New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly has issued an internal message ordering officers not to unreasonably interfere with media access during news coverage and warning those who do will be subject to disciplinary action.
The message being read at police precincts citywide Wednesday came after journalists, including two from The Associated Press, were arrested covering Occupy Wall Street protests.
A coalition of media outlets, including the AP, sent a letter protesting the treatment. The media also argued police wrongly blocked journalists from seeing when authorities cleared out the Occupy camp in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park.
The police department’s letter was provided to the AP. The AP and representatives of The New York Times, the Daily News, the New York Post and the National Press Photographers Association met with Kelly on Wednesday.
(Source: NY Post)
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3 Responses
Why should “media” have better access than anybody else? What makes them special? Mimah nafshach: If the public is being kept away from somewhere for a legitimate reason, then surely that same reason applies to reporters too. If there isn’t a legitimate reason then why are other people being kept away? Reporters like to pretend that they’re some sort of “fourth estate”, but in America we don’t have estates, and reporters have no constitutional role.
To me it seems most probable that the police who blocked and man handled the press, did so under orders. Police meet the press during there work all the time. They know the rights of the press. If they blocked the press its only because they were told to do so.
What rights? Reporters don’t have more rights than anybody else.