Why are journalists arrested for doing their jobs?

A journalist can only cover what they can access. As police in riot gear clashed with protesters from homeless advocacy groups at Echo Park in March, many journalists were among the 182 people arrested, while many more were detained.

“I was removed from the protest, zip-tied for about 45 minutes. It was the usual process. I got patted down, I got searched, they went through my bag,” said LA Times journalist James Queally, who was one of the journalists detained. “I was in a line-up being walked towards the bus that they were going to use to transport, and I think that’s when it started getting around that I was media and they did have me step out of the line.”

The United States constitution declared with the First Amendment rights of journalists to cover matters of public concern. To do that, journalists venture into the midst of the chaos during times of unrest. Yet, media pens are being used to keep journalists out and with police officers routinely removing journalists from the scene, they are effectively being kept from fully reporting on these incidents and bringing the authorities’ actions to the public eye.

Mickey Osterreicher is General Counsel for the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) and has been advocating for and defending the rights of visual journalists for over 15 years.

“The First Amendment is there obviously to protect the press, but it’s really there to protect the public - to be able to receive that information,” Osterreicher said.

The last two years have been the years of protests and activism. From Black Lives Matter and Juneteenth protests, women’s marches, Pride marches, climate strikes to pro-Palestinian rallies across the United States and around the world.

During this time of turmoil and revolution, journalists across the country have been facing an onset of unwarranted arrests and attacks while covering these demonstrations, according to the Press Freedom Tracker; and since 2017, 206 journalists have been arrested while covering protests.

More well-known journalists like James Queally and Kate Cagle (a journalist and anchor for Spectrum News 1 in Los Angeles) were detained in the Echo Park protests but later released due to organizational backing, immediate media outcry, and they had presented official LAPD press credentials.

However, others were not so fortunate. The Press Freedom Tracker reported that two journalists for Knock L.A., Jonathan Peltz, and Kate Gallagher, were not only arrested but were later ordered to appear in court on a charge of failure to disperse. The Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer recently declared that charges would be dropped for all those who were arrested for failure to disperse at the Echo Park protests, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“It’s protest coverage where the police do seem to be making less and less distinction between demonstrators and members of the media,” Queally said. “It can have a chilling effect on reporters. Some people locally that I’ve talked to have said they’re a little more wary of covering protest situations because they’re more afraid than usual that the police might use force against them or they might get detained.”

Currently, journalists and media experts are raising questions about whether press credentials should even be handled by City Hall, the LAPD, or the Sheriff’s department — organizations that face critical coverage themselves.

Queally adds that such discourse rises from the police’s selective behavior when it comes to recognizing journalists without any institutional backing.

“LAPD’s treatment of the credentialed press is not great but generally not horrible. Their treatment of independent reporters and freelancers and people who don’t have their specific credentials is a lot worse,” Queally said.

While the press’ role remains enshrined within the constitution, there is a constant fight on both ends: enforcing existing rights and making sure future legislation does not violate that role. Legislators recently proposed an amendment to California Senate Bill 98 which threatened to further suppress press freedom. The amendment would have required journalists covering protests to obtain permission from officers on the scene before being able to enter closed areas. This was in direct contrast with the original legislation that grants journalists access to areas declared inaccessible to the general public.

“Telling journalists what their rights are is all well and good, but it’s not going to make any difference if police officers don’t understand or respect those rights,” Osterreicher said.

Osterreicher has also given extensive training to police officers and journalists around the country regarding the rights and responsibilities of both groups.

“It’s very rare that offices are disciplined for their activity,” Osterreicher said about the aftermath of such incidents. “When they [any state actor] violate people’s civil and constitutional rights, people are able to bring what’s known as a 1983 action … and it costs taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle these lawsuits. It doesn’t come from the pockets of the police officers or doesn’t come from the police departments.”

These have been only the most recent of innumerous rights violations against members of the media by law enforcement agencies:

• In May 2021, photojournalists Nasser Baker and Nicholas Stern sued the LAPD, claiming abuses during mass protests against police brutality in the Fairfax district.
• In October 2020, L.A. Taco journalist Lexis-Olivier Ray faced a criminal charge for failure to disperse — after a video he tweeted about the LAPD’s violent behavior went viral.
• On September 12, 2020, KPCC reporter Josie Huang was pinned to the ground by several police officers (this was captured on video), charged with interfering in an arrest while covering the shooting of two deputies. However, the District Attorney threw the case away on Sept. 24, 2020.
• In May 2020, Andrea Sahouri was arrested while covering the George Floyd protests, charged with failure to disperse and interference with official acts. She was fully prosecuted and went through a three-day trial, and acquitted by the six-member jury and found not guilty on both charges.

Most recently, The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ/LA) sent a letter to the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners in response to the LAPD’s After Action Report on Echo Park noting that during the Echo Park operation, a freelance AP photographer, Christian Monterrosa, was struck in the abdomen by a hard foam projectile.

In response to an individual legal claim, the LAPD said that this was a mistake and that the projectile was not intended for him. The After Action report also failed to interview multiple journalists who were detained and arrested.

“I think there are heightened tensions both among journalists and among police about police-journalist interactions,” lawyer and journalist David Snyder said, suggesting an alternative explanation for the current predicament.

David Snyder is the Executive Director of the First Amendment Coalition (FAC) — a nonprofit dedicated to advancing free speech, open government and public participation in civic affairs.

“We’re seeing an increase in the raw numbers. Does that mean that there’s been an important attitude change in the police or is it just a reflection of the fact that last year we saw a vast increase in the number of opportunities for these kinds of conflicts to arise?” said Snyder. He added that it may very well be that attitudes are changing but that this is very hard to tell given the circumstances.

While much of the law is clear on the rights of journalists, what remains unclear is if law enforcement agencies can continue to ignore these rights and dole out charges against journalists simply for doing their jobs.

“I’ve often found that a journalist saying, ‘I know my rights’ is usually the last sentence they get to utter before hearing, ‘Turn around, put your hands behind your back, you’re under arrest,’” Osterreicher said.