Cases dropped against reporters arrested for covering protests

These days some might assume the fight for press freedom is limited to playing defense and holding the line. Not so — we’ve got progress to report.

In October, we called upon six prosecutors around the country to drop cases against journalists arrested for covering protests. We cited recent guidance from the Department of Justice reiterating its position that journalists are constitutionally entitled to report on protests and their aftermath. That includes the conduct of police officers after they issue dispersal orders.

We subsequently led a letter from press freedom advocates to prosecutors in northern New York calling to drop the case against Indian Time journalist Isaac White. It’s a safe bet that St. Lawrence County District Attorney Gary Pasqua wasn’t expecting to hear from some of the state and country’s most prominent press rights and transparency organizations when his office brought the petty charges against White back in May.

White was arrested alongside demonstrators while covering a land claim demonstration. He had nothing to do with planning the demonstration — he found out about it from a source the day it happened. He was not alleged to have done anything but report the news.

Prosecutors dropped the charges last month. We’ll never know for sure if we had anything to with it — district attorneys’ offices don’t usually send us thank you letters — but hopefully, we at least educated local officials about the First Amendment rights of journalists covering protests so those officials will do better next time.

We were also thrilled to learn that at least two of the journalists arrested in Chicago while covering protests during the Democratic National Convention in August (Olga Fedorova and Josh Pacheco) saw their cases dropped as well. A third journalist, Sinna Nasseri, was also arrested, but we haven’t been able to confirm that her case has been dismissed.

Like White, all they were accused of doing was not leaving along with protesters when police ordered them to, exactly what the DOJ and appellate courts have said they’re entitled to do by the First Amendment. Yet they were arrested and more. Officers broke Fedorova’s camera and a top police official snatched Pacheco’s press pass from their neck. That official, Tom Ahern, the department’s deputy director of news affairs and communications, inexcusably threatened journalists with revocation of press passes in retaliation for exercising their constitutional rights throughout the convention.

We began ringing the alarm about Chicago Police Department misconduct at the DNC even before it happened (as a Chicagoan, it didn’t take a crystal ball to see it coming). Afterward, we hosted events where press freedom advocates and independent journalists could air the abuses they witnessed by police, particularly by Ahern, who should have already been fired for his out-of-control behavior during the convention. We wrote about the abuses on our site and in letters to local newspapers.

Again, we can’t claim credit for the dropped charges, but we hope we played a part in prosecutors’ shift to damage-control mode. That shouldn’t be the end of it though — the journalists who were arrested, denied access, or otherwise wronged should sue. And Chicago should update its policies to reflect the DOJ’s position, and stop letting the Police Department control press pass issuance — it’s like letting the fox guard the henhouse.

That still leaves plenty of cases pending against other journalists who were just doing their constitutionally protected jobs. Prosecutors in Portland, for example, ignored a call from Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and partner organizations to drop charges from a protest arrest of journalist Alissa Azar. Her case is scheduled for trial in January. It’s not clear what the Portland, Oregon, officials who insist on pressing these charges are waiting for — perhaps a personalized reprimand from the DOJ like the Minneapolis Police Department got last year.

But the progress that has been made shows there is room to get things done at the local level, no matter who is in charge in Washington. These small victories aren’t so small to the journalists who can move on without frivolous prosecutions hanging over their heads.