Most of the 143 affected members of the media work for US outlets, however international journalists were also targeted and attacked by police. Journalists working for publications in the UK, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, Canada and those working for international wire services were among those detained, arrested or attacked by police and other law enforcement agencies during the protests.

Rubber or foam bullets and other kinds of “less lethal rounds” were the most commonly used weapon, with 40 instances of journalists coming under fire from less lethal rounds according to Guardian analysis. The data also shows 34 instances of officers physically assaulting journalists including pushing, punching and throwing people to the ground. More than 20 incidents involved the use of tear gas, and 15 the use of pepper spray. Of the incidents analysed by the Guardian, a journalist was arrested or detained 33 times.

The data excludes instances of assaults by protesters or members of the public carrying weapons, which did not form part of the Guardian/Bellingcat data analysis. A database of incidents being collected by the US Press Freedom Tracker has identified 11 such instances.

Most of the attacks were carried out by local police departments, but there were 15 incidents involving state troopers. A further three reports named the National Guard, which is a military reserve force, as the aggressors.

Press freedom advocates say the incidents reflect a wider erosion of respect for the place of a free media in a democracy. “Journalists have always been targets of criticism and back in the 1960s they were also targeted by police,” Mahoney says. “But there was an understanding that journalists were necessary and it was incumbent on police forces to allow them to do their job. That has changed.”

Booming in the background is the rhetoric of the US president, Donald Trump, who has turned denigration of the media into an applause line at his rallies and has labelled reporters “scum”, “fake news” and the “enemies of the people”, language that is often echoed by some of his supporters.

But the violence pre-dates Trump and is fuelled by longer-term shifts, says Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Going back to the 2014 Ferguson riots, over a dozen journalists were arrested and had tear gas or projectiles fired on them by police,” he says.

“The big issue here is the militarisation of police. That’s the real systemic issue and that’s been building for two decades now. The fact that the Defence Department literally sells this equipment made for war to local police.”

Deploying heavily armed officers to protests before any serious violence has occurred can create a provocative atmosphere in which the free-speech rights of both protesters and the media may be less likely to be respected, says Laurie Robinson, a professor of criminology who was the co-chair of a taskforce set up by President Barack Obama to advise on improving relations between police and the public.

“We talk about the importance of police having a guardian mindset rather than an occupier or a warrior mindset,” she says.

The attacks also show the urgent need for extra training on how to handle media during charged protests, she says, especially in a new-media age where journalists are less distinguishable in a crowd of people filming on their smartphones.

Analysts have also warned for years of a growing cultural gap between rank-and-file police officers and the communities they patrol as a contributor to violent incidents. The same division might also be a factor in attacks on media, some speculate, with shrinking and vanishing newsrooms in many cities and towns leading to fewer personal relationships between journalists and police departments than in the past.

“The police used to know who the journalists were, who the organisations were, they lived in the community,” Mahoney says. “So there was a certain level of familiarity but also accountability. But there are fewer and fewer journalists and those relationships don’t exist anymore, and that might make the ‘us and them’ dynamic more stark.”

The data gathered and analysed by the Guardian and Bellingcat has been published and will be maintained by Bellingcat.