The media: CNN journalists arrested for doing their jobs
The scenes of police brutality and civil strife in Minneapolis hardly cry out for further “dystopian spectacle,” as one observer put it. And yet one came in the form of an onair arrest of journalists who appeared to have done nothing more criminal than their job.
Minnesota state troopers in riot gear handcuffed and arrested CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez, producer Bill Kirkos and cameraman Leonel Mendez early Friday as they covered unrest over the latest police killing of an African American man, George Floyd. Because Jimenez was giving a live report, the arrests unfolded chillingly on camera as a stunned anchor narrated: “That is an American television reporter ... being led away by police officers . ... For some reason, he was just taken into police custody live on television.”
Just before his arrest, Jimenez could be heard calmly identifying himself and offering to move to no avail. That the correspondent is black and Latino only compounds the disturbing implications.
The journalists were released about an hour later, CNN reported, without charges. While Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz rightly apologized for the arrests, his State Patrol seemed to have missed the memo: It issued a tonedeaf statement suggesting the detentions were necessary until the journalists “were confirmed to be members of the media.”
In fact, the police have yet to produce evidence that the arrests were anything other than an intolerable assault on constitutionally protected press freedoms.