I’ve been covering a pretty tough story involving the active investigation of a police shooting — and the protests it has sparked — and on Friday I became part of the story a little more than I’d like to be.
I received a tip from one of my sources that he would be joining some other activists in a meeting with the prosecutor, and that if things did not go smoothly they may engage in some civil disobedience. I was told that they were also alerting the local paper. I was the online guy. TV wasn’t going to be interested, because they don’t allow cameras inside the court complex.
I caught up with them and took some pictures of the men outside the courthouse, and then stashed my camera in my car. The other reporter and I followed them into the lobby. I won’t rehash what happened inside, because most of it made its way into my story, which I wrote from my car outside the courthouse. But we witnessed the whole thing.
At one point I was asked to leave the room where two men were about to be arrested. I put up a bit of a fight, asking if I was going to be arrested if I didn’t leave, arguing that I was only there to observe, and that I’d be gone as soon as they were gone. It was tense for a brief period, but the cops involved were polite. They were doing their jobs, same as me.
Afterward, seeking comment from the prosecutor for that story, his communications director sent me a statement. In it, he mistook me for a reporter from the other reporter’s organization, accusing them of colluding with activists, sending two reporters and a photographer to make a scene and then cover it. He made some valid complaints about how the event distracted his office from some important investigations, but accused us of making news instead of reporting it, of conspiring to create a spectacle where no spectacle would otherwise exist.
Civil disobedience is by its very nature spectacle. You don’t go on a hunger strike and then not tell anyone about it. So yes, we went to the courthouse with the understanding that there would be something to see. But I was very careful about making clear to the activists that I was there to observe; I was sensitive to being used as a bargaining chip, as advocacy groups and government agencies alike are wont to do with media coverage.
That statement, describing a situation I had witnessed from start to finish, was riddled with inaccuracies. Certainly, most of the releases from that office are less reactionary, the result of deliberate police investigations. But I couldn’t help but wonder, if this is how they describe a situation I witnessed, how accurate are the other statements they send me on a regular basis?
From my experience, this agency is a pretty tight ship. They do good police work. But as a journalist, I’m kind of allergic to bullshit, and that account of how I went about doing my job gave me hives. I spent the weekend doing a lot of hand-wringing over whether or not I did the right thing, and I’ve decided I wouldn’t do a single thing differently. Real reporting isn’t easy or comfortable and it doesn’t make everyone happy. Shit happens.
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