Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and two of her producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar were arrested on Monday at the Republican National Convention while filming police and protesters. Both Salazar and Kouddous reported brutality, Salazar saying she was dragged – facedown – by her leg on concrete. All three held press badges and Nicole carried her camera. (Because she had her camera, she was able to film her arrest) Despite this, and, you know, the First Amendment of the freaking Bill of goddamn Rights, Kouddous and Salazar were charged with inciting felony riot and Goodman with obstruction and interference.
The stentorian buzz surrounding the convention drowns out all else. Considering the story concerns the violation of journalists’ rights, I’m disappointed the media isn’t running it up the flagpole and making everyone salute. Yes, police violating civil liberties – old news. Why? The press did its job and reported those transgressions. If the government continues intimidating journalists, the public will be ignorant because nobody will be doing the reporting. Shouldn’t all reporters – Kouddous says one working for a Republican paper was arrested – be bringing this issue, so close to home for them, into the rest of our homes? They are the ones writing the stories, right? Do publicists and corporate sponsors handle copy nowadays? (Answers to those questions – yes, uh?, yes.)
The government will not make itself transparent of its own accord. Hope become audacious if journalists are forced to risk their safety to uncover events our leaders would rather not have exposed When Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward opened up the Watergate scandal in the early 70s, this was a much different country, one whose voice of dissent had been growing steadily louder since the end of World War II. We have regressed in the last three decades. Judith Miller’s imprisonment in 2005 and the recent incarceration of the press at the RNC are a reminder that those in power only believe in the Constitution up the point it protects them. These kinds of stories need to get off the “related articles” links-- we shouldn’t have to troll the web to unearth buried items regarding our nation’s hypocrisy. Thank God for bloggers, though, who prove how many sides to a story can be told. This Russian blogger was killed by Putin’s goons. They said the gun went off accidentally. Our country is on that track, folks. Our government pretends opposing points of view don’t exist or insists people with differing opinions are terrorists. Let’s prove them wrong by fighting for the right of every citizen to bear witness to her experience, and further, by making space to listen to all those experiences without silencing the ones different from our own.
posted by yogagrrrl at 8:45 AM
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