Not in Kansas anymore: Alabama press violations echo earlier attack

 Via Freedom Of The Press Foundation

December 5, 2024

“Where are all the good people who are supposed to stop this from happening?”

Marion County Record co-owner Joan Meyer asked that question repeatedly before her death — a day after local police illegally and unconstitutionally raided her community newspaper and home in response to the Record’s reporting about a local restaurant owner’s drunk driving convictions.

Alabama reporter Don Fletcher and newspaper publisher Sherry Digmon might have asked themselves that same question.

Last year, the two were arrested on sham charges for allegedly revealing grand jury secrets. Digmon, who also served on the local school board, was charged with violating an Alabama ethics law as well. It’s yet another unfortunate effort to make journalism a crime and silence reporters.

The bogus criminal investigation came after Atmore News, the local newspaper co-owned by Digmon, published Fletcher’s article about a school board meeting and a subpoena seeking school board financial records from the previous year. The subpoena was issued by Escambia County District Attorney Stephen Billy.

Four months after the arrests, Billy admitted to personal and professional conflicts of interest in the cases, and removed himself as prosecutor. The state attorney general’s office dropped the charges soon after.

Now, Digmon and Fletcher, joined by a school board member and a district employee also caught up in the investigation, have filed a federal lawsuit against Billy, Sheriff Heath Jackson, and “allies” for conspiring to violate their First and Fourth amendment rights.

On the surface, the attack on Atmore News — like that on the Marion County Record — may appear limited to a few law enforcement officials abusing their power. But in both cases, a little digging reveals politically motivated multiparty schemes.

The similarities between officials’ arrest of Fletcher and Digmon and the raid on the Record are startling and informative. After the Marion raid, the response and backlash seemed to make a repeat unlikely soon. But just months later, the Atmore News found itself at the center of a similar attack on press freedom.

Full article here.

"The press is once again not at war, but at work"

 Via Columbia Journalism Review

November 6, 2024

"For now, a few important things seem clear for the press—things we’ve known conceptually for some time, but now hit with a shocking new clarity. The most important is that Trump’s impending second term poses a credible and unprecedented threat to press freedom as America has known it."

Journalists must be allowed to do their jobs safely in Lancaster County and across the US [editorial]

 Via Lancaster Online

October 27, 2024

Lancaster Safety Coalition footage shows a Lancaster city police officer pushing a photojournalist to the ground during protests Sunday, Oct. 20, in Penn Square, near the Lancaster County Convention Center, where Donald Trump was speaking.

Lancaster Safety Coalition

THE ISSUE

“A Lancaster city police officer pushed a photojournalist to the ground (last) Sunday afternoon, causing her to hit her head on the street during a protest of former President Donald Trump’s town hall event at Lancaster County Convention Center,” LNP | LancasterOnline reported. Susan Stava, a New York City-based freelance photographer, was working to capture the scene in Lancaster city’s Penn Square, where local Democrats were protesting Trump’s visit. Video shows a Lancaster city police officer firmly pushing Stava, causing her to fall backward onto the road. Stava said she landed on her camera bag, and a lens was broken.

It took the Lancaster City Bureau of Police all of three days to “investigate” the incident in which a freelance photojournalist was pushed to the ground by a city police officer. Its conclusion: The officer “followed the law including the Bureau’s training, policies, and procedures.”

--Click for full editorial

"Journalists see journalism not merely as a job, but as a calling that’s critical to the health of a democracy. Elected officials should not actively undermine their safety — or stay silent about an incident in which a journalist faced harm."

Pennsylvania man, brother charged with assaulting New York Times photographer on January 6

 

Via ABC20 WHTM

September 13, 2024




Two brothers were arrested Thursday on charges that they assaulted a New York Times photographer inside the U.S. Capitol during a mob’s attack on the building more than three years ago.

David Walker, 49, of Delran, New Jersey, and Philip Walker, 52, of Upper Chichester, Pennsylvania, also are charged with stealing a camera from the photographer during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack.

Philip Walker told investigators that he tossed a camera into a body of water on his way home from Washington, D.C., according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

Court records don’t name the photographer or identify her employer, but New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha confirmed that the affidavit refers to staff photographer Erin Schaff, who wrote about her experience at the Capitol.

“We are grateful to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the FBI for their persistence in pursuing justice in this case,” Rhodes Ha said in a statement. “Independent, fact-based journalism is a cornerstone of democracy and attacks against reporters should be a grave concern to anyone who cares about an informed citizenry.”

Philip Walker told the FBI that he believed the photographer was a member of “antifa,” a term for anti-fascist activists who often clash with far-right extremists at political protests.

A livestream video posted on social media showed the photographer standing at the top of the East Rotunda Stairs just before the Walkers assaulted her and then ran down the staircase.

Schaff recalled that two or three men in black surrounded her, demanded to know her employer and became angry when they grabbed her press pass and saw that she worked for The New York Times.

“They threw me to the floor, trying to take my cameras,” she wrote. “I started screaming for help as loudly as I could. No one came. People just watched. At this point, I thought I could be killed and no one would stop them.”

Schaff said police found her but didn’t believe that she was a journalist because her press pass was stolen.

“They drew their guns, pointed them and yelled at me to get down on my hands and knees,” she wrote. “As I lay on the ground, two other photojournalists came into the hall and started shouting ‘She’s a journalist!’”

Philip Walker was carrying what appeared to be Schaff’s photographic equipment as he fled, the FBI said. David Walker pushed the photographer again when she tried to pursue his brother and retrieve her equipment, according to the affidavit.

A magistrate judge ordered David Walker to be released on $50,000 bail after his initial court appearance in New Jersey on Thursday, court records show. An attorney who represented Walker at the hearing didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The Walkers were arrested on complaints charging them with robbery, assault and other charges.

