Posts Tagged ‘Freedom of the press’
Freedom Squelch
There have recently been some noteworthy reports of police in the U.S. infringing upon the rights of dissidents and reporters. One such report comes from a blogger at Znet. The post draws attention to preemptive arrests of protest leaders in an apparent effort to thwart protesters exercising their right to voice dissent.
Democracy Now reports the arrest of a camera operator who had been recording a peaceful protest. The journalist was violently assaulted by the officer and his camera confiscated.
Democracy Now is not only reporting the unwarrented arrests of journalists, but was directly involved when producers of the news program were arrested as well as journalist Amy Goodman. An interview with Goodman can be found at NPR’s On the Media. This is not Amy Goodman’s first time to experience abuse as a journalist. In 1991 she and journalist Allan Narin were documenting a peaceful protest in East Timor when the Indonesian military opened fire on the protesters slaughtering close to 300 Timorese and beating Goodman and Narin.
