Police In Ferguson Sign Court Agreement Promising Not To Interfere With Media... Then Go Threaten And Arrest Media
from the because-who-cares dept
We've been writing about the efforts by the police in Ferguson, Missouri to intimidate and arrest reporters trying to cover the protests and the police (over)reaction there. What's now come out is that, last Friday, the police actually signed a court agreement promising not to interfere with the media:Parties acknowledge and agree that the media and members of the public have a right to record public events without abridgement unless it obstructs the activity or threatens the safety of others, or physically interferes with the ability of law enforcement officers to perform their duties.This was based on a lawsuit brought by Mustafa Hussein, the reporter for radio station KARG (Argus Radio) who got some attention last night after a police officer yelled at him to "get the fuck out of here or you're going to get shelled with this" while pointing some sort of weapon at him:
And those kinds of activities are continuing today. Here's an Instagram video of a Getty photographer, Scott Olson, being arrested. Olson, if you don't know, is the guy who has photographed many of the most iconic images of what's happening in Ferguson, including this astounding shot. Here are a few more Olson images, courtesy of Getty's recent embedding program:
And here's a video of police threatening CNN's Don Lemon -- which I've now seen, but for reasons that I don't understand, the video seems to disappear at times (as does the embed code).
No matter what, it seems pretty clear that police are continuing to stamp on the rights of just about everyone, including those with cameras and microphones (so you can just imagine how they're handling those without such things). The fact that there's a signed court agreement promising not to do this doesn't seem to matter to anyone.
Filed Under: ferguson, free speech, journalists, media, missouri, press, scott olson
