I wish we would collectively agree that press is a thing people do, not a certain “class” of people.
All people should be able to observe and report on (to the extent they wish or do not wish to) actions of the state without being interfered with.
What about the professional journalist who stays past the curfew announced 10 minutes earlier, remains in the middle of a protest to live interview the event, and then gets caught in the police corral? Once the police collapse a large group of people into a very small area (say, with gas and shields), is there anyway that this journalist is not "involved"?
Or, should this journalist, to remain an observer and not become a participant, immediately leave when the state commands them to do so... perhaps going to an authorized "observation area"?
Civil disobedience has proven critical for societal progress. Why shouldn't those who are career professionals at documenting these events be given deference, acknowledging their service to the public interest?
The modern method of suppressing it is to impose a penalty of twenty years in prison and three generations of bankruptcy for anyone caught ruffling the wrong feathers, when the offense in question would otherwise justify a night in jail or a modest fine. That's a problem we need to solve for everybody and not just state-sanctioned journalists.
> Law enforcement quickly identified media and escorted them to a line where they were asked for credentials and identification. Law enforcement took pictures of journalists' credentials and IDs as well as photos of the journalists’ faces.
So let them. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. The government's job is to make people aware of the risk, not to stand between worthy recipients and their Darwin award.
And most people aren't suicidal, so most of the people who go there and take that risk are going to be doing it for a reason. We can suffer a few people lying about which reason it was when there aren't all that many of them and they still fundamentally had one.
If you can prove you belong to such an organisation that’s great, you’re press. In the U.K. press have a card to prove this, issued on behalf of the police. It doesn’t give you any rights by law, but if the police started locking down the press like they do in countries without guarantees on the freedom of the press - China, Myanmar, USA, etc, then it becomes a political matter.
Someone could be smashing windows one moment and then claiming they are press the next.
- encircle the crowd and ask who is press
- person who was smashing windows (unbeknownst to the police) claims they are press
- person is escorted out
- person goes smashing windows somewhere else
What would you change about this process?
So I don't buy the premise in the first place. In practice it's an authoritarian, abusive method.
If you have a legitimate reason to disperse people because elements are threatening violence, then disperse them - don't lock the those who are peaceful in with the violent elements.
This is more difficult than you expect. Police are drastically outnumbered in any crowd control situation. You can watch videos from Minneapolis riots where police just watch windows being smashed and shops being looted because they don’t have enough people.
It takes more than once officer to arrest someone too so things like Kettling need to be done for safety of everyone.
The rules are simple: if you get dispersion order it’s time to go. It’s not like they are not given a choice. I think a lot of people showing up to protests are just a bit unaware of the law. The number of times you see someone complaining about being asked to move on and they shout back that they are “on the sidewalk - can’t I just walk in my own city blah blah”. It’s just a misunderstanding of the law or a willingness to violate democratic law.
If you believe keeping everyone squashed together in a small space is safe, then you've basically admitted the crowd is not a risk to each other and can be contained, in which case there is not justification for it.
I don't care that the "rules are simple". Every authoritarian governments tends to have simple rules like that. That does not make this kind of authoritarian use of power justified.