George Floyd protests: reporters targeted by police and crowds

Journalists covering the protests and riots that have erupted in US cities after the killing of George Floyd have reported being shot at, teargassed and arrested, as well as being intimidated by crowds.

More than 50 incidents of violence and harassment against media workers were reported on social media and in news outlets on Friday and Saturday, according to a tally the Guardian collated. They included the blinding of Linda Tirado, a freelance photojournalist and activist who has contributed to the Guardian, who was hit in the eye with a nonlethal round while covering unrest in Minneapolis; the arrest of the HuffPost US reporter Chris Mathias during protests in New York; and the shooting of the Swedish foreign correspondent Nina Svanberg, who was struck in the leg by several rubber bullets on Friday night.

“They’re sighting us in,” a member of a CBS News crew was heard saying in another incident in Minneapolis on Saturday, as police fired rubber bullets at the team, who said they were wearing press credentials and carrying large cameras. A sound engineer was struck in the arm, a journalist from the outlet said.

A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, Susan Ormiston, was hit with a gas canister also while covering the protests in the city. “The thing is, we were in that parking lot all by ourselves,” she said in a broadcast. The police “fired at us to clear us away but we clearly had our camera equipment visible”.

Minneapolis was the scene of especially acute unrest on Saturday night as authorities imposed a curfew and deployed the Minnesota state national guard to clear the streets and prevent the rioting and looting of the previous night.

Protests have spread to more than 30 states across the US since Floyd’s death on Monday. Curfews are in place in dozens of cities and hundreds of people have been arrested.

David Kaye, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, said the reports of attacks on journalists were “appalling and must be condemned and perpetrators held accountable”.

“They are a repudiation of fundamental rights enjoyed by all Americans, under the constitution and human rights law,” he said on Twitter. “Poor training combined with incessant attacks by Trump on the press as enemy