A common complaint of the media is that it has a liberal bias, which of course is a reflection of where the complainer is standing. But two University of Kentucky journalism students learned a little bit about where not to stand while covering the Republican National Convention.
From the Kentucky Kernel (cute name, no?):
It’s hard to take a decent photograph while keeping a decent distance from the action. But get too close, and…Two UK students and the photo adviser for the Kentucky Kernel were arrested at the Republican National Convention Monday afternoon in St. Paul, Minn., on charges of felony rioting. They were photographing the protesting of the convention.
Photographers Ed Matthews and Britney McIntosh and adviser Jim Winn were three of 286 people arrested as convention protests escalated into riots Monday.
All three were arrested are being detained at the Ramsey County Adult Detention Center in St. Paul, until noon, said jail officials.
They will be charged no later than Wednesday, said jail officials. If convicted, Winn, Matthews and McIntosh would receive a minimum sentence of one year in jail and have to pay a minimum fine of $3,000.
Unlike this prior video, we have a bit more information about what compelled the police to use force against the throng.
Photographer Carla Winn, who was with her husband Jim Winn at the convention, said the problems at the Republican National Convention started when a group of protesters broke off from the main group. People started “smarting off to cops,” said Winn, who said she slipped behind a building while her husband got mixed in with protesters.The police tried to move the protesters back, Carla Winn said, but when they couldn’t, they started spraying people with pepper spray.
Jim Winn and McIntosh obeyed the police order to lie on the ground, Carla Winn said. She didn’t see if Matthews laid on the ground or not.
A friend of the Winns, Jonathan Woods, witnessed the riots as well. Woods, also a photographer, said that the police warned the protesters before using chemical deterrent.
“There was a pretty good volume of tear gas and pepper spray used,” Woods said. “The rubber bullets are what really got people moving.”
Rubber bullets will do that. Now some will find that the police were fully justified in dealing forcefully with the crowd, since it’s their duty to maintain order and they only escalated their use of force when the crowd failed to comply with their orders. As one person suggested to me yesterday, if given a choice between the thugs on the street and the thugs in police uniforms, he’d pick the latter.
The UK journalists wore press passes, identifying them as members of the media rather than member of the horde. The St. Paul police spokesman has a curious perspective on this detail:
Of those arrested Monday, four were journalists accredited with the Republican National Convention, said Tom Walsh, public information officer for the St. Paul Police Department. However, he said, that does not include journalists affiliated with Republication National Convention-accredited groups, including some bloggers and photographers such as Jim Winn, McIntosh and Matthews.Such a small group of accredited journalists being arrested means police aren’t targeting journalism, but criminal behavior, Walsh said.
“There are literally thousands of journalists here, and they’ve managed to cover their stories (without getting arrested), which would imply there’s nothing going on there,” Walsh said.
It’s likely accurate to say that the cops weren’t targeting journalists. But that’s really not a sufficient statement to appreciate the problem. They similarly aren’t demonstrating any sensitivity to the fact that journalists are amid the throng in order to take photographs and get their story.
While most of the “literally thousands of journalists” are inside the theater for the big show, where there are neither protests nor police shooting rubber bullets, there remain a few outside covering the “thugs” who won’t join the local “anarcho-syndicalist” club and protest in an orderly fashion. And if they are arrested, along with the subjects of their coverage, because of their presence amidst the disaffected, then who’s left to report?
“If journalists are being arrested and the police are not separating them from the rioters, who is going to be there to report on the event itself?” [Kentucky Kernel Editor in Chief Brad] Luttrell said. “Journalists being arrested for doing their job is a form of censorship.”
What are the chances that these journalism students will carry some baggage in the future when reporting on the actions of the police? This could explain a bit about liberal bias.
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I think the most telling phrase in your article is, “it is their[the police] duty to maintain order.” Some people have the misunderstanding that it is the duty of the police to enforce the law. That is not, however, how the police nor the people who hire them view the job of a police officer. A police officer is not a lawyer and his job is to maintain public order in accordance with departmental policies, not interpret the fine points of law. The inevitable result is shocked behavior on the part of innocent bystanders who find themselves slammed into curbs, cuffed, and charged with a crime when they’re in an area that the police are trying to clear. The charges are inevitably dismissed, but the police officer has obtained his objective. He has created public order from disorder. Which what he, and the people who hire him, view his job as being.
In short, there is a disconnect between what police officers view their job as being, and what the general public views the job of police officers as being, and that is the cause of issues such as this. However, in the case of police officers giving journalists the same treatment they give ordinary citizens, there is an old saying, “never pick an argument with someone who buys paper by the truckload and ink by the barrel.” It is as true today as it was in the pre-Internet age. As you point out, journalists who have themselves been falsely accused of rioting or other such illegal behaviors are going to have a more prejudicial view of police statements in the future, because they already have personal experience with the fact that police officers can, and do, lie. For most people that is a theoretical notion and they can dismiss it as “I’m sure it happens, but not often.” For a journalist who has personally seen it happen to himself and several of his co-workers while they were doing their jobs as journalists, it becomes not-so-theoretical, and their distrust for law officers can impair the public trust in law enforcement and therefore make it more difficult to maintain public order in the future. As you point out, this is counterproductive behavior on the part of police officers… but behavior that, I suspect, will continue because police officers appear to believe that the press is an enemy and make it true.
I just took a swing around your blog, and it’s really something. Glad you decided to stop by here and hope to hear from you regularly.