News commentary

The Other Echoes of 2020

Columbia Journalism Review · Jon Allsop · last updated

Last week, I wrote in this newsletter about attacks, mostly perpetrated by law enforcement, on journalists covering the protests that followed the recent immigration raids in Los Angeles, and how they echoed the summer of 2020, when police assaulted journalists covering the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd: an Australian TV reporter was hit while talking to camera, which also happened in 2020; ditto the on-air detention of a CNN correspondent; as of last Monday, the US Press Freedom Tracker was working to document at least twenty-six anti-press incidents in LA—short of the hundreds that cascaded nationwide in 2020, but, perhaps, an ominous starting point. As last week progressed, the echoes continued: the confirmed number of injured Australian journalists alone jumped to three; an LA police officer was caught on camera shoving and screaming at an ABC journalist; as of Friday, the Press Freedom Tracker was working to document at least fifty anti-press incidents. On Thursday, shocking footage spread showing Alex Padilla, the senator from California, being manhandled and cuffed after trying to ask a question of Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, at a federal building in LA. This wasn’t a press-freedom violation. (Padilla isn’t a journalist.) But the vile scene did play out at a press conference.

View full article

here today, more tomorrow

We’re launching briefing.center with a focus on the press and media.

And we’re adding Citizen Cartwright, a daily quick-read news summary by veteran Washington journalist Linda Cartwright.

We’re readying our first policy briefing.center, on energy and climate. We’d love to hear from you in what our other policy priorities should be.

You can use briefing.center as the center of your information management, or just one of your tools. We have a Slack channel for users, and we’re happy to discuss your connectivity needs.

Sign up