The worst media disaster of August 2014
If you’ve been watching the news over the past several weeks, odds are you’ll be able to guess what the biggest disaster of the month was.
The Ferguson police department’s bullying of reporters is not the biggest part of the Ferguson story. But as many people noted, if that’s how the department treats people who have a megaphone to the world, it’s unfathomable to think how they must treat local residents who don’t.
By employing often terrifying tactics, the Ferguson Police Department (and some officers from surrounding jurisdictions) reacted to the protests with some of the most shocking mistreatment of journalists I’ve witnessed in many years on American soil.
Among other incidents, police ordered two journalists from The Washington Post and The Huffington Post, who were working at a nearby McDonalds, to leave—and arrested them when they didn’t move quickly enough.
Wesley Lowery, the arrested Washington Post reporter, claimed that he was assaulted by officers:
Chris Hayes, who hosts a primetime program on MSNBC, was threatened with Mace by a police officer—while he was on the air. â
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