Courtney Radsch, advocacy director of the NYC-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), explains how leaders are violating media freedom, not only in the United States but also around the world.
Since the outbreak of the protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, the U. S. Press Freedom Tracker founded by CPJ has investigated and documented numerous violations against journalists such as arrests by police, theft of equipment, assaults by both police and protesters, among other attacks. Hundreds of cases of press freedom violations in the U. S. were registered from late May to mid-June. CPJ is calling for investigations into these incidents.
One of those incidents involved a DW reporter named Stefan Simons. He was shot at with rubber bullets and threatened in Minneapolis. According to Courtney Radsch, unfortunately, Simons’ experience of getting shot at by the police with non-lethal projectiles is not uncommon.
Not all of those attacks were necessarily directed at the journalists because they were journalists though, she adds. “Sometimes it’s simply an issue of being in a protest in a crowd. But there were numerous incidents in which the police targeted journalists,” says Radsch.
