Apparent Undercover Charlotte Cops Threaten, Search FDL, TruthOut Journalists

It is with genuine sadness that I report this. FDL reporter Kevin Gosztola and TruthOut's Steve Horn, both credentialed journalists at the Convention, were photographing "four burly middle-aged white males" in the street during a protest march. The four males, dressed as protesters but later identifying themselves as cops, were themselves photographing undocumented immigrants in the march. The undocumenteds were urging President Obama to make good on his 2008 campaign promise to facilitate some sort of solution to the ongoing problem faced by farmworkers without papers, other than the brutal approach in effect now for many decades, which is getting worse in border states. The cops threatened the journalists, one saying he would punch Gosztola in the teeth, another dragging Horn away from his story to a street corner. Gosztola deleted all his photos rather than turn them over to a cop.

Oh, hell. Just go read it. I'm weary and tired of this shit. It is an old, old story with echoes of Chicago 1968, and it is no more acceptable at a Democratic convention than a Republican one. As Jane Hamsher said,

“There’s nothing illegal about photographing people on the street” says Jane Hamsher, publisher of Firedoglake. “There was absolutely no provocation that could have possibly justified the thuggery and bullying by law enforcement agents of journalists who were legitimately covering a public event. It was an outrageous abridgement not only of freedom of the press, but of individual civil liberties.”

But that is where we are in 2012. Civil liberties, especially for journalists and news photographers, are infringed daily, and cops take sides in matters that are not rightfully theirs to resolve, absent violence. Things are different now, but not in a good way. Freedom of the press is in grave danger in America today.