
Police attacks against journalists across the U.S. since May 28 - laurex
https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/well-try-to-help-you-follow-the-police-attacks-on-journalists-across-the-country
======
jascii
Disclaimer: I am a bleeding heart liberal and this may filter my observations.

I have been to a few rallies/vigils/marches lately and all incidences of
violence that I have witnessed either in person or through media has been
instigated by the police. As far as I know,every documented case where a
formerly peaceful crowd turns into chaos has been started with police shooting
pepperspray, teargas, or whatever into the crowd.

I find it really hard to not come to the conclusion that the police is
desperately trying to set a narrative to justify a history of violence by
escalating more violence, but please, someone, restore my faith.

~~~
jwilber
It’s the same here in Seattle as it was while I was in Berkeley during
Ferguson.

People protest peacefully, and police shoot tear gas into the crowd and attack
whomever they can get their hands on.

I’ll admit, the outright brutality I saw _in-person_ in Oakland was worse than
what I’ve seen here in the recent days.

In Oakland, the police would purposely corral protestors into groups and
literally beat the shit out of them. I saw this in-person multiple times. In
Seattle, I haven’t seen that sort of corral behavior. However, police do shoot
tear gas completely unprovoked and fire rubber bullets and mace without
concern.

In both places, no looting was occurring at the main scene of the protests. In
both cases, numerous videos show police breaking windows themselves.

In any case, it’s all the same: in a country that parades its freedom, people
of color can’t protest without the president calling for them to be roughed
up, and without the police willingly complying.

~~~
SpelingBeeChamp
"numerous videos show police breaking windows themselves"

I don't believe you.

The umbrella guy breaking the AutoZone window with a hammer has no connection
to any police department. Someone made that up on social media and people
shared it because that's what people do.

The only video I know of showing officers breaking a window is out of Seattle.
It shows officers responding to a burglary in progress at a Target store. The
officers had to chip away at the _already broken_ glass windows so they could
safely get in. (The burglars had broken the glass to get inside.) Once inside,
the responding officers found and arrested the three burglars they had come
for.

~~~
stonogo
Here you go.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/gv2ogk/news_ch...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/gv2ogk/news_chopper_pans_out_as_riverside_county_sheriff/)

~~~
monoideism
That looks very suspicious, but if this were really a widespread technique by
the police, I'm assuming there would be more than a single video taken.

I mean, we _know_ the black bloc and similar groups engages in these tactics,
they've been doing it since Seattle WTO 1999. I've seen it in person to
protests I've been to (as a protester). It's very hard for me to believe that
all of a sudden those people are no longer active in protests, and their place
has been taken by (insert your politically-convenient group here).

~~~
rumanator
> That looks very suspicious, but if this were really a widespread technique
> by the police

Giving your comment the benefit of the doubt, that does not address the fact
that a while platoon of police officers witnessed a fellow police officer
vandalize public property without any reason or justification, and they didn't
even flinched or complained or even frowned upon that brand of unprovoked
abuse.

That's pretty much one of the central points of the whole protest.

~~~
slg
> they didn't even flinched or complained or even frowned upon that brand of
> unprovoked abuse

I have seen dozens if not over a hundred videos of the police acting
inappropriately over the last few days. I have only seen a single video in
which any of them were stopped or reprimanded by another cop and that one
"good cop" was a woman of color. If this inappropriate behavior is done by
such a small percentage of the police force and is frowned on by all the other
good cops, why is there so little evidence of police policing themselves?

~~~
thatguy0900
The video of George that started all this has 4 cops in it. The 3 cops that
allowed him to kneel on georg's neck for 7 minutes are not being charged with
anything at all. The one female cop even remarks that George should be moved
to be on his side, then when she's ignored, doesn't bring it up again. Why
should they police each other when nothing happens when they dont

~~~
selimthegrim
I thought they were all males and it was the rookie that said it

------
zubspace
Here's another article uncovering the brutality of the police [1]. Some of the
scenes are really inhuman [2] and I feel sorry for the poor people trying to
make their voices heard.

I hope, that both sides, the protesters and police force will find a way, to
exit that spiral of violence. But right now it looks like this won't happen.
It's a shame.

If the state acts harder against protesters, journalists and civilian
bystanders it will only fuel their anger. Leading to more violence, used by
the state to issue a even worse crackdown than now. And so on and so on.