Other rioters were charged with assaulting an Associated Press photographer outside the Capitol during the riot. One of them, Alan Byerly, was sentenced in October 2022 to nearly three years in prison.

Nearly 1,500 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Approximately 140 police officers were injured in the attack.

Three years on, little justice for press assaulted on Jan. 6

Via Press Freedom Tracker

January 2, 2024

This Saturday marks three years since we watched, horrified, as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to halt the democratic process of counting electoral votes. Nearly 20 journalists were assaulted and thousands of dollars in news equipment was destroyed in the riot.

Three years after the failed attempt to halt the democratic process of counting electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, the Department of Justice has charged more than 1,100 people with criminal activity that day. Yet it has charged only a few of those who committed assaults on journalists, attacked as they covered the rapidly escalating events in Washington, D.C.

Nearly 20 journalists were assaulted — dragged over a wall, punched in the face or had a camera stolen. Tens of thousands of dollars in news equipment was also destroyed in the riot.

Of the six people who were charged with assaulting journalists, most were for the mob assault of Associated Press photojournalist John Minchillo, who was pushed, punched, dragged through the crowd and thrown over a wall. Four people have been charged with his assault — two pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison; two others are working their way through the justice system.

One of the men charged in the assault of photographer Minchillo was also charged in the assault of documentary journalist Nick Quested. Quested was filming the riot from the steps of the West Plaza when the man grabbed his camera and attempted to pull him down the stairs.

New York Times photographer Erin Schaff was inside the Capitol when a crowd attacked her. In her account for the outlet, Schaff wrote that when the rioters realized she worked for the Times, they became angry, stealing and breaking her equipment: “At this point, I thought I could be killed and no one would stop them. They ripped one of my cameras away from me, broke a lens on the other and ran away.” A woman was charged with inciting the assault on the photojournalist and sentenced to prison.

Schaff’s wasn’t the only news equipment targeted by rioters. She was one of four journalists who had gear like camera lenses, broadcast cameras and recording devices damaged during their assaults.

Most large-scale harm of news equipment occurred when rioters attacked a media staging area. A Reuters cameraman was filming as rioters ripped apart the staging area, breaking news equipment, piling it up and attempting to set fire to it.

A man, later charged with destroying equipment belonging to media outlets including The Associated Press and German public-service broadcaster ZDF, tackled the Reuters journalist to the ground. He subsequently pleaded guilty to two assault charges and was sentenced to four years in prison and three years of supervised release.

Five other rioters have been charged in relation to damaging news equipment; at least one has been sentenced to pay ZDF more than $30,000 in restitution.


For 15 other journalists documenting events in and around the Capitol on Jan. 6, no criminal charges have been filed in their assaults:

Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, a freelance photojournalist on assignment for The Washington Post, was hit by crowd-control munitions fired by law enforcement multiple times.

Independent journalist Douglas Christian told the Tracker he was harassed, pursued and punched by rioters near the Russell Senate Office Building.

PBS NewsHour correspondent Lisa Desjardins told VICE News that someone grabbed her and tried to wrest her phone away.

Independent journalist Nate Gowdy told the Tracker he was standing on a railing photographing rioters storming the Capitol when a man threatened him and shoved him off.

Independent journalist John Harrington told the Tracker he was assaulted and harassed multiple times by rioters. He said he was hit in the head with what he believes was a fire extinguisher and also hit with a chair thrown by a rioter in a scuffle with police officers.

Slate reporter Aymann Ismail said he was pushed by a Capitol Police officer as a way to slow down the crowd of people behind him who were trying to force their way into the Capitol Building.
Reporter Vincent Jolly was livestreaming for Le Figaro when a man knocked his cellphone out of his hands, destroying it.

Photojournalist Chris Jones of 100 Days in Appalachia told the Tracker he was confronted by rioters inside the Capitol for being a journalist and was picked up and dragged out of the building. Later in the day, a flash-bang grenade fired by Capitol police exploded right next to him, damaging his camera pouch.

Christopher Lee, a freelance photojournalist on assignment for Time magazine, said rioters identified him as a journalist and started to grab and remove him from the Capitol.

CNN photojournalist Ronnie McCray was assaulted by a rioter who also smacked his camera.
Freelance journalist Christopher Morris said he was assaulted at least four times, with rioters “pushing, shoving, some kicking [and] pulling” on him.

VICE News cameraman Chris Olson and international correspondent Ben Solomon were attacked by several rioters on the steps of the Capitol. A man attempted to smash Olson’s camera, damaging the handle grip, and another gave Solomon a “good hard shove to the throat.”

Members of a WTTG television news crew were assaulted and harassed by a woman who was later arrested and charged with multiple criminal counts by the DOJ for her actions during the Jan. 6 riots. While the charging document describes the woman as “kicking two members of a news team” none of the charges filed were directly related to their assaults.

View the exhibition: January 6, One Year Later

A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty on Monday to attacking an Associated Press photographer during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol

Via The Associated Press

July 25, 2022

A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty on Monday to attacking police officers and an Associated Press photographer during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot on the U.S. Capitol.

In a deal with prosecutors, Alan Byerly, 55, admitted to wielding a stun gun while confronting officers who were trying to protect the Capitol from the angry mob. He also admitted to assaulting AP photographer John Minchillo, who was documenting the chaos and violence outside the building where lawmakers were meeting to certify President Joe Biden’s election victory.

On July 22, photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow spoke about threats photojournalists are facing. Both photographers covered January 6 at the US Capitol and talked about their experiences during the insurrection riot. View the discussion here on the Monroe Gallery YouTube page.