Swept into the kettle of felony riot charges during the inauguration of Donald Trump (the one with more people in attendance than all inaugurations ever, if only they can find the really good pictures that truthfully show what Trump believes) were six journalists covering events. The Guardian went nuts.
“These charges are clearly inappropriate, and we are concerned that they could send a chilling message to journalists covering future protests,” said Carlos Lauría, the CPJ’s senior Americas program coordinator. “We call on authorities in Washington to drop these charges immediately.”
“The way we were treated was an absolute travesty,” said Keller, whose cellphone has been kept by the authorities. Keller’s editor, Annabel Park, said: “It is a maddening and frustrating situation. These are people who were there observing and documenting.”
The handling of the arrests was, indeed, a travesty. Some people were engaged in criminal conduct, burning limos and smashing windows. And so the police rounded them up, en masse, by surrounding the group and herding them into what has been called the “kettle.” So what? They deserved it?
The individuals who committed crimes should be arrested for the crimes they committed, whatever they may be. The people who were merely in the vicinity of the crimes have no culpability for the crimes committed by other people. Just because some guy 30 feet away from you smashed a window doesn’t mean you smashed a window.
When mass prosecutions happen, people are typically swept up in mass allegations, where claims are made against a “group,” which may be a discrete group or just a random bunch of people who may have a common thread or belief, such as protesting the new president. Some are angry and violent. Some are angry. Some came along for the ride. And some don’t quite know how they got there or what the people around them are there for. Not that any of this matters later.
The prosecution comes up with cool names to characterize these groups, like “the anarchists,” to suggest they’re a gang and they parked their motorcycles somewhere else. Waco, perhaps. They wear no colors, which could either mean they aren’t really a gang or they’re a particularly sneaky gang concealing their nefarious connection.
Either way, the allegations of some are levied against all in broad, vague words that fail to distinguish any particular conduct of individuals charged with felonies. One guy burned a limo. You did too. If you didn’t want to be charged, you should have stayed in Jersey.
When limos, or trash cans, burn, it’s a news story. When it’s a particularly controversial president’s inauguration day, it’s a really fascinating news story. And so, there were reporters.
It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.
The distinction for journalists is that they are an identifiable subgroup swept into the kettle, doing a job with which the police and prosecutors should be aware and familiar, making charges against them more unfounded, absurd and wrong. After all, the police know who they are, and if they are susceptible to being arrested for doing their job, not merely lawful but constitutionally protected (free press and all), then it would certainly impair their ability to report.
This police and prosecution approach chills them from performing a critical societal function. Much as reporters may want to report, get paid to report, they really aren’t thrilled at being saddled with a felony for doing so. They aren’t even mildly okay with having to endure prosecution, even if they eventually prevail. Rap and ride, as they say.
And, of course, they’re quite right.
“Our concern is that these arrests could send a chilling message to journalists that cover future protests,” Mr. Lauria added.
Witnesses reported that sweeping arrests during the parade targeted rioters, protesters and journalists indiscriminately.
But what to make of those three “groups,” rioters, protesters and journalists, as denominated by…journalists? They’re sensitive to their own, but sweep the others into facile characterizations. Were they “rioters”? Was everyone who wasn’t a journalist or rioter a protester? And even so, isn’t protest similarly protected by the Constitution, like that occasionally beloved free press?
It is, indeed, wrong to sweep journalists into the kettle because some broke windows. It’s similarly wrong to sweep peaceful protesters as well. The peaceful protester isn’t any more thrilled about being prosecuted, facing a conviction, than are the reporters.
Is it just that the media protects its own? No one comes to grips with reality better than when it touches their lives. The media believed itself immune from the improprieties of police, covering it close up or far away, dutifully reporting the official narrative of police rather than leaving the press conference and talking to an actual person with knowledge. It was just a job. The biggest risk they faced was a paper cut.
Now, it touched them. Or at least, their kind. So they circled the wagons around their own and raised a big stink about the “travesty” of journalists being arrested. And they’re right, it is a travesty. It’s just no more of a travesty than any other innocent person being arrested.
Just as innocent people, some of whom were there to protest and others for reasons that only they know, were herded into the kettle, so too were reporters doing what they are lawfully entitled to do. The prosecution will characterize their involvement in the crimes using broad, vague terms, never capable of offering individualized allegations of wrongful conduct committed by each member of the herd.
In a better legal system, these vagaries would be tossed by a judge at arraignment for failure to establish probable cause to arrest. What were the allegations at arraignment? It’s unclear. The reporting gave no insight. It pretty much sucked, even though one might have hoped that some deeply caring journalist would report on exactly how the D.C. United States Attorney’s office managed to surmount the lack of specificity problem.
Too bad no journalist did. Instead, they were too busy bemoaning how this time the injustice happened to their tribe. Welcome to the club.
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It must be cool to be a member of the trashcan paparazzi. Bet they got some great pix.
Or maybe they’re just into fire. Like Beavis.
Interestingly, several of these journalists have been identified in the media as “journalist and activist” so-and-so. What was the “activism” in the course of the rioting? I don’t see any basis to assume they were not participating. Maybe the video will shed light.
As far as how the police arrest and charge in these things, isn’t this how it has always been? That is, if there is “rioting,” everybody in the crowd gets charged on the theory that it was a crowd behavior and everybody there encouraged it? If not by smashing the window, then by lending the cover and anonymity of the crowd to the guys who smashed the windows? When the crowds don’t disburse on police orders, don’t the police always direct the tear gas, pepper spray and firehoses at everyone? The “herding” mechanism of arrest just seems consistent with that. Also, I don’t see how it would ever be practical for the police to wade into the crowd trying to find the guys who smashed the window. The alternative would seem to be the Baltimore approach of letting the riot go unchecked and taking some video in the hopes of being able to tag some of the (often masked) individual smashers, looters and burners later. That approach abandons sectors of a city to anarchy, leaving citizens who care about their homes, cars and businesses on their own to mount whatever defense they can.
Yes, and yes. Though in the past, the reporters were cut loose because they were reporters. But then, they weren’t reporters and activists, as they are now.
How ironic that the one who most “disrupted” the inauguration was the one who simply took a picture from high atop the Washington Monument.
That probably was a National Parks Service pic. I’m pretty sure that’s not within the ambit of this post.
I seem to recall it was a Guardian photographer who climbed up there.
(The elevator is broken again…)
Well, if you seem to recall, that’s that.
It seems to me there’s a qualitative difference between collective action against crowds that refuse to disperse, versus against crowds which the police do not allow to disperse.
There’s certainly a qualitative difference between wet and teary and a felon.
Do these protestors not know that they are burning a four star Rat restaurant? Where was PETA to stop this insanity?
Not a clue what this means.
It was sarcasm. You’d have to have been on the streets of DC late at night and see the rats crawling out of the sewers and metal grates that surround the trees on the sidewalks, going for their nightly meals.
It might be the same in NYC. In DC, garbage is put out nightly from all the restaurants and bars not too far from the Capitol. I used to joke with my co-workers that they were our Congress critters coming out at night in their true form.
Okay then.