2021 Winter/Spring Silha Bulletin (791.1Kb
A PUBLICATION OF THE SILHA CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF MEDIA ETHICS AND LAW | WINTER/SPRING 2021 Members of the Press Detained and Targeted with Use of Force by Police, Despite Court Order he trial of former Minneapolis Police Department the finding inBranzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 681 (1972) that (MPD) officer Derek Chauvin, charged with second- “without some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of degree murder, third-degree murder, and second- the press could be eviscerated.” She also cited American Civil degree manslaughter after he pressed his knee into Liberties Union of Illinois v. Alvarez, 679 F.3d 583, 597 (7th Cir. the neck of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, 2012), in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Twho died at the scene in May 2020, began on March 29, 2021. It held that the First Amendment “goes beyond protection of the continued through mid-April. Meanwhile, on April 11, 2021, a press and self-expression of individuals to prohibit government Brooklyn Center, Minn. police officer, Kimberly Potter, shot and from limiting the stock of information from which members of killed Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic the public may draw.” stop. Potter claimed to have accidentally grabbed and used her Second, Wright rejected the defendants’ argument that “the gun rather than a taser. In the course of these events, protests press had no right to ‘remain in an active dispersal area’” and that arose once more in the Twin Cities. Although the initial protests such orders “render[] the press’s news-gathering activities no were generally peaceful, a significant law enforcement response longer a ‘protected activity[.]’” She reasoned that because most of followed when tensions escalated.
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