Arrest of reporter covering New Jersey protest latest in a troubling trend
At 9:40 p.m. Monday, USA TODAY Network reporter Gustavo Martínez Contreras filmed an extraordinary moment as police and protestors took a knee together during a rally for George Floyd in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
Thirty minutes later, Martinez Contreras of the Asbury Park Press was being loaded into a police van, detained for doing his job (see the above video).
This is happening all over the country and its bad for democracy. Real bad.
According to the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, U.S. police arrested or attacked journalists more than 100 times from May 28-31, as protests over the killing of George Floyd spread throughout the country. Some perspective on that: Over the last three years, U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documented between 100-150 such incidents per year.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/arrest-of-reporter-covering-new-jersey-protest-latest-in-a-troubling-trend-opinion/ar-BB14V0EO?ocid=msn360