Senator Andy Kim was on Pod Save America talking about trying to go in and the interactions with the prison guards.
He talked about people being fed spoiled food, it being stifling hot even though the temperature was still cool in NJ and people having been there for months waiting for an appointment and people getting less than 5 minutes with an immigration judge before being deported.
The interaction ended with them pepper spraying him while he tried to speak to some protestors.
If they are going to treat a US Senator that way, imagine how they are treating people with no power.
Increasingly, the public learns what happens at protests through independent livestreamers. While rarely employed by major outlets, some sell footage to the world’s largest news organizations. Whether they work for a television network or stream on TikTok, they are engaged in journalism.
On paper, both laws and courts tend to respect that press are exempt from curfews and dispersal orders. They recognize that media require “sight and sound access” to do their job. But on the street, constitutional protections for those livestreamers can boil down to an officer’s snap decision.
Near Delaney Hall, some of those decisions could be seen inside the kettle on five live video feeds. None came from traditional TV cameras.
If an officer can point at them and say they are not press, the first amendment ceases to have meaning.
OK, so help me out here. Just to play Devil's Advocate if you will. The police are going to presumably say we can't just have protesters and potential rioters, agitators, curfew violators, etc, hold up their phones and claim to be immune members of the press.
Is there a solution there? Is there a way to determine who is actually media and who is a protester larping as media? Or is this concern overblown?
While malicious coverage is an issue. So is giving any level of government control over who is valid media.
I’d point that Fox easily qualifies as a malicious propaganda source. They have been so for years and years. Of any “media” organization that could be banned they easily join the top of the list.
Today anyone who criticizes Trump is an agitator, a malicious actor, an agent of the so called radical left according to the regime. Government cannot be given control over who is bad media.
Unfortunately to have the good we need to accept there will be bad actors. The only solution is to provide strong backing for good media. And that means people who care need to put money where their mouth is.
Also, we could do something about the billionaires that have poisoned good media by getting them to pay appropriate taxes. Their money gives them too much power. Restoring editorial independence might be a good way too.
> It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
I’d rather see larpers and malicious coverage be allowed to stay than one legit journalist be denied their right to cover an event. And any idiot should be able to recognize the conflict of interest in allowing the government to decide the “legitimacy” of a journalist.
Idk what would actually be helpful, I'm not a lawyer or journalist or whatever, but I do think this is a good starting point.
There is an international federation of journalists and a few US based ones as well, so you can get a card basically. Like a certificate. Idk what the standards are, if you can be freelance or self employed, but they probably vary from organization to organization.
There are also war zone standards like the blue vest and hat that say press, but there's rules, like the journalist has to comply with the Geneva convention, which I think only applies to international reporters.
Most effective but difficult would be piling on and making a class action law suit, with all classes of journalist represented, include those who were arrested, injured, or forced away during all of these incidents, regardless of what the protest was. Have a literal preliminary court order to wave in their faces, enjoining them from directing you to cease exercising your rights as a journalist.
>There are also war zone standards like the blue vest and hat that say press, but there's rules, like the journalist has to comply with the Geneva convention, which I think only applies to international reporters.
That would be because the Geneva Conventions apply to armed combatants, and are meant to protect those combatants and civilians alike during wartime.
There is not comparable agreement about abuse of your own citizens with your military or police forces; this is why US police forces can and do use munitions and chemical weapons that are illegal for our military to use against lawful combatants in a combat zone.
Basically, international law exists primarily to police sovereigns interacting with each other. It does not protect citizens from those sovereigns. No journalist can count on any international body for their safety or security; indeed it is now one of the most dangerous professions in the world per-capita because of how many have been killed, intentionally or incidentally, by Russia, Israel, and increasingly, the United States.
In theory, the US Constitution's 1st Amendment provisions provide sweeping protections for journalists - indeed, you can proclaim yourself a journalist, and prior to the Trump administration's corrosive assault on rule of law, the judiciary largely deferred to the exact principle discussed in this article: that the government is not in the business of policing who and who is not a legitimate journalistic enterprise.
For a long time, this was primarily beneficial to conservatives, as it allowed them to build up propaganda and fraud ecosystems with 1st Amendment shields, then monetize them and use the weak libel and slander precedents of our country to avoid accountability. Now those precedents are being used by everyday citizens engaged in civic journalism, literally the kind of activity the Amendment had in mind in the age when printing presses were still somewhat seditious pieces of technology.
There are very few candid ways to interpret the actions of the police and government forces in play here, other than their total ignorance of, or indifference to, the constitutional rights of journalists, citizens, protestors, and the incarcerated whose conditions of durance they are protesting. They have decided that order is more important than justice, the tyrant's plea, and I should think that we, the public, should treat them accordingly.
Most members of the press wear their ID on a lanyard.
And so of course, someone who is not a journalist downvotes a fact. I swear if you say good morning on Reddit half the people will downvote you because it’s not morning in their part of the world.
cocoagiant | a day ago
Senator Andy Kim was on Pod Save America talking about trying to go in and the interactions with the prison guards.
He talked about people being fed spoiled food, it being stifling hot even though the temperature was still cool in NJ and people having been there for months waiting for an appointment and people getting less than 5 minutes with an immigration judge before being deported.
The interaction ended with them pepper spraying him while he tried to speak to some protestors.
If they are going to treat a US Senator that way, imagine how they are treating people with no power.
