When Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery was roughed up and arrested in Ferguson, Missouri, in August while covering the shooting of an unarmed teenager by a police officer, it reminded me that even in the U.S. where covering news tends to be relatively safe, there is always a risk that something can go awry.
Back in August 1991, several of my colleagues at New York Newsday were on the wrong end of a nightstick while covering rioting in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The riots, which lasted three days, touched off after a black child was accidentally struck and killed by a car in the motorcade of a Jewish religious leader.
William Douglas, was one of several reporters dispatched to find out what was going on in the streets.
“I was walking among the chaos on one of Eastern Parkway's side streets when I noticed two police officers wrestling with a woman, who was yelling in distress. I asked the officers loudly what they were doing. They left her alone to give me a personal demonstration of what they were doing. They whacked at me with their nightsticks. I tried blocking the blows with my arms, a painful but successful strategy.”
When another reporter, Curtis Taylor, came upon the scene and started shouting, police moved on to another area of the disturbance. Douglas said he found a pay phone – cell phones were not ubiquitous then and the “smart phone” had yet to be invented – called the office and filed his story before going home to nurse his sore arms.
“I wondered how this could be happening given that I had my New York press pass displayed around my neck. I wondered afterwards what would have happened to me had Curtis not shown up. But I also was running on adrenaline. There was a story to cover and a deadline to be made. I didn't start to feel physically bad until after I filed.”
Douglas and Lowery’s experiences were neither rare nor uncommon, but the threat to physical safety that they
faced is exponentially intensified in other parts of the world when reporters cover what ought to be routine stories.
Javier Garza, a journalist based in Mexico City, writes in an article reprinted in the Morgan Global Journalism Review that such attacks have become routine and that 34 journalists in Mexico City were harassed, injured, arrested, and their equipment destroyed or stolen while covering nine protests in the past two years.
Better training in first aid and safety protocol, linked with digital mapping of where the attacks took place, Garza suggests, could result in better protection for reporters. He contends that reporters should be sure to make a risk evaluation, understand potential threats, know where they can take cover or contact police commanders on the scene.
Douglas, who now covers Congress and politics for McClatchy news service, said the beating he took in Brooklyn did not change the way he reports in dicey areas.
“The former Knight Ridder sent me to New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit. Police on the scene were on edge, residents were on edge, shops were being looted, and some citizens were walking around with guns and rifles vowing to protect their property. I, along with two other colleagues from the newspaper chain, roamed the city and interviewed those who were willing to talk. The scene in New Orleans was much worse than Crown Heights. What happened to me in Brooklyn in 1991 never entered my mind in New Orleans.”
Douglas is old-school enough not to be deterred, but after what happened to Lowery – and other journalists in Ferguson (including CNN’s Don Lemon, who was jostled by police while broadcasting a report) – perhaps it’s time for U.S.-based news organizations to consider instituting safety protocols.
Letter from the editor
5
Jackie Jones
chair, Department of Multimedia Journalism