Since September 11th, 2001, civil liberties have become a thing of the past. The USA PATRIOT Act made a mockery of the U.S. Constitution, authorizing the federal government to access private telephone, email, financial, and even library records without court orders establishing there is a reason to access and investigate these records in the first place, in wholesale violation of the First Amendment. The National Defense Authorization Act gave the federal government the ability to hold individuals who are suspected of being involved in terrorism the ability to detain them indefinitely, in wholesale violation of the Sixth Amendment. It is not just the federal government that is using the U.S. Bill of Rights as toilet paper. Here on the local level in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, and the NYPD have been in operating in overdrive to curtail the legal freedoms and privileges guaranteed to Americans by that document. Be it spying on student associations, businesses, mosques, churches, synagogues, and other groups/organizations/assemblies without direct or circumstantial evidence tying them to any kind of wrongdoing, the NYPD is no stranger to illegally harrying large groups of people. More disturbingly, I find, is the trend of harassment towards members of the media- both the formal, accredited media, and citizen journalists.
In general, the relationship between law enforcement/governmental agencies and the media is a complex and complicated one. The line between public and privileged knowledge is always shifting and very delicate, because of the emphasis on one side to do something as painlessly and smoothly as possible without disruptions, and the emphasis on the other to cast light on and scouring information for topics of discussion. In the early 1975, the New York Times became aware of Project Azorian, the clandestine CIA project designed to raise the K-129, a Soviet nuclear submarine from the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Bill Kovach, then Washington bureau chief of the paper, was convinced to sit on the story because information on the sensitive project “would have caused an international incident”. Was the right of the public to know where $800 million dollars (adjusting for inflation, $3.6 billion dollars today) worth of their taxpayer money more important than transparency, or did the potential national security issues trump the right of people to know? On the flip side, classified intelligence data obtained and published by WikiLeaks supposedly endangered civilian and military personnel in Afghanistan and/or Iraq. Is the public’s claim to information more or less important than the safety of an individual or individuals?
Having grown up in law enforcement home, around law enforcement agents of varying importance from different city/state/federal agencies, and having gone on to study criminal justice, I always detected some degree of resentment towards the media on the part of most of these people I’ve known. Resentment is probably too strong of a word- low-key resentment or simmering annoyance might be a better way to put it. A contentious relationship. Many disliked the negative police stereotypes that were perpetuated by the media. Others didn’t like the fact that they or their coworkers were more often vilified by the media than praised. For others still, the meddling media often upset carefully researched operations with the flick of a pen, and made their jobs that much more difficult. It is this last detail that demonstrates the power of the media, the power that information brings with it- oversight and accountability. Never was this clearer to me than when the Occupy Wall Street movement began.
The wake-up call took place in the middle of the night on November 15th, 2011. In the middle of the night, a large police force evicted the Occupy Wall Street protesters who were staying in Zuccotti Park. During the chaos that ensued, the NYPD did not allow credentialed members of the media to witness what was going on. Instead, a special ‘media area’ was established a few blocks from the park, where reporters were supposed to go to film, take pictures, and so on. I’ve heard individuals attempt to justify this, claiming that the NYPD was simply looking out for the safety of the journalists present, by not having them report in the belly of the beast, so to speak. This notion goes against the point of press credentials, which are given to reporters of reputable news agencies to allow them to cross police (and fire) lines- and, the majority of reporters who were sent to the ‘media area’ were indeed credentialed reporters from reputable organizations. The notion that the eviction might have been dangerous to the reporters is very laughable- the Zuccotti Park Occupy Wall Street encampment had been a relatively safe place before that night, and reporters are regularly allowed into more dangerous places. Embedded reporters, anyone?
Since then, a disturbing trend as seemed to develop. There have been numerous cases of credentialed reporters being arrested despite making their profession and affiliations known to police. There have been numerous cases of credentialed police having their credentials arbitrarily revoked on the spot by police officers. During marches and protests, police officers have intimidated members of the public by threatening confiscation of property or arrest when recording police actions (I have personally seen this, and been “shaken down”, so to speak- while recording a video of police officers lining up and “protecting” a Bank of America branch across the street from Union Square, I was told by a black female NYPD officer that what I was doing, “recording a police operation” was illegal and could result in my arrest or confiscation of my cell phone. Knowing this is factually untrue, I tokenly complied, and then switched to my camera and continued snapping pictures. Many people don’t necessarily know that, however). Early in January, the livestream headquarters for Occupy Wall Street NY in Bushwick, Brooklyn was raided by police on a semi-bullshit charge that regularly goes unenforced or semienforced for hundreds of other New Yorkers (the fact that other people are still living in a building whose “the premises are eminently perilous to life” makes the extremely flimsy smokescreen that much more transparent)
This doesn’t necessarily mean that our city/state/country has turned into an Orwellian police state, or anything like that (maybe it has, though). What it does show is that the semi-privileged relation that law enforcement agencies for so long enjoyed with media outlets is a thing of the past. What could have been politely asked to be squashed in the past, or could have been filtered, isn’t necessarily the case anymore, with a public hungry for as much information as possible and a media willing to go to lengths to get that information for them.. Since the advent of easily portable camcorders (Rodney King) to today’s cellphones, anybody can be a journalist. All it takes is a device, an internet connection, and a few clicks along the way. If nothing else, based on so much that we have seen these last few months, I think this new paradigm worries them.
