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The attacks on press freedom in Portland

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The voice of journalismJuly 24, 2020This week Dave Miller, who hosts a daily talk show on Oregon Public Broadcasting, interviewed “two very tired people”: Tuck Woodstock and Sergio Olmos, both independent journalists. Since late May, daily protests in solidarity with Black lives and against police brutality have taken place in Portland. Local outlets have often sent reporters, but not to cover every protest; mainstream national outlets , when OPB reported that federal agents in unmarked vehicles were snatching protesters off the streets. By contrast, freelancers like Woodstock and Olmos have been out night after night, documenting the scene.the power balance between protesters and law enforcement, the ethics of livestreaming ( to surveil and make arrests), and the physical threats that reporters face. “I’ve been out there for the majority of the last fiftysomething nights,” Woodstock said, “and I have never once felt unsafe by the actions of a protester. But I have, almost every night, felt unsafe by either the actions of Portland police or the federal law enforcement.” Without the institutional backing of a newsroom, freelancers in Portland have helped equip one another with protective gear—helmets, gas masks, Kevlar. “As independent journalists, we’re not getting a paycheck, so we’re really risking it just in the hope that people will compensate us for it,” Woodstock said. Local and federal officers had been violent for a while, Olmos added, but in recent days federal agents raised the risk level, pointing assault rifles and handguns at reporters. “It is as dangerous as it’s ever been out there,” Olmos said.ICYMI:Horrifying stories of law enforcement abusing reporters have emerged from Portland. Officers have routinely teargassed and beaten journalists. A federal agent, in full military getup, , a photojournalist on assignment for . Two other photojournalists—Jon House, of the Portland Tribune, and Alex Milan Tracy, who works for wire services—. Mike Baker, who’s been covering the protests for the New York Times, . Yesterday, The Daily, a Times podcast, . Another reporter, Eddy Binford-Ross, was shoved against a wall, and said that a federal agent cocked a gun at her. Binford-Ross is seventeen and has been covering the protests for her student paper, the South Salem High School Clypian. “I feel like the protest could go downhill very fast,” . “I think it’s incredibly important that people continue to be out there every night reporting on this.”On Wednesday, —the day after Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, killed George Floyd, a Black man, igniting protests nationwide—it has received fifty-two reports of journalists being abused in Portland, including eight physical attacks by law enforcement and five arrests. (In late June, —Cory Elia and Lesley McLam, who are podcast hosts at the community radio station KBOO, and Justin Yau, a freelancer—on a single night.) , since Floyd’s death, the only area that’s been less safe for reporters appears to be the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul.In recent days, journalists on the ground have spoken about the toll of militarized police aggression. Sandi Bachom, a video journalist, —and none could compare to the continuing attacks by officers in Portland. On Tuesday, Mathieu Lewis-Rolland, a photographer who doesn’t normally cover hard news, “the most horrifying thing I have ever experienced.” He added, “I’m supposed to be taking pictures of music festivals and weddings this summer. Instead I’m having federal officers point AR-15s at my fucking face.” On Wednesday, Karina Brown, who has covered protests in Oregon for years, and has written about the recent violence for Courthouse News Service, that her treatment by law enforcement holds “an echo” of sexual abuse she experienced as a child. “Don’t those fuckers know I’m sacred?” Brown asked, of agents in Portland who taunted and chased her. “That every one of us out there is?”On Wednesday, , and from cooperating with federal agents. Jo Ann Hardesty, a city commissioner, told The Oregonian that the order was necessary because Chuck Lovell, Portland’s police chief, had recently told her that he didn’t believe journalists enjoyed special protections under the Constitution, and should be subject to the same dispersal orders as protesters. In court this week, lawyers for the federal government . Yesterday, a federal judge disagreed, in Portland.That ruling is welcome. But it’s worth remembering, , that reporters enjoy the same First Amendment rights as everyone else, including protesters. We shouldn’t rely on legal exemptions to stand outside that dynamic; the state isn’t just crushing journalism in Portland, it’s crushing speech writ large, and our coverage must urgently reflect that. In her op-ed Wednesday, Brown wrote that, in the eyes of traditional journalists, she should have kept her terror facing police and federal officers to herself. “But to me, objectivity in journalism creates a disembodied voice,” Brown wrote. “It fails to come from both everywhere and nowhere and instead encapsulates the perspective of the powerful rather than afflicting it. I come from somewhere. I come from right here.”Below, more on Portland, protests, and race in America:Other notable stories:Related:Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by .Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJR’s newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter .Ten days ago, a public-records request came to light involving the Columbia Missourian, a newspaper that is affiliated with the University of Missouri and staffed by students in its journalism school, and Eric Schmitt, the state’s attorney general and Trump-endorsed...

The voice of journalismJuly 24, 2020This week Dave Miller, who hosts a daily talk show on Oregon Public Broadcasting, interviewed “two very tired people”: Tuck Woodstock and Sergio Olmos, both independent journalists. Since late May, daily protests in solidarity with Black lives and against police brutality have taken place in Portland. Local outlets have often sent reporters, but not to cover every protest; mainstream national outlets , when OPB reported that federal agents in unmarked vehicles were snatching protesters off the streets. By contrast, freelancers like Woodstock and Olmos...

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The attacks on press freedom in Portland

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