Who would have thought withholding evidence to crime was not a good idea?
Setting this precedent will mean that when covering riots in the future they will have to worry about whether or not the rioters will attempt to prevent them from acquiring footage, or even attempting to destroy footage that they have acquired. That's a chilling effect on the freedom of the press that will last decades.
There is also a potential chilling effect on peaceful protestors here, who now know that the police have yet another way of identifying them to retaliate. That's more of a problem in a place like Hong Kong than the US, but the constitution is there to prevent the US from being able to become like Hong Kong.
Recording who set a police car on fire and refusing to hand over the recording is a different matter.
You can't have everything, so we must compromise. Unfortunately, in this case the judge ruled incorrectly, and freedom of the press will suffer as a result. If this ruling is allowed to stand, any future event a journalist covers where someone happens to commit a crime of opportunity will result in that journalist being at risk of harm should the perpetrators notice that they've been filmed. And that will make journalists think twice about covering such events.
The alternative is allowing criminals to get away with what they were filmed doing, which of course leaves a bad taste in ones mouth. But given the stakes, it's a sacrifice we must make. I'm of course talking about crimes-of-opportunity here (in this case, arson), not planned terrorist attacks or murder, where journalists would be at risk regardless.
That might be true if you know that Journalist X has an actual picture of the person lighting the car on fire and your are asking for that specific picture.
However, that is NOT the case here. The police are on a fishing expedition and are asking for pictures that "might" include the perpetrators.
Those pictures also might include a picture of someone the police might like to identify in order to exert some intimidation. The fact that the judge limited the scope is not terribly useful. Parallel construction is a thing.
Journalists aren't evil. They don't necessarily want criminals to get away with their crimes. Normally you would just politely ask the journalists to go over their pictures and turn over any that they think would be helpful.
However, after the police attacked journalists on camera, you can imagine that most journalists are more inclined to give the police the middle finger rather than cooperate.
The rest is non sequitur.
> The Supreme Court decided in a five to four decision that the press did not have a Constitutional right of protection from revealing confidential information in court. The court acknowledged, however, that the government must "convincingly show a substantial relation between the information sought and a subject of overriding and compelling state interest."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield_laws_in_the_United_Stat...
> Lee said the news organizations were not protected by a Washington state shield law that under many circumstances prevents authorities from obtaining reporters’ unpublished materials.
Try to imagine they were reporting on the Hong Kong protests instead.