The only hope that I have is, that other politicians from all parties will
stand up against that.

[1] [https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2020/05/31/us-
law-e...](https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2020/05/31/us-law-
enforcement-are-deliberately-targeting-journalists-during-george-floyd-
protests/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Byk2axDVNHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Byk2axDVNHE)

~~~
steffandroid
> I hope, that both sides, the protesters and police force will find a way, to
> exit that spiral of violence.

The two sides are massively unequal in terms of power, the onus is on the
police to stop the violence.

~~~
brobdingnagians
The onus is on both. One may be able to do it better, and more conveniently,
but everyone's responsible for doing their bit in ceasing and stopping
violence.

~~~
viraptor
You understand why the protests started though, right? It's not like the
protesters can say "ok, if we stop protesting now, will you please consider
following the law?"

How to you expect protesters to deescalate this with absolutely nothing
changing and high level LE people still not accepting any blame and pushing
for military help?

~~~
oh_sigh
You understand why US cops are so heavy handed though, right? It may be
because they have to deal with a population with 3 guns per capita, where the
amount of police killed per year on duty(even disregarding accidents) is more
akin to a third world country than anything going on in the EU.

> and high level LE people still not accepting any blame

I don't know how you get that from OP saying that both sides need to de-
escalate.

~~~
dingoegret
>where the amount of police killed per year on duty(even disregarding
accidents) is more akin to a third world country

Police mortality isn't any more exceptionally high in a "third world country"
than anywhere else. Your view that bad things = third world country, is
simplistic. Your attitude is typical of a certain mindset. It's also boring
because now I can tell a lot about you and could guess 100% correctly about
any of you derivative political viewpoints.

~~~
oh_sigh
> now I can tell a lot about you and could guess 100% correctly about any of
> you derivative political viewpoints.

Well go ahead and guess then, and let's see how accurate you are.

------
bosswipe
I had been heartened by the right's recent upswing in fierce support for the
first amendment, but unfortunately I've seen little of that support during the
protests as freedom of assembly and freedom of the press have been attacked.
For example Rand Paul has not tweeted in a week. Sadly, as always, these kind
of principled arguments, on both sides, are a sham to advance whatever the
partisan battle of the week is.

~~~
Loughla
I honestly wish there was anyone in Washington who seemed willing or able to
lead in a bipartisan manner. Someone who didn't rely on the partisan firestorm
of the week to get support.

It's all very disheartening, and hard to explain to my children.

~~~
pjc50
Prisoner's dilemma. Bipartisanship is "cooperate", divisiveness is "defect".
Cooperating with a defector results in losing badly. The right have worked
this out and are playing "defect" continuously. And currently "winning".

We have to change the payoff matrix.

~~~
ashtonkem
The name for this is “asymmetric polarization”. The right polarized and
stopped cooperating earlier and more aggressively.

------
ravenstine
A reporter at my previous workplace, KPCC, was shot in the neck with a rubber
bullet on Saturday.

[https://laist.com/2020/05/31/reporters_injured_protests_poli...](https://laist.com/2020/05/31/reporters_injured_protests_police.php)

It's unfortunate that it's gotten to this point for people to take police
brutality at least somewhat seriously.

I'm mistaken for being pro-police and anti-BLM merely because I'm against the
looting and rioting. I've always had the stance that the police in their
current form are state-sanctioned street gangs.

~~~
pwinnski
I recently read that if you tend to think, "it's a shame that black people are
being killed by cops like this, but the rioting and looting MUST stop,"
perhaps you should consider thinking more like, "it's a shame that there is
rioting and looting, but black people being killed by cops like this MUST
stop."

~~~
rhino369
There is no reason why it can't be "black people being killed by cops like
this MUST stop" and "the rioting and looting MUST stop."

Buried in your reasoning is the idea that the rioting and looting is helping
reducing black deaths by cops. I see no reason to believe that.

First, its directly putting people into violent conflict with police. So
additional black people have been killed by police caused by the rioting.
Second, innocent people are getting killed by the rioting.

Third, there are people who would support police reform but are also terrified
of looters and rioters. The riots are giving me a look at what my city looks
like without police control, and it is scary. I know that police v.
lawlessness is a false dichotomy and I reject that sort of thinking.

There was a consensus that what happened to George Floyd was an atrocity. Even
racists thought so. A huge peaceful protest would have raised awareness.

Violence lost that consensus.

