LA Times reporter arrested at Echo Park Lake homeless camp protests - The Washington Post - 0 views
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Earlier this month, Los Angeles Times reporter James Queally wrote about an unusual case of police action against a journalist. As he noted, authorities in L.A. had charged a freelance reporter — but no one else — with failing to disperse from a protest scene last fall.
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“We were looking at each other, asking, ‘Is it going to happen again?’ and of course, it did,” Queally told The Washington Post after his release from police custody. “The fact that it has to enter people’s minds is concerning.”
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In September, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies violently tackled and arrested a reporter for the local NPR affiliate. A reporter for the Des Moines Register recently was taken to trial and acquitted after her arrest at a racial justice protest in Iowa last summer.
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Given that he covers policing and criminal justice, “I’m probably more deferential to police than your typical reporter,” Queally said. “I have no problem writing critical stories about them, but I’m going to follow instructions.”
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Just two minutes later, LAPD put out a statement on its Twitter account: “As a reminder, members of the media are also to obey the dispersal orders. Members of the media are to use the designated media viewing area.”
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“It’s a risk when you’re covering a crowd-control situation that you’re going to be among the people police are going after,” he said, but arrests and police violence toward journalists could make some reporters think twice about covering future unrest.