Journos brace for protests
NEW YORK — While monitoring online chatter about protests at state capitols in advance of next week’s presidential inauguration, the Seattle Times came across a chilling description for journalists: soft targets.
The phrase drove home the importance of safety precautions being put in place by news organizations across the country this weekend, including those planned by Times managing editor Ray Rivera and his colleagues.
“This is scary territory,” Rivera said. “I don’t want to overstate this, but there is always the concern. It’s hard to know how much of this is rhetoric or bombast, but it’s easy for me to think that some person is going to take those messages seriously and do something.”
At Capitols across the country, National Guard troops are being called up, fences built, windows boarded up and employees warned to stay away. No one wants to see repeats of the siege at the US Capitol last week, and no one wants to be caught flat-footed.
Video of journalists being roughed up is fresh in mind, along with graffiti scrawled on the Capitol saying “Murder the media”.
Reporters at the Minneapolis Star Tribune went through a harrowing summer of covering civil unrest following the death of George Floyd, with some shot by rubber bullets, tear-gassed or detained by police. The current situation is different, said Suki Dardarian, the Star Tribune’s vice president and managing editor.
“The protest this summer was targeted at the system,” she said. “The risk to us was as bystanders. There were a few people who didn’t like us, but it wasn’t an anti-media situation.
In this case, people are inflamed not just against the government but the media.”
A “Storm the Capitol” rally in St Paul, Minnesota last week shifted to the residence of Governor Tim Walz, who said state troopers had to hustle his 14-year-old son to safety.
Gas masks and bullet-proof vests are being provided to Star Tribune journalists assigned to cover upcoming rallies, and they will be watched by security hired by the newspaper. The experience of last summer helps in planning; without it, Dardarian said she didn’t know whether the vests would have been ordered.
“It did help us think more clearly and more strategically about what we needed to do, and to take it seriously,” she said.
While demonstrations are not expected everywhere, The Associated Press is prepared to cover Capitols in all 50 states, said Brian Carovillano, the organisation’s vice president and managing editor.