~~~
standardUser
Rioting and looting don't generally kill people. Cops do kill people, time and
time again, and they usually get away with it. That's why it is absurd to
equate the two.

"There was a consensus that what happened to George Floyd was an atrocity."

Who cares? Thinking something is an atrocity accomplished precisely jack shit.
Peaceful protests get ignored or mocked. Police forces continue to get more
militarized. Far right politicians, like the president, encourage violence
from their bully pulpit. At a certain point, people need to respond. To not
respond is to encourage those who seek to abuse power.

~~~
yyyk
"Rioting and looting don't generally kill people... Peaceful protests get
ignored or mocked."

Can you find a large episode of rioting and looting without any death toll?
Even the 2011 London riots led to the deaths of five people.

The bigger issue though is that the current situation is starting to turn
counterproductive. The only way to eventually fix things is with politics.
Protests are politics.

But violence eventually takes a life of its own. Already now there are
overwhelming evidence various third party actors are interfering. Soon this
turns into an order vs chaos issue, and guess in who's favour that framing
would play out?

The protests can no longer be ignored, now is the time to step back and to do
whatever can be done to make this peaceful - before people forget why the
protests started in the first place.

------
simonw
Since this is happening simultaneously in many different cities around the
country, I have to wonder if there are private Facebook or WhatsApp or Signal
groups where police members are talking about this trend. I'd very much like
to see those conversations.

~~~
jonlucc
It's possible, but also, there's precedent from 2014 in Ferguson. Several
members of credentialed media were arrested and assaulted to various degrees.
Pretty much nothing happened by way of punishment other than a settlement from
the DoJ saying they couldn't kettle people anymore, enforced by what is now
Barr's department.

Any officer paying attention would know you won't be punished unless you act
particularly egregiously like the one officer in Louisville reassigned to desk
duty (big whoop). Add on the amount of animosity stoked by the president
toward media for the past 4-5 years, and it really doesn't take a
simultaneously coordinated effort to have this outcome.

~~~
gedy
> you won't be punished unless you act particularly egregiously like the one
> officer in Louisville reassigned to desk duty (big whoop)

Isn't this honestly largely due to the police union rules and contacts, which
(unions) are a key part of leftist labor relations?

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Don't you think it's curious that only the police are allowed to have these
super-effective unions with literal stay-out-of-jail clauses in their
contracts - while Amazon workers who want proper toilet breaks will simply be
fired?

Does that answer your question?

~~~
illumin8
Police unions shouldn't exist. It would be like having a union of military
soldiers. Imagine if the US military had a union that refused to defend the
country unless every soldier got immunity from war crimes and high 6 figure
salaries. That is effectively what the police unions have done to this
country.

~~~
leetcrew
does this argument not apply to all or most public sector employees? what if a
teachers' union demanded high salaries and protection against being fired for
poor performance (or worse)?

------
loceng
If you haven't seen it yet there's a 2020 Police Brutality subreddit -
[https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/](https://www.reddit.com/r/2020PoliceBrutality/)
\- that's very active in cataloguing the increasing number of video evidence
of police brutality; 35,000 subscribers, up from 12,000 just this morning.

Warning: there is a lot of disturbing content there.

------
itsspring
When "Freedom of the Press" is under attack, newspapers/press/media have had
their legal counsel file lawsuits against the government. But with the demise
of revenue for many newspapers (and many going out of business), I wonder if
they will take those expensive steps.

~~~
apazzolini
Are you aware of a foundation I can donate to that will explicitly use the
money in these types of lawsuits against the government?

~~~
colejohnson66
ACLU?

~~~
itsspring
The ACLU has too many objectives, so I don't think defending journalism is
their primary goal. This fund is probably better, dollar for dollar:
[https://www.spj.org/ldf.asp](https://www.spj.org/ldf.asp)

------
dmix
This policy introduced into congress sounds like a helpful solution:

> "Ending Qualified Immunity Act," which would allow civil lawsuits against
> police, a recourse that the Supreme Court has all but done away with.

