Press freedom groups are warning that the arrests of two independent journalists, including the veteran former CNN anchor Don Lemon, signal a chilling new crackdown on US media by the Trump administration.
Lemon was taken into custody on Thursday night by federal agents in Los Angeles, despite a magistrate judge declining to sign off on charges against him a week ago in connection with a protest at a Minnesota church against violent government immigration enforcement actions.
Georgia Fort, another reporter who covered the 18 January protest at the Cities church in Saint Paul, posted a live stream of her arrest early on Friday on Facebook.
“The justice department’s arrest of journalists reporting on anti-ICE protests is extremely alarming, especially given that multiple judges refused to approve arrest warrants just last week,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said.
“Reporting on protests isn’t a crime – it’s protected by the first amendment. We are especially concerned about these arrests because they take place against the background of a broader effort by the Trump administration to tighten the vise around press freedom.”
Scott Griffen, executive director of the International Press Institute (IPI), echoed a similar fear in a statement that called for the release of Lemon and Fort.
“The arrests of two independent journalists doing their jobs is a shocking and disturbing escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign against the free press in America. This is an unequivocal attack on the first amendment and the American people’s right to know,” he said.
“The outcome of this case will have direct consequences for the future of free media and free information in America. IPI condemns the Trump administration’s attempts to criminalize journalism and calls for the immediate release of both journalists with all charges dropped.”
A statement from the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) said: “The selective targeting of journalists – especially, Black and LGBTQIA journalists – raises urgent concerns about unequal enforcement and retaliatory policing of the press … and mirrors a broader pattern in which government actors appear quick to criminalize those documenting injustice.”
The NABJ’s president, Errin Haines, added: “As journalists, our first obligation is to bear witness and to inform. When those obligations are met with detention or prosecution instead of protection, we must ask: ‘What message are we sending about who gets to report and who gets silenced?’”
The Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press said it was an “unprecedented” use of federal law by the justice department that amounted to overreach.
“Historically, the limited number of cases that have been brought against a journalist documenting a protest on private property have been handled as trespass cases at the state level. Those charges are almost always dropped, or if the cases go to trial, the journalists typically prevail,” Gabe Rottman, the group’s vice-president of policy, said.
Jenna Ruddock, advocacy director of Free Press Action, said the arrests were part of Trump’s “all-out assault on Minnesota communities”, and an attempt to silence coverage of it.
“While journalists and civilians continue to heroically document conditions on the ground in the face of escalating violence from federal agents, the Trump administration is using every weapon at its disposal to shut down efforts to document, report and dissent,” she said.
“These latest arrests are just the latest in a long line of first amendment violations by the administration. Too often, corporate media have readily capitulated to the administration’s demands. Independent journalists, on the other hand, are continuing to lead by example with their critical reporting under increasingly unsafe conditions – indeed, with targets on their backs.”
Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, said: “The fact that a federal magistrate judge and a federal appeals court already rejected the evidence against Lemon makes his arrest all the more troubling, putting on full display the continued misuse of government power to deflect accountability and intimidate a free press.”
Democratic politicians joined the condemnation of the journalists’ arrests. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, told the chamber: “The arrest is a dark message to journalists everywhere: if you dare criticize this administration, watch your back. That is not democracy. That is a police state and that is pure authoritarian bile. Democracy will suffer if the government chokes our civil liberties.”
Hakeem Jeffries, leader of House Democrats, said there was “zero basis” for Lemon’s arrest, which he called “a disgraceful affront to the first amendment and a corrupt weaponization of the criminal justice system”.
In a statement, Jeffries said: “Don [Lemon] is the most recent target of the ongoing attacks by Donald Trump and his sycophants on those who challenge the administration and refuse to bend the knee to their extremism.
“The illegitimate extremists in the Trump administration will all be held accountable for their crimes against the constitution. America will not be intimidated.”
