Elizabeth City police arrested two reporters in the USA TODAY Network Wednesday night who were doing their jobs and covering a protest related to the death of Andrew Brown Jr.
We must be clear: This police action is a frontal assault on freedom of the press, which is enshrined in the First Amendment.
Ayano Nagaishi and Alison Cutler work for The News Leader, based in Staunton, Virginia. The publication belongs to the Southeast Region of the Gannett/USA TODAY Network, which also includes 12 daily newspapers inNorth Carolina.
More:Our View: NC lawmakers should pass Transparency Act, break ‘culture of secrecy’, build trust
Related:Two reporters arrested, released, during Andrew Brown Jr. protests in Elizabeth City Wednesday night
The reporters were filming an arrest of a protester across the street just before 9 p.m. when they were approached by police officers, according to the video. The journalists wore media vests and identified themselves several times as media, as officers put on the handcuffs. Cutler asked about the charge and was told, “for standing in the street in a roadway.”
The journalists told USA TODAY they were about a foot away from the curb, standing in a crosswalk. A curfew that led to the arrest of some protesters did not apply to news media.
The News Leader wrote: “A citizen filmed the arrest with Nagaishi’s phone, which an officer then retrieved and placed in her pocket.”
The reporters were released about 10:30 p.m.
It is hard to view this as anything but a bald-faced attempt by police to stop fair reporting of a public event by journalists.
In addressing the incident, Elizabeth City ManagerMontre Freeman said reporters need to decide if they want to be reporters or protesters. He claimedit was his understanding that the two journalists went beyond reporting and did not follow officers’ orders, according to one local publication. Really? We wonder who gave him that understanding. The officers who made the needlessarrests?
Their live-streaming video would say otherwise.
Freeman’s commentwas both unnecessary and wrong. The News Leader journalists were covering Wednesday’s protests, and we challenge the managerto present evidence otherwise.
Local officials’ lack of transparency has already been questioned in their handling of the death of Brown, a 42-year-old, unarmed Black man who was shot and killed by Pasquotank County sheriff’s deputies on April 21.
District Attorney Andrew Womble on Tuesday declined to charge the deputies involved in the shooting, saying it was reasonable for them to “believe it was necessary to use deadly force to protect themselves and others.” Yet, he resisted calls by the family and the public to release more video from the officer’s body cameras, instead showing just 44 seconds at a press conference.
Brown’s killing has spurred weeks of protest in Elizabeth City. Journalists from across the Southeast and the nation have been there as the public’s eyes and ears on what is going on.
Reporters do not intend to become part of the story. But the arrests of the Stauntonteam is a story that is, unfortunately, becoming more common in the era of social justice protests that started last year after the death of George Floyd, killed by a Minneapolis police officer.
(Story continues below)
At least 117 U.S. journalists were arrested in 2020, according to a report by the Freedom of the Press Foundation. In 2019, the number was 9. That’s a 1,200% increase.
In one case, local officials went to the point of prosecuting Andrea Sahouri, a reporter for the Des Moines Register, also part of the Gannett/USA TODAY Network, on misdemeanor charges related to her coverage of protests on May 31, 2020. She was acquitted in March.
Arresting reporters does not benefit anyone. It does not serve the public or taxpayers, who pay the salary of law enforcement and the governments that hire them.
Inevitably, the arrests hurt most the agency that conducts the police action. Whenever any institution tries to suppress reporting, people wonder what they are hiding. What is it that they don’t want the public to see?
This is never a good narrative. But when it comes to the already fraught relationship between law enforcement and many people in the public, it is particularly harmful.
Public distrust has come to define the handling of the Andrew Brown Jr. case, and Wednesday night’s unjustifiable arrests add to a toxic atmosphere.
The USA TODAY Network and, even more so, North Carolina residents, have a right to an explanation of what happened and an expectation that such does not happen again.
Support local journalism with a subscription to The Fayetteville Observer. Click the “subscribe” link at the top of this article.