[https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/06/01/us/politics/01reu...](https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/06/01/us/politics/01reuters-
minneapolis-police-congress.html)

That plus the laundry list of obvious issues with criminal justice that any
defense attorney could list off hand.

~~~
gruez
Is qualified immunity really the issue? The general impression I have is that
PDs/DAs straight up refuse to investigate/prosecute abuses of power. It's not
like we have a bunch of cases where the case was airtight, but the officer was
being acquitted because of qualified immunity.

~~~
mcguire
Qualified immunity affects civil suits, not criminal prosecution. If the
police department or district attorneys refuse to investigate or prosecute,
qualified immunity means that cannot sue for recourse (under some
qualifications).

------
mchusma
I have been trying to think of good, relatively simple policy decisions that
can make a large impact. I have not heard too many proposed besides removing
qualified immunity. I would be curious what ideas people have:

Ideas include: -Banning police unions -Having a federal agency to discipline
police (outside the purview of local politics)

I haven't heard this idea elsewhere but I like the idea of us addressing from
the top down the fact that we have the highest incarceration rate in the world
at 698 per 1,000 currently. This is something like 10x some comparable
countries, and at least 3x any country we consider "free"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate#Comparison_with_other_countries)).
We can make a top down decision to change this by making a hard "200
incarcerated per 100,000" cap at the state level. Dec 31st of each year, each
state with over 200 per 100,000 prisoners has to release prisoners until they
are below the threshold.

I am not saying it is a simple problem, but any other solution ideas?

~~~
elihu
Ending cash bail policies wouldn't directly address police violence, but it
could reduce the incarceration rate. There are many people in jail waiting
trial for crimes they did not commit, simply because they could not afford
bail and would not take a plea deal.

Ending the use of private prisons and restricting police use of military
equipment and weapons are also frequently suggested proposals.

In terms of police violence, I think the main thing lacking right now is
accountability. There are a lot of ways to impose that. One avenue is to
impose accountability from a higher level of government (for instance: the FBI
getting involved if local government doesn't act), and the other traditional
approach is accountability from voters.

~~~
mchusma
Thanks! Ending cash bail is a good one. I'm not so well versed on private
prisons, but I think I'm general the scale of incarceration is a larger issue
than the quality of it. Still a good suggestion for discussion.

We have 10x more incarcerated per capital than germany. If the police think 1
in 100 (rounding a bit) belong in jail, it leads to a very different quality
of interaction if it is 1 in 1,000.

Definitely agree on the issues with accountability.

~~~
mchusma
I think another simple one is simply that police officers cannot be formally
afforded any due process differences than other citizens of their
jurisdiction.

------
abolishme
Important to note: I have seen not one example of a non-press person claiming
to be press and I've been watching all the livestreams constantly.

~~~
colechristensen
Just a piece of data, a cameraman attacked by someone posing as a medic:
[https://twitter.com/Lucas_Jackson_/status/126708396851348684...](https://twitter.com/Lucas_Jackson_/status/1267083968513486848)

Any news reports of people posing as reporters might be suppressed by
newsrooms themselves as to not encourage copycats or get the idea out there
that reporters might not be reporters, that is entirely unsubstantiated
conjecture though.

------
brenden2
For anyone who wants to keep an eye on what's going on, the subreddit
/r/PublicFreakout is full of videos of police (and rioters) engaging in
violence. I haven't found a better source yet. There's sometimes misattributed
content, so be sure to wade carefully. Many of these cases have multiple
videos from different people from different angles as well. The evidence is
quite damning.

~~~
koheripbal
That sub is great because you really get a good sampling of what's going on.

There are peaceful/permitted protests that the police leave alone and
occasionally support/join.

There are peaceful/not-permitted protests that the police disperse with
various uses of non-lethal force.

There are Rioters that vandalize and try to blend with protesters but seldom
directly confront the police - occasionally confronted by protesters.

...and then there's just tons of rampant looting with little police
intervention.

Anyone blending these four distinct phenomenon is just doing truth and justice
a disservice.

~~~
margalabargala
Could you clarify your use of "permitted" here? In the sense of "allowed", it
seems redundant, since you go on to say that they were or were not forcibly
dispersed.

The other option, more literal, is "they got a permit to do this protest", but
there have certainly been plenty of peaceful grassroots protests that got no
sort of official go-ahead and yet were executed perfectly fine on both sides.

