New York – 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.
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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.
If journalists get in the way, they shouldn’t be crying when a billy club cracks their skull.
They better not , it’s an infringement on our 1st amendment !!! And besides the only thing our officials fear is the media!
They should have never allowed the police to pen up the press & to try to block them from covering the protesters in the first place! They just don’t want people knowing what the police are doing to American citizens! It’s a total miscarriage of justice! We have 1st Amendment rights in this country!
The journalists tend to sensationalize the news, and are not always objective. For example, during the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq, in 2004, the news media kept showing photos of civilians who were killed in the crossfire. It was not possible to verify whether those civilians were killed by Iraqi insurgent forces, or by the coalition forces. As a result, American forces had to withdraw, and leave the barbaric insurgents in charge. I say barbaric, because they ambushed several unarmed American contractors, killed them, burned their bodies, and hanged their burned bodies from a bridge.