SFPD move to exclude reporter scrutinized

When a reporter for the left-leaning San Francisco online publication 48 Hills was removed from a police news conference on Wednesday, speculation swirled that the department was adopting a Donald Trump-like approach to the media.

But it turns out the decision to kick out Sana Saleem — a reporter with a year’s worth of stories critical of the SFPD — may have been an avoidable misunderstanding rather than a reprisal.

The episode, though, highlights challenges facing a Police Department working to adopt sweeping reforms to ensure transparency while also facing scrutiny from reporters at a growing number of digital and legacy media outlets — some with undisguised bents.

Acting Police Chief Toney Chaplin addressed the matter at Wednesday night’s Police Commission meeting when pressed by Commissioner Petra DeJesus.

“My understanding is she was asked to leave because she was not properly credentialed,” Chaplin said of Saleem, while pledging to look into the matter further.

The confusion began as officials were preparing to play the bodycamera footage of an officer shooting unarmed 43-year-old Sean Moore during a heated exchange in which he attacked police at his Ocean View home earlier this month.

The meeting at police headquarters came shortly after the city’s public defender released the same footage in an effort to have criminal charges against Moore dropped.

The shooting has drawn criticism from some police watchdog groups and comes as the latest in a series of officer-involved shootings in San Francisco. The department is working to adopt mandated deescalation tactics among other use-of-force policies.

Several activists showed up at the Wednesday briefing with hopes of seeing the footage, but were kept out by officials.

Saleem said she was granted access to the media room at police headquarters after showing her 48 Hills-issued press credential and state-issued identification.

But before things got started, a member of the department’s media relations team came into the room and asked Saleem for her credentials. The officer, apparently unfamiliar with 48 Hills, asked if it was in print, and then removed her from the room after learning it was a digitalonly publication, Saleem said.

On Thursday, police Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a spokesman for the department, said the meeting was not open to the community. But anyone with a company press identification, department press pass, or company business card and photo identification, was allowed in, he said.

“It is unfortunate that a writer, who is not known to the media relations staff, neglected to bring her company-issued press pass and was asked to leave,” Andraychak said about the incident. “Our understanding is the writer in question stated that she forgot to bring her press pass and instead presented a laminated card with her photo and the words, ‘All Access’ printed on it.”

Saleem admits she did not have a departmentissued press badge — something the police hand out to certain members of the media who cover breaking news in San Francisco — but the assertion that she forgot her company-issued identification was false.

“There’s absolutely no way I said I forgot my press pass,” she said after sending a picture of the press pass in question to The Chronicle. “I sat there for 12 minutes. If they say I don’t have an SFPD press pass it’s fine, but to say I didn’t have a press pass is not true.”

The whole episode didn’t sit well with other reporters in the room, or with 48 Hills founder Tim Redmond. To some on social media, the incident was reminiscent of President-elect Donald Trump’s blacklisting of journalists during the campaign.

“I would hate to think that this had anything to do with the fact that Sana has been writing critical stories about the SFPD for the past year,” Redmond, the former editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, said Thursday. “I would like to think they are bigger than that.”

The Northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, a media advocacy organization, also expressed concern over the matter.

“It’s a troubling sign that a journalist who has consistently covered the SFPD was removed from a press conference, and thus prevented from doing her job,” the organization said. “Reporters’ ability to gather and report the news should not be hampered by arbitrary denial of access from the police department.”

While frustrated, Saleem believes getting kicked out of the news conference was likely a misjudgment by police rather than payback for her reporting.

“I know when someone wants to cut me out — it happens to reporters all the time,” Saleem said. “I honestly don’t think it was one of those situations at all. I actually think it was a confusion.”

Saleem, a freelancer for several other publications, including the Guardian and Al Jazeera, said she’s ready to move on from the matter. If anything, she hopes the incident will make her more known to the department.

“I just want to go ahead and do my job,” she said. “My job is to report the story, not be the story.”