------
AaronFriel
Hey dang, why was the headline changed from the source's?

~~~
dang
I changed it from the article title to a shortened version of the URL slug
(/well-try-to-help-you-follow-the-police-attacks-on-journalists-across-the-
country). That's often a legit source title, along with the HTML doc title,
and other places that articles tend to reveal what they're actually about
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20url%20html%20doc%20title&sort=byDate&type=comment)).

The reason I changed it is that "U.S. police have attacked journalists more
than 110 times since May 28" is more baity. First you've got the aggressive
verb "attacked". And then you've got the specific facts and figures (100
times, May 28). Why do these things make a title more baity? I don't know, but
they are somehow active ingredients in the psychology of titles, which is why
headline writers use them. I think of them as sharp edges. If you throw a
spiky thing into a crowd, it gets more attention than a beach ball—but the
_quality_ of attention it gets is less conducive to a reflective discussion on
the internet
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20reflective%20reflex&sort=byDate&type=comment)).
People react reflexively to the sharp edges.

It's in HN's interest to rewrite baity titles (indeed the site guidelines
request it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html))
but this is 1000x more important on inflammatory topics of the moment, like
this one. We want HN to discuss this, but we want to support the discussion to
stay in the intended spirit of the site: thoughtful, respectful, curious
conversation. The material is provocative enough, and a title doesn't need
sharp edges to make readers here care about the topic.

To clear up a misconception that sometimes arises: I'm not saying the
statement in the sharper title is false. Obviously it's legitimate to use an
aggressive verb to describe an aggressive action, and if the facts and figures
are true then it's obviously legitimate to make a factual statement with them.
As a reader I have zero problem with that title. But the moderator perspective
is different: the question for a moderator, on HN at least, is always: what is
the prospective effect on forthcoming discussion? Or to put it
pseudotechnically: given choice A vs. choice B, what is the diff between the
probability distribution of threads that A is a prefix of, vs. threads that B
is a prefix of? (This is just a metaphor, but it reflects how we think about
this. See
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22expected%20value%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)
for more.) In the case of these two alternative titles, experience has shown
that there's a significant difference in probable outcomes, and titles are by
far the biggest influence on threads, so it's potentially a big deal.

~~~
AaronFriel
I would like you to please change the title back because the quantity and
recency is salient to the topic, and that the new title diminishes the title
in those two specific ways.

1\. This is not just about police attacks against journalists across the U.S.
in general, this is about attacks since a specific date. The date matters
because it is recent, it delineates a specific span of time (a mere five
days), which helps the reader place it into context. This is about the
protests that have occurred since the murder of George Floyd.

2\. This is not just about some rare occurrence of police attacks against
journalists since a specific date, this is about how this happened many, many
times, and as the article notes, in the majority of the cases the journalists
were clearly identifiable as press. This places it in context again: this is
not a one-off incident, but something that has happened with startling
frequency.

With the original title, it is easy to identify a through-line from the start
of protests against the murder of George Floyd to a startling factual
statement: on average, each day since then, police have attacked journalists
over 20 times a day. Or to put it another way, police have attacked a
journalist almost once an hour since the protests have begun.

That context is vital to the discussion, if as you say the headline has such
an enormous impact on the conversation that follows. If, as I see in your
recent edit, the distribution function is changed because the headline
specifically calls out that high rate of attacks on journalists in a small
window of time, then I think it moves that function for the better.

~~~
dang
That's a fair point about recency, so I've added the date back to the title
above.

(Sorry for editing my comment on the fly like that - yours is long enough that
I imagine I changed the carpet under you several times while you were writing.
It's the most convenient way for me to craft responses, so I do it all the
time, even though there are downsides.)

~~~
AaronFriel
Thank you for compromising.

And no worries, I do the same thing.

------
dzonga
in zimbabwe, the police was once put on lockdown. & guess what the protests
were peaceful, no looting etc. america needs to do the same. otherwise, this
is another pointer show america has been a 3rd world country. i'm sure you
know where else journos are harassed.

------
jfoster
How & why is this happening?

I feel fairly confident that police don't usually attack media, but it seems
clear that in the past few days there has been some kind of deliberate choice
made to start doing so.

