Although the police limited U.S. press freedom when they arrested journalists covering Occupy protests, some Boston University professors said Boston fared better than other cities.
During the Occupy movements that began in the fall, news outlets across the country reported the arrests of their own journalists who were covering local Occupy demonstrations.
“There was a great deal of brutality by the police, and many journalists were even charged,” said Delphine Halgand, the D.C. director of Reporters Without Borders.
Reporters Without Borders “fights against censorship and laws that undermine press freedom,” according to its website.
“We want to remind everyone that the freedom of expression and information is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution,” Halgand said. “We have to protect journalists who are doing their job and who should not be arrested in such a strong democracy.”
Reporters Without Borders reported in their annual Press Freedom Index that the U.S. dropped 27 places from its ranking of 20 last year to 47.
The Occupy movement caused the drop because it involved many arrests of journalists, according to Reporters Without Border’s website. The decrease in rankings rivals that of Egypt and Bahrain, which fell 39 and 29 places, respectively.
The American press’ freedom ranking dropped because of police preventing news coverage of Occupy protests, even to the extent of some media blackouts, Halgand said.
She said diminishing freedom of the press is also partially due to recent concerns with SOPA and PIPA legislation.
“I can’t make any grand pronouncements about the state of freedom of the press based on this,” said Professor Mitchell Zuckoff, who teaches journalism in BU’s College of Communication, “but I can say that I think it reflected very poorly on America because of how the reporters were treated.”
Zuckoff said although the First Amendment allows the free exchange of ideas, America in some ways did not work as well as other countries where these protests took place.
“It was shocking to me to see police in the U.S. behaving the same way as police in what we think of as repressive countries in quelling peaceful protests,” said Nick Mills, a COM associate professor of journalism.
More than 36 journalists were arrested while covering the events, but less than one third of them were full-time journalists from professional news organizations, Mills said.
Other BU professors said the changing field of journalism is possibly one of the reasons police did not respect journalists’ rights during the Occupy demonstrations.
“The nature of journalism, because it’s changed, has sort of blurred the lines a little bit about who is a journalist and who isn’t,” said Professor Fred Bayles, who teaches journalism in COM and directs BU’s State House program.
Bayles said his own personal attitude is to stay out of the way.
“You’re not doing anybody any good by being arrested – essentially because your job is to cover a story and get it out,” he said.
The police find themselves in a difficult situation with everyone claiming to be a journalist because they blog and tweet about what they see, Zuckoff said.
Despite police disregard for freedom of the press across the country, Zuckoff said, Boston authorities set a good example for the rest of the country.
“Boston did a far better job than most cities,” he said. “There was way more cooperation and understanding on the police department [and] mayor’s office here than there were in New York and parts of California.”
Professor Robert Zelnick, who teaches journalism in COM, said he agreed that Boston is better off than other cities for journalists.
Zelnick said Boston has the benefit of a very experienced political leadership led by Mayor Thomas Menino. Boston never developed a situation with sustained or massive violence, he said.
“There came a point when Menino was concerned about things getting out of hand and he basically said, ‘We’re not going to tolerate this,’” Zelnick said, “and I think the police responded in a measured fashion.”
Nevertheless, the police crackdown on journalists during the Occupy movement does not correspond with the democratic principles of America, Mills said.
Mills said he hopes these incidents will at least trigger a dialogue between the press and the government.
“We need to improve on this,” he said, “or lose our democracy.”
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