The attacks on press freedom in Portland (Columbia Journalism Review)

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https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/portland_trump_press_freedom.php

By Jon Allsop, CJR

THIS WEEK DAVE MILLER, who hosts a daily talk show on Oregon Public Broadcasting, interviewed “two very tired people”: Tuck Woodstock and Sergio Olmos, both independent journalists. Since late May, daily protests in solidarity with Black lives and against police brutality have taken place in Portland. Local outlets have often sent reporters, but not to cover every protest; mainstream national outlets mostly ignored Portland until last week, when OPB reported that federal agents in unmarked vehicles were snatching protesters off the streets. By contrast, freelancers like Woodstock and Olmos have been out night after night, documenting the scene.

Miller asked Woodstock and Olmos about the power balance between protesters and law enforcement, the ethics of livestreaming (The Oregonian has reported that federal agents are using live online videos to surveil and make arrests), and the physical threats that reporters face. “I’ve been out there for the majority of the last fiftysomething nights,” Woodstock said, “and I have never once felt unsafe by the actions of a protester. But I have, almost every night, felt unsafe by either the actions of Portland police or the federal law enforcement.” Without the institutional backing of a newsroom, freelancers in Portland have helped equip one another with protective gear—helmets, gas masks, Kevlar. “As independent journalists, we’re not getting a paycheck, so we’re really risking it just in the hope that people will compensate us for it,” Woodstock said. Local and federal officers had been violent for a while, Olmos added, but in recent days federal agents raised the risk level, pointing assault rifles and handguns at reporters. “It is as dangerous as it’s ever been out there,” Olmos said.

Horrifying stories of law enforcement abusing reporters have emerged from Portland. Officers have routinely teargassed and beaten journalists. A federal agent, in full military getup, knelt on the back of Rian Dundon, a photojournalist on assignment for the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Two other photojournalists—Jon House, of the Portland Tribune, and Alex Milan Tracy, who works for wire services—were struck by federal officers’ impact munitions. Mike Baker, who’s been covering the protests for the New York Times, reported that a federal agent punched him in the head. Yesterday, The Daily, a Times podcast, featured a dispatch from Baker in which he can be heard choking on tear gas. Another reporter, Eddy Binford-Ross, was shoved against a wall, and said that a federal agent cocked a gun at her. Binford-Ross is seventeen and has been covering the protests for her student paper, the South Salem High School Clypian. “I feel like the protest could go downhill very fast,” she told Katie Shepherd, of the Washington Post. “I think it’s incredibly important that people continue to be out there every night reporting on this.”

On Wednesday, the US Press Freedom Tracker observed that, since May 26—the day after Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer, killed George Floyd, a Black man, igniting protests nationwide—it has received fifty-two reports of journalists being abused in Portland, including eight physical attacks by law enforcement and five arrests. (In late June, local police arrested three reporters—Cory Elia and Lesley McLam, who are podcast hosts at the community radio station KBOO, and Justin Yau, a freelancer—on a single night.) According to the Press Freedom Tracker’s figures, since Floyd’s death, the only area that’s been less safe for reporters appears to be the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

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