Category: Journalism

Anarchist arrested after tweeting out the fuzz to protesters – Ars Technica

The FBI arrests a man for Tweeting police locations during the G20 summit, and goes on to search his home.

I’m not aware of the case/legislation history on possession of police scanners, or regarding what information can be retransmitted, but is a troubling turn of events. Journalists, for one, are quite reliant on scanners to quickly get on location as stories unfold. Other than time and intent, it’s difficult to parse their actions from those of the tweeting protester. In First Amendment terms, going down the road of intent has been traditionally viewed as a slippery slope.

The author of this article closes by remarking that “Maybe it’s time for protest organizers to start moving back to lower-tech, less trackable methods of communication.” I would instead argue that actions such as these need to be challenged.

YouTube, PBS urge people to record voting (Silicon Valley)

In what must be an effort to combat voter intimidation, PBS and Google are encouraging voters to discretely record their experiences and upload them to a YouTube channel. PBS will air the best ones, I assume, after the election.

The YT channel page also links to the Citzen Media Law Project (a cool Drupal site, I might add). The law of recording around a poling place could be dicy, although the idea of a voter recording their own experience has never really been addressed.

This could be one to watch.

A state appellate court overturned an order against a SoCal newspaper, stating that the paper can publish stories about a case in which it is a defendant. This is one of those strange cases where a paper can use it’s strong voice in the community (from which jurors will be selected) to argue on its own behalf. The government (here, the court) is rightly restricted from restraining the voice of the paper–even though it means those on the other side of the case might have a more difficult time arguing in the court of public opinion. The strength of one’s right to speak often results in the restriction of another’s.

Also worth a look is the Supreme Court’s Tuesday hearing on the constitutionality of searches resulting from erroneous database information.

The Minnesota Independent went to the trouble of tabulating the journalist arrests at the RNC Convention in St. Paul.  What’s interesting is the range of media organizations–from the grassrootsy-independent types, to student newspapers, to established media organizations like the AP, Fox, and local stations KARE and WCCO.

Of the 800-plus people who were arrested or detained in conjunction with RNC protests, a good chunk of them — 42, by our count — were members of the news media. Media representatives in town to cover the events, from both big and small presses, were slapped with citations and pending charges ranging in severity, including unlawful assembly, obstructing the legal process, misdemeanor interference with a peace officer and felony to riot plus other riot pretenses.

The mass of protesters has been accused of being violent, anarchist, and part of a liberal media conspiracy. Yet, how can we know this if journalists are prevented from doing their job–reporting what’s happening on the ground.