What makes you so sure that these people were arrested for telling the truth? What about telling the truth would be an offense worthy of arrest in the US? Assange and Manning come to mind, for leaking government secrets.

But according to the article, most arrests happened in connection with Black Lives Matter protests.

It seems equally plausible that more people than ever try to evade arrest by claiming they are journalists. Or journalist have less and less ethics when doing their jobs.

Not saying that's the root cause, just that you can not simply assume all those people were arrested for telling "the truth".

And how do people who bemoan that stand on the subject of censorship on social networks?