[OP] FreedomofPress | a day ago
Increasingly, the public learns what happens at protests through independent livestreamers. While rarely employed by major outlets, some sell footage to the world’s largest news organizations. Whether they work for a television network or stream on TikTok, they are engaged in journalism.
On paper, both laws and courts tend to respect that press are exempt from curfews and dispersal orders. They recognize that media require “sight and sound access” to do their job. But on the street, constitutional protections for those livestreamers can boil down to an officer’s snap decision.
Near Delaney Hall, some of those decisions could be seen inside the kettle on five live video feeds. None came from traditional TV cameras.
If an officer can point at them and say they are not press, the first amendment ceases to have meaning.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/03/delaney-hall-new-jersey-protests-police
kafka_lite | a day ago
OK, so help me out here. Just to play Devil's Advocate if you will. The police are going to presumably say we can't just have protesters and potential rioters, agitators, curfew violators, etc, hold up their phones and claim to be immune members of the press.
Is there a solution there? Is there a way to determine who is actually media and who is a protester larping as media? Or is this concern overblown?
vicegrip | a day ago
While malicious coverage is an issue. So is giving any level of government control over who is valid media.
I’d point that Fox easily qualifies as a malicious propaganda source. They have been so for years and years. Of any “media” organization that could be banned they easily join the top of the list.
Today anyone who criticizes Trump is an agitator, a malicious actor, an agent of the so called radical left according to the regime. Government cannot be given control over who is bad media.
Unfortunately to have the good we need to accept there will be bad actors. The only solution is to provide strong backing for good media. And that means people who care need to put money where their mouth is.
Also, we could do something about the billionaires that have poisoned good media by getting them to pay appropriate taxes. Their money gives them too much power. Restoring editorial independence might be a good way too.
foobarbizbaz | a day ago
Blackstone’s Ratio applies here:
> It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
I’d rather see larpers and malicious coverage be allowed to stay than one legit journalist be denied their right to cover an event. And any idiot should be able to recognize the conflict of interest in allowing the government to decide the “legitimacy” of a journalist.
Scarecrowithamedal | a day ago
Exactly !!
lasagnaman | 21 hours ago
In the age of streaming, they ARE media.
horseradishstalker | 20 hours ago
However, they may or may not be professional journalists.
ZeniraEle | 8 hours ago
Neither is Fox News, yet they are allowed to
Positive_Wafer42 | a day ago
Idk what would actually be helpful, I'm not a lawyer or journalist or whatever, but I do think this is a good starting point.
There is an international federation of journalists and a few US based ones as well, so you can get a card basically. Like a certificate. Idk what the standards are, if you can be freelance or self employed, but they probably vary from organization to organization.
There are also war zone standards like the blue vest and hat that say press, but there's rules, like the journalist has to comply with the Geneva convention, which I think only applies to international reporters.
Most effective but difficult would be piling on and making a class action law suit, with all classes of journalist represented, include those who were arrested, injured, or forced away during all of these incidents, regardless of what the protest was. Have a literal preliminary court order to wave in their faces, enjoining them from directing you to cease exercising your rights as a journalist.
kylco | a day ago
>There are also war zone standards like the blue vest and hat that say press, but there's rules, like the journalist has to comply with the Geneva convention, which I think only applies to international reporters.
That would be because the Geneva Conventions apply to armed combatants, and are meant to protect those combatants and civilians alike during wartime.
There is not comparable agreement about abuse of your own citizens with your military or police forces; this is why US police forces can and do use munitions and chemical weapons that are illegal for our military to use against lawful combatants in a combat zone.
Basically, international law exists primarily to police sovereigns interacting with each other. It does not protect citizens from those sovereigns. No journalist can count on any international body for their safety or security; indeed it is now one of the most dangerous professions in the world per-capita because of how many have been killed, intentionally or incidentally, by Russia, Israel, and increasingly, the United States.
In theory, the US Constitution's 1st Amendment provisions provide sweeping protections for journalists - indeed, you can proclaim yourself a journalist, and prior to the Trump administration's corrosive assault on rule of law, the judiciary largely deferred to the exact principle discussed in this article: that the government is not in the business of policing who and who is not a legitimate journalistic enterprise.
For a long time, this was primarily beneficial to conservatives, as it allowed them to build up propaganda and fraud ecosystems with 1st Amendment shields, then monetize them and use the weak libel and slander precedents of our country to avoid accountability. Now those precedents are being used by everyday citizens engaged in civic journalism, literally the kind of activity the Amendment had in mind in the age when printing presses were still somewhat seditious pieces of technology.
There are very few candid ways to interpret the actions of the police and government forces in play here, other than their total ignorance of, or indifference to, the constitutional rights of journalists, citizens, protestors, and the incarcerated whose conditions of durance they are protesting. They have decided that order is more important than justice, the tyrant's plea, and I should think that we, the public, should treat them accordingly.
horseradishstalker | a day ago
Most members of the press wear their ID on a lanyard.
And so of course, someone who is not a journalist downvotes a fact. I swear if you say good morning on Reddit half the people will downvote you because it’s not morning in their part of the world.
horseradishstalker | a day ago
That’s next level confusion. Delaney Hall is not the Pentagon. And if it is a public right of way it is legal to be there.
Bhodiliscious | a day ago
I want to decide which Flock camera captures me.