Today a well known, well respected, well paid mainstream reporter attempting to report on a homicide was harassed by Baltimore Police and he took it without complaint or resistance.
The reporter posted a picture of a house in the vicinity of the incident and stated that police told him he could not take pictures and had to leave the area.
Nothing more was ever heard from the reporter on scene.
Despite the courts, the Department of Justice, and even the reporters own newspaper repeatedly reaffirming the right of citizens, including reporters, to take pictures in public of places of crime scenes among other things, the reporter seemed uninterested to take a stand and assert his first amendment rights. This is deeply disturbing.
On the surface it may seem a small and trivial manner. There may even be many logical reasons for someone whose job depends on freedom of the press to tuck his tail and turn around when the police decide to push him around.
But there is a bigger principle of reinforcing and strengthening a very dangerous, unlawful overreach of police power in play here.
If you think of the press as a wall standing between the public and a slowly turning tyrannical government, think again. Holding government accountable and then calling them out when they willfully trample our rights is only of secondary concern at best, to these people.
In a future article the subject will be examined much closer and the discussion expanded in scope.
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