The first time officers shot rubber bullets at MSNBC host Ali Velshi and his crew on Saturday night in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he was willing to believe that the officials did not know they were press.
The second time, Velshi said, they knew and shot anyway. “We put our hands up and yelled: ‘We’re media!’” Velshi said. “They responded, ‘We don’t care!’ and they opened fire a second time.”
Velshi, who said he was hit in the leg by a rubber bullet, is just one of many journalists across the country who sustained injuries from police or protesters while covering the George Floyd protests over the weekend.
Photo: AFP
And this occurred after Minnesota Governor Tim Walz promised that journalists would not be interfered with following the Friday arrest of a CNN crew on live television and other reports of violence against reporters from the city where Floyd died, including freelance photographer Linda Tirado, who said she is blind in her left eye after being shot at by police.
Dan Shelley, the executive director and chief operating officer of the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA), said while all the attacks on journalists were “outrageous and unacceptable” that he was particularly upset about the Minneapolis incidents that happened after the governor made his reassurances.
“They started deliberately attacking journalists who were clearly identifiable and identifying themselves as journalists,” Shelley said. “We’ve heard a number of instances of police officers, either through their words or actions, saying that they just didn’t care. To be a journalist in the Twin Cities last night, particularly in Minneapolis, if you were just arrested, you were lucky.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Chris Serres on Sunday tweeted that he was twice ordered at gunpoint to hit the ground.
Serres wrote that he was “’warned that if I moved an inch’ I’d be shot. This after being teargassed and hit in groin area by rubber bullet. Waiving a Star Tribune press badge made no difference.”
His Star Tribune colleague Ryan Faircloth’s car was also hit by what were “likely rubber bullets,” which shattered his window and left him with cuts on his arm and brow.
It was not just Minneapolis where reporters found themselves in harm’s way. On Saturday there were journalist injuries reported in cities like New York, Chicago, Washington, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Diego, Detroit and Denver.
In Chicago, Vice reporter Michael Adams had a similar interaction to Velshi when police raided the gas station he and his crew were sheltering at and said they “didn’t care” that they were press.
“After shouting press multiple times and raising my press card in the air, I was thrown to the ground,” Adams wrote on Twitter. “Then another cop came up and peppered sprayed me in the face while I was being held down.”
Huffington Post reporter Christopher Mathais was arrested on Saturday while covering protests in New York.
CNN commentator Keith Boykin was also arrested by the New York Police Department on Saturday after he identified himself as press.
Lexis-Olivier Ray said a Los Angeles police officer hit him in the stomach after he had identified himself as a journalist “multiple times.”
In Washington, Huffington Post reporter Philip Lewis tweeted that he was hit in the leg with rubber bullets.
Detroit Free Press news director Jim Schaefer said several of their journalists showing their media badges were pepper-sprayed by Detroit police.
And in Denver, 9NEWS reporter Jeremy Jojola tweeted that he got hit with “Something fired by police” even though he was holding a camera and lights.
“Journalists shouldn’t be the story,” Shelley said. “It is calamitous to see all of these journalists who are merely serving the public by covering these incidents of civil unrest being wantonly attacked... Journalists are representatives of the public and are there to serve the public and to tell the stories of the protesters and of the elected and other public officials trying to deal with the situation.”
“It is really harming the public at large, not just the journalist. It’s interfering with their ability to be eyewitnesses and chroniclers of what’s occurring in this country right now,” he said.
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