Are individual groups of police making the decision to attack media, or is it
concerted? Are they just seeing it from other police and copying? I know some
people will say it's because Trump has called media "fake news" and such, but
is that really all it takes for police to start such gross behaviour? At the
same time, I presume there hasn't been a direct order to start targeting media
or it would have been leaked.

~~~
viraptor
It all started with the media, as in, police crime was documented. Now when
police already uses questionable methods, cameras will point at them. Since
they can't be identified in full gear, they can shoot at press without anyone
stopping them, so I guess why not? They're already shooting at random people
so there's a lot of aggression built up.

~~~
iso947
Why don’t the police have visible numbers on their uniforms?

~~~
lm28469
They do, but they put black tape on the numbers or conveniently have some
piece of equipment in front of it. It's not like someone is going to punish
them for doing that

------
egberts1
Wear a jacket that says Press. Holds up better in US Court when accosted by
cops.

------
wiseleo
I submitted this story about a KPIX reporter detained despite clearly
identifying herself as media.
[https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/06/01/tear-gas-
rubber...](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/06/01/tear-gas-rubber-
bullets-oakland-protest-george-floyd-kpix-katie-nielsen/)

------
haydenlee
Cached:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c-5hfR...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:c-5hfR5ySHkJ:https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/06/well-
try-to-help-you-follow-the-police-attacks-on-journalists-across-the-country/)

------
NicolasBeuzeboc
There is video of police discreetly unloading bricks to later bait the
unsuspecting protester into using them.

------
noirchen
You have to outnumber for security. From the videos in Hong Kong, I noticed
that the journalists in shiny PRESS vests were usually WAAAAAY more than the
number of police, many of them only holding video-taking cell phones.

------
novia
Here's a repo to collect videos of police brutality during the protests.

[https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality](https://github.com/2020PB/police-
brutality)

------
linsomniac
I can imagine animosity from the leadership, for example classifying most
journalists as "fake news", contributing to violence from the front line
against them.

~~~
starpilot
You're assuming most cops support Trump?

~~~
Loughla
Yes. It's anecdotal at best, but all of the 6 cops I know have either "Trump
2020" or "Trump No More Bullshit" or (my personal favorite) "Trump Making
Liberals Cry Since 2016" flags flying _above_ the US flag at their homes.

My baseline assumption is a vast majority of police/sheriffs/troopers support
Trump. Is this incorrect?

~~~
at-fates-hands
>> "Trump Making Liberals Cry Since 2016" flags flying above the US flag at
their homes.

I'm having a hard time understanding why this is wrong?

EDIT: "Meh, I'm not going to try and explain it, I'll just downvote it."
Bravo. B R A V O.

~~~
macintux
Ignoring the antisocial aspects of the wording, the U.S. flag code indicates
the national flag should always be the highest in a display.

“When flags of States, cities, or localities, or pennants of societies are
flown on the same halyard with the flag of the United States, the latter
should always be at the peak. When the flags are flown from adjacent staffs,
the flag of the United States should be hoisted first and lowered last. No
such flag or pennant may be placed above the flag of the United States or to
the United States flag’s right.”

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/7](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/4/7)

------
runawaybottle
I just want to say that we have to do the things necessary to differentiate
ourselves from places like China or Saudi Arabia. Nothing is implicit.

~~~
jdc
While this is very disappointing news, these matters are not black and white.
That is that say that even if police attack journalists in two countries, the
one where it happens less frequently still outperforms the other.

~~~
r00fus
Hypocrisy is a problem too. At some point, a mild improvement over
totalitarianism becomes an implementation detail.

------
50ckpuppet
Does Assange count?

------
mrfusion
It seems like in a democracy that voting should be able to effect the changes
we need. What has gone wrong?

~~~
nemothekid
Are you serious?

1\. If that were true women would still be unable to vote. Would you tell
women in 1905 that "it's a democracy, you don't need to protest, just vote."

2\. Even now, we have seen the power that be make it more and more difficult
to vote. The current administration is throwing a complete temper tantrum at
even the thought of letting people use absentee ballots during a national
pandemic, citing the voter fraud boogeyman.

~~~
rpiguy
Women didn’t shoot cops in the back of the head, burn down city hall, steal
and loot stores. These aren’t protests they are riots.

