Attacks on media covering protests are simply following the president’s rhetoric
President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he boards Air Force One on Saturday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Police brutality. Racial injustice. Storefronts burning. More
than 100,000 dead from the coronavirus. Massive unemployment. A country in
complete disarray.
You would think President Donald Trump had enough concerns to
deal with, and yet his attention Sunday afternoon was on … the media?
He tweeted: “The Lamestream Media is doing
everything within their power to foment hatred and anarchy. As long as
everybody understands what they are doing, that they are FAKE NEWS and truly
bad people with a sick agenda, we can easily work through them to GREATNESS!”
For his entire administration, Trump has continually bashed the
media — calling it “lamestream” and “fake news” and, worse of all, “the enemy
of the people.” Perhaps then it should come as no surprise that the media was a
target for violence and attacks all over the nation during its coverage of the
protests.
Even before Sunday night, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documented 68 cases
of incidents involving the media during the George Floyd protests. Poynter’s Katy Byron started a widely-shared Twitter
thread that relayed cases of journalists being targeted by either
police or protesters.
Most troubling were incidents involving the police going after
journalists. A CNN reporter was arrested live on the air in Minneapolis. A
reporter in Louisville was shot with pepper balls by police. A Denver
photojournalist was also shot with pepper balls fired by police. Two Los
Angeles Times reporters were hit with tear gas and rubber bullets in
Minneapolis.
And then there was this disgusting moment: a member of the press
lying on the ground in Minnesota callously sprayed by a cop with pepper spray.
Those are just a handful of high-profile incidents involving the
media and police.
Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website, wrote “US Law Enforcement Are Deliberately Targeting
Journalists During George Floyd Protests” and listed the most
egregious examples.
Meantime, protesters also attacked journalists. A news
photographer from the Chicago Tribune was shoved to the ground and had her
equipment stolen. A Fox News crew was chased and punched by protesters in
Washington. A photojournalist for KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh was attacked by
protesters before being rescued by the CEO of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Journalists across the nation were hit by flying debris and many TV vehicles
were vandalized.
Why is the media the target of these attacks?
In responding to Trump’s tweet, The Atlantic CEO Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted,
“Statements like this one from the President of the United States endanger the
lives of reporters.”
Clearly, the health and, potentially, the lives of journalists
were in danger over the weekend, and continue to be as they cover these
protests.
While there is no way of knowing the motivation of every single
attack against the media, how can one not question if Trump’s constant assaults
on the press play a role in the disrespect and disregard toward the media? When
the leader of the free world disrespects the press, why should we expect
citizens to respect them? For years, we’ve warned there would come a day when
Trump’s words would move beyond rhetoric and carry over into real-world
violence. The past few days have seen those fears come to fruition.
Why isn’t the president showing support for one of America’s
most democratic institutions? At a time when the media is under attack from all
sides, why not tweet something sympathetic and ask for their protection instead
of repeating his same old song about the evil media?
As far as journalists under attack, let’s be clear about
something: While protestor-on-journalist violence is an outrage and should be
condemned, any attempts to portray it as being “equally bad” as police attacks
on journalists miss the mark. Police are there, in part, to protect the rights
of those who want to peacefully protest. The media’s role is to chronicle those
protests. Thus, the police are there to protect journalists, not attack them.
How important are these rights? So important that our Founding
Fathers made them the very First Amendment. By attacking the media for merely
doing its job, the police are, effectively, attacking the First Amendment.
Bruce Brown, executive director of the Reporters Committee for
Freedom of the Press, said in a statement: “These attacks not only endanger our
free press, but also threaten our democracy and the essential role that
journalists play in safeguarding constitutional rights.”
And here’s a troubling question: If police are attacking the
media, which is capable of going public about them, how are they treating
everyday citizens who are legally protesting?
“Many of these attacks were captured on live broadcasts,” Brown
said. “The video evidence showing journalists under police assault simply for
doing their jobs is harrowing. We strongly condemn these actions and will be
contacting law enforcement in each jurisdiction to demand a full explanation
and accountability for officers who knowingly targeted journalists.”
We often point to these kinds of transgressions against a free
press in the rest of the world where there are dictatorships or authoritarian
governments. Sadly, we are seeing these infringements right here in the United
States of America. And it’s because the president is OK with it.
What should the media do?
A protester shouts in front of a fire during a protest in Los Angeles on Saturday. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
If you’ve turned on your TV over the past five days, you’ve seen
protests from dozens of cities across the country. It can be hard to watch, but
it’s critically important, too.
Covering these protests aren’t as simple as turning on a camera.
The point of the protests, of course, is to give voice to those protesting —
whether those voices are talking about the death of George Floyd, police
brutality, racial inequality or other injustices. But there’s another aspect to
the protests, and that includes confrontations, violence, fires and looting.
So I asked my Poynter colleague Al Tompkins — a journalist and
teacher with more than 30 years experience — what’s the media’s role in
this? How should we be covering it?
“When we are at our best, journalists document and report
truth,” Tompkins told me. “That means we report the grievances and demands of
protesters, we report their peaceful demonstrations and we report the violent
overreactions, too. We report the honest and professional response of police
and political leaders and we report the overreaction and lawless cruelty when
it happens, too.”
Tompkins told me he has seen remarkable examples of coverage
showing peaceful marches, protesters stopping others from looting and
productive conversations between citizens and police officers. But the scenes
that often get the most attention are burning buildings and looting.
“I am waiting for the public cry, that always happens after a
few days of civil disturbance, that will sound like, ‘If you would quit
covering them they would quit protesting,’” Tompkins said. “And, of course, if
we did not show violence or disobedience, there would be the rightful
accusation that not
covering looks an awful lot like endorsing such actions.”
