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dimitrios1

"Belgian police willingly comply with U.S. ambassador's request, and Belgian police stopped your reporting"

FTFY

> a foreign ambassador had Belgian police remove us

Belgian police removed us.

FTFY again.

The article is making a good point, especially the hilarious irony of all the private companies, and US being complicit in limiting press freedom. But it also fails to recognize the agency and complicitness of the Belgian authorities as well, and makes them out to be some sort of innocent bystandards -- "Oh look those poor Belgians being bullied by the big bad US!" If they didn't want to remove you, they simply could have not.

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Renting a venue for an event usually comes with the right to decide who may attend and who may not. So if the embassy indeed rented the park, then as soon as the ambassador decided the journalists weren't welcome, they were no longer allowed to stay and the Belgian police were correctly doing their duty in making sure they complied and left.

So the article isn't strictly alleging that the ambassador did anything he didn't have the right to do, but uninviting journalists from an event after they ask a question he preferred not to answer and involving the police instead of directly telling them to leave is maybe not the best use of those rights.

> The officers, we later learned, had been told that Samuel was an ”active threat.”

The ambassador does not have the right to lie about someone being an active threat.

> A few days before the event, Samuel had published on his Instagram that ambassador White tacitly threatened an American and Belgian resident after that citizen urged the Zac Brown Band not to perform at the event

No right to threaten either.

> how we had got into the event (that the American embassy invited us to).Eventually, they accepted that we were journalists and that they disagreed with detaining us.

You dont get to invite journalists and then try to get police to detain them either.

Did you actually read the article?

The Belgian police got the information that the person would be an 'active threat' which is just absolutely bizarre and explains the somewhat 'hasty' reaction of the police to quickly remove that person from the event before asking further questions. After they realized their mistake they apologized but of course at that point the journalist wasn't allowed back in.

The ambassador essentially swatted the journalist.

Yes.

I quoted something from deep in the article.

Did you read my entire comment, and assume the least bit of positive intent?

I acknowledged the main points the article brought up. I highlighted a glaring discrepancy, from my point of view.

When police act unjustly, hastily, or rash, in my country, it gets at least equal weight (typically more). We don't just focus entirely on the person or party who triggered the reaction.

Anyways, the reason I commented anything at all was, as someone who values true unbiased and objective journalism, something we need now more than ever, this is clearly falling short of their stated goals -- from their editorial policy:

"Doing journalism means taking responsibility for the public. We are aware of our biases and strive not for artificial objectivity but fairness."

Seems like a complete lack of awareness of the strong Anti-american bias, and a lack of taking responsibility for the Belgian public.

Indeed, I find this story quite interesting (and disturbing) from the Belgian point of view.

Suppose the Belgian government declared the ambassador persona non grata, and sent them on the next plane to Washington. Presumably this would raise their popularity with their own voters, although if Trump noticed he'd throw another temper tantrum. What then?

Europe is mighty, independent, strong and decoupling from the US, but also everything bad Europe does is because the big old meanies in the US made them do it against their will

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