~~~
nemothekid
> _Women didn’t shoot cops in the back of the head, burn down city hall, steal
> and loot stores_

In what timeline are you talking about? Women's Suffrage definitely had
protests turn violent. Here[1] is source about documenting this violence, and
I went through the trouble of finding a source published 2 years ago in order
to counter any narrative that it's "convenient" for today's issues. History
has a way of whitewashing and romanticizing what were difficult fights for
rights.

Large protests turn violent, and I'm not surprised that, with record
unemployment as well, that looting is being amplified as well.

Besides, in any case, it's long established that peaceful protests don't even
work. A man can't even kneel during a sports game without his protest being
diminished.

[1] [https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/suffragettes-
viol...](https://www.bl.uk/votes-for-women/articles/suffragettes-violence-and-
militancy)

~~~
rpiguy
Not so much in the US.

~~~
nemothekid
Are you sure of that or are you just talking out of your ass? A 10 second
google search would say you are wrong.

------
99_00
Is this because of police changing their tactics or is it because of
journalists changing their tactics?

I don't know the answer, but with the internet and analytics, we've seen media
become more sensationalistic to get those clicks and views. So this is a
possibility that should be considered.

~~~
augustt
Honestly cannot tell if you're trolling. If journalists are getting roughed up
more because of sensationalism (still well within their 1st amendment rights)
that is _completely_ the fault of police.

One side has cameras. The other side has guns. When violence happens, who's
fault do you think it is?

~~~
99_00
Do you agree that police have the right to declare a gathering unlawful and
can clear the area?

~~~
augustt
Clear the area how? I think people have forgotten this doesn't need to mean
your first step is pulling out the batons. If you tell a journalist they are
under arrest, they will always comply. They won't fight back. So yes, still
cops' fault.

~~~
99_00
>I think people have forgotten this doesn't need to mean your first step is
pulling out the batons.

When and where did this happen? The first step is verbally telling people to
clear the area.

>If you tell a journalist they are under arrest, they will always comply. They
won't fight back. So yes, still cops' fault.

Given the fact that the police are always outnumbered in these situations, and
vehicles, jails and officers have limited capacity, arresting everyone who
doesn't comply is impossible. So they are first asked to leave. If they don't
they are pushed out of the area by force.

If reporters are too close to the police line that is pushing people they will
get pushed along with everyone else. Breaking the line weakens it and hampers
the police's efforts.

------
angel_j
It is totally ironic bullshit that mainstream media "journalist" are presumed
to get passes to watch police brutalize the actual 1st amendment right to free
assembly.

~~~
angel_j
Less speech out of you please.

------
colechristensen
Some people say police attacking journalists are isolated incidents by a few
bad eggs, most of them are doing the right thing.

Some people say protestors becoming violent, vandalizing, and looting are
isolated incidents by a few bad eggs, most of them are doing the right thing.

Really similar thought processes go into those two, usually by people you can
sort into camps of opposing worldviews. They're both right and both wrong, but
it's surprising how similar the lines of thought are and how people can't see
the other side is thinking just the same way.

~~~
Pfhreak
One of those groups has access to military hardware, live ammunition, and
legal (or cultural) protections from prosecution.

It's dangerously to boil down the arguments from both sides and say, "Look,
these two things are the same!" because even if both sides were saying, "It's
a few bad apples", the implications of that would be wildly different.

~~~
wnoise
One of these groups could in theory arrest their bad apples. The other cannot.

~~~
Pfhreak
Or, at the absolute minimum, fire them.

------
lurkmurk
"Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of
some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute
animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." HN
Guidelines

But this is probably just my lurker observation. Not against all news but
there should be at least some spark of insight of novelty. Feel free to flag
now.

Edit: To expand a bit. What I like about HN is not that it's tech but it has
plethora of very interesting topics and comments are almost always insightful
(unlike this one). This headline is basically the whole article. The comments
are therefore not guided by idea, but news. This topic is important but
nothing comes out of these threads. This rant is contributing to bad quality
of comments, one thing I always try to avoid.

~~~
simonw
You don't think police attacks on journalists counts as an "interesting new
phenomenon"?

~~~
dnautics
It's hardly new in the us.

~~~
staticassertion
It actually is. While the police have often attacked journalists I don't know
that it has ever been so blatant, so well documented, and done so broadly
across all journalists, even from the larger news networks that often have the
clout and means to avoid such abuse.

------
c1b
Over 100 upvotes in 20 minutes for something non tech related?