On CNN’s “Reliable Sources” Sunday, Errin Haines,
editor-at-large of The 19th*, said, “I think that is part of the risk. I
certainly can understand that cameras are drawn to things like fires and
destruction of property. Those are very dramatic images. But showing those
images without centering the peaceful protesters, reminding people that that is
the majority of the reason that protests are happening — that any incidents of
rioting or looting are a distraction.”
Haines said that it’s important to return to the central
questions, like why are black people getting killed by police?
Jane Coaston, senior politics reporter for Vox, told “Reliable
Sources” that the media’s primary role is to explain how we got to this point.
“This isn’t a sport,” Coaston said. “This isn’t something that
we can just observe and then comment on later. We have to add in the necessary
context about how we got here, why this has happened, why violence has erupted
and how we can do something about it.”
Inside one protest turned ugly
On Saturday, as I sat in my home in St. Petersburg, Florida, I
was interested, specifically, in the protests going on near where I live — in
nearby downtown St. Pete, as well as in Tampa and Clearwater. By late
afternoon, it appeared that all the protests were moving along peacefully.
Then it changed. Early Saturday evening, things turned ugly in
Tampa as people set fire to a gas station and sporting goods store, broke into
a diamond and jewelry store and tried to breach a shopping mall near the
University of South Florida.
I followed most of this on local TV and through the tweets and
updates from reporters at the Poynter-owned Tampa Bay Times. So, on Sunday, I
reached out to one of the Times’ reporters, Divya Kumar, about her coverage.
There were, of course, hundreds of journalists in the thick of these protests
all across the country. But Kumar’s reporting is an example of just what it was
like everywhere.
“I don’t know if I have the right words quite yet to put
everything in its proper context,” she told me.
Kumar was one of many Times’ journalists covering the story. I
asked her if there was ever a time when she felt scared as the crowds grew and
tone changed.
“Our coverage was truly a team effort, and editors and reporters
were constantly checking in on each other,” Kumar said. “I think all this made
it feel less scary, and remembering that we are reporting on what our community
is living through.”
Kumar provided some dramatic tweets with video, including a gas station set on fire and protesters confronting police. Her colleagues
also shot video while standing between police and protesters, such as this tear gas video by the Times’ Josh Fiallo.
“I did worry at times if each individual tweet would provide
adequate context or if they were giving a full enough picture, but hoped to put
our readers at the scene as best as possible,” Kumar said.
But, despite the dangers, Kumar said, “After the fact, I felt
grateful to be working as a reporter right now covering this moment in time,
and hope local journalists across the country are able to continue to do their
jobs and be the eyes and ears of their communities.”
A scary warning
Protesters march in St. Paul, Minnesota. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Ugh. No one wants to hear this right now, but on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” former Food and
Drug Administration commissioner Scott Gottlieb said he expects the protests
across the country could lead to a rise in coronavirus cases.
“There’s going to be a lot of issues coming out of what’s
happened in the last week, but one of them is going to be that chains of
transmission will have become lit from these gatherings,” Gottlieb said “This
country isn’t through this epidemic. This is continuing to expand but at a much
slower rate. But it’s still expanding, and we still have pockets of spread in
communities that aren’t under good control.”
Extreme measures
Doesn’t it seem like President Trump’s battle with Twitter was
like a month ago? It was actually just last week. Late last week, at that.
Anyway, that led to this intriguing New York Times column from Maureen Dowd,
who encouraged Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to take the extreme measure of shutting
down Trump’s Twitter feed.
She wrote, “C’mon, @Jack. You can do it. Throw on some Kendrick
Lamar and get your head in the right space. Pour yourself a big old glass of
salt juice. Draw an ice bath and fire up the cryotherapy pod and the infrared
sauna. Then just pull the plug on him. You know you want to.”
Random thoughts from the weekend
CNN’s Van Jones. (Photo by Jason Mendez/Invision/AP)
- Each time Van Jones appeared on CNN, going all the way back to Thursday night, he was must-see TV. His comments — way too voluminous and important to reduce to a matter of sentences — were insightful, thoughtful and as powerful as anything seen on TV recently. If you can go back and hear his comments, do so. When he talks, we’d all be wise to shut up and listen.
- CNN’s Jake Tapper hosted a special COVID-19 memorial show Sunday afternoon. He had various religious figures, including a Southern Baptist minister, an African Methodist Episcopal bishop, a rabbi and a Muslim Iman. He asked each guest to lead a prayer. The special also featured a performance of “Amazing Grace” by the Harlem Gospel Choir. Good stuff.
- One final thought on CNN. The network’s coverage since protesting really started to take off last week has been nothing short of sensational. They’ve had the perfect balance between showing live protests and interviewing various commentators. That led to coverage that not only focused on the reporting of the minute, but the context of the moment.
- I was highly critical of Fox News' lack of coverage going back to Thursday night when they ran reruns of Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham instead of showing live coverage of protests in Minneapolis. Fox News’ coverage did improve as the weekend progressed, although their choice of guests wasn’t always the best. For example, Mark Fuhrman as a guest on Ingraham’s show to talk about race and police? Really?
- Speaking of Fox News, the attacks on a Fox News crew by protesters Friday night in Washington, D.C., were reprehensible and disgusting. Period.
Hot type
- The Atlantic’s James Fallows looks back at 1968 and why that worst year in American history might preview what is yet to come in 2020.
- The Undefeated’s Martenzie Johnson with “Colin Kaepernick Tried to Tell White America.”
- I recently wrote about journalists at The Post and Courier in South Carolina being forced to go back to work in the office once a week during COVID-19. Starting today, they are being required to work in the office full time. The Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani has the details.