~~~
badrequest
Right now, on the front page, there are posts about the recreation of the
first automobile, the archaeological discovery of cannabis residue at a dig
site, news articles about meetings between Zuckerberg and civil rights
leaders.

While this site trends heavily towards tech, it is not so narrow-minded that
we cannot discuss things not strictly related to that subject.

~~~
yters
i bring up this argument when anti ccp topics get flagged or modded, but for
some reason the argument does not work in that context

~~~
dang
The argument does work in that context. It's the same across all topics as far
as I know.

The moderation question is always: what serves intellectual curiosity?
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment).
Once a topic becomes repeated enough, there's a power-law-style dropoff in how
interesting it is
([https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment)),
except to people who have a strong identification with one side of an
argument, and that sort of interest isn't intellectual curiosity, it's loyalty
to a cause. That may be an admirable quality in many ways, but it's not a good
fit for this site.

Nationalistic flamewar, which is the theme you're referring to, definitely
falls in this category. That doesn't mean that "anti ccp" stories don't get
attention here—they certainly do. Just not enough to satisfy the warriors, and
rightly so, since warriors want _every_ story that serves their cause to be on
HN's front page.

See also
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)
for how we handle major ongoing topics.

Edit: it looks like we've had a similar conversation before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22870427](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22870427),
which makes me think that your "for some reason" is an insinuation of the sort
the site guidelines specifically ask people not to post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
Please don't do that here.

~~~
yters
i see, so this topic is considered 'intellectually curious' while anti-ccp is
'loyalty to a cause'

i am not really sure how you make that determination, i personally find
accounts of what the ccp does to exploit its citizens intellectually
interesting when it is not widely reported

so, given you exponential drop off comment, i assume that means a small number
of highly voted protest posts are allowed, and then past that point they will
get modded. is that correct?

and yes, we had this discussion before, and i became confused in this context
since protest topics also seem prone to intellectually uninteresting flamewars
hn wishes to avoid

it seems there is an exception in this kind of case where a controversial
topic is allowed if it is new

technically, police brutality and protesta are not new topics, but i suppose
this exception is the current national impact?

~~~
dang
None of that is correct. The primary issue isn't the topic itself but the
amount of repetition around it. Curiosity withers under repetition. You would
see exactly the same pattern if the current topic ended up getting repeated a
lot: the users who felt most strongly about it ('loyalty to a cause') would
want every single article to be on the front page, and would feel like the
mods and/or community must be pro-police-brutality if that didn't happen, just
as some people feel like we must be pro-communist or pro-China or whatever.

I tried to explain that above, and linked to past explanations of the same
points. If you want to take a look at those past explanations, and still have
a question that isn't answered there, I'd be curious to know what it is.
Perhaps it would be helpful to describe what these links contain more
explicitly:

(1) We try to optimize HN for intellectual curiosity:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment)

(2) Curiosity and repetition don't go well together:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20repetition&sort=byDate&type=comment)

(3) With submissions on a MOT (major ongoing topic), the main thing we look
for is SNI (significant new information):
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22significant%20new%20information%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

As far as I can tell, the complete answer to your question follows from those
three points.

~~~
yters
Yes, #3 is the key point, that there are exceptions to the flamewar constraint
if there is some new, interesting information for a current major topic..

------
lostmsu
I think it would show more nuanced sentiment to say, that on 110 occasions
journalists ended up caught in aggressive police action since May 28. Current
wording would have an implication for many people, that journalists were
deliberately chosen as targets.

~~~
cryptoz
The current wording is correct. The journalists are in fact being deliberately
chosen as targets.

~~~
lostmsu
This is not the first article claiming that on HN (the previous one was
flagged to death). Like the previous one, this one does not show anything
objective to support this interpretation.

~~~
fzeroracer
The last time I linked you multiple objective instances showing journalists
being attacked by the police unprovoked, you made some strong efforts to try
and ignore the context of those videos.

I don't think you're here to actually argue in good faith at all.

~~~
lostmsu
> ignore the context of those videos

Huh? There was no context in most of those videos, which was exactly the
problem I was pointing to, and is the same one with this post.

