Bloomberg's office admits to arresting journalists for covering OWS

Bloomberg's office admits to arresting journalists for covering OWS

rt.com

New York is admitting that journalists that they credentialed are among those that were cuffed by cops. In a statement to the press released from Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office on Thursday, November 17, spokesperson Stu Loeser addressed the media about reports relating to the growing number of journalists who have been arrested by the NYPD during Occupy Wall Street protests, a now-international movement which began in Lower Manhattan two months to the day of Loeser’s memo.

(visit the link for the full news article)

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Well if you ever needed proof that the constitution is not being obeyed.
1. Your dumb
2. Here it is
Not that it hasn’t been here for months. Police are only meant to use force when someone is in danger and accordingly there have been hundreds of assaults on protesters that are going unprosecuted.
There is no freedom of speech; there is no freedom for that matter.

People are waking up one by one and it won’t be long until the revolution is right on our doorstep.
People against occupy are blind.

rt.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I will play devil's advocate here:

Are reporters allowed in the building while a fire is being fought?

My opinion:

RT.com has a misleading title on that story. The reporters were not arrested for covering the story. They were arrested for being there.

Freedom of the press and freedom of speech does not mean that you can disobey orders. If police tell people to vacate an area and someone goes there to get the story then they're subject to arrest.

Originally posted by butcherguy
I will play devil's advocate here:

Are reporters allowed in the building will a fire is being fought?

My opinion:

RT.com has a misleading title on that story. The reporters were not arrested for covering the story. They were arrested for being there.

A building that is on fire is not anything close to a classwar state vs people crackdown.

The police didn't want reporters there to record their crackdown, because that's just too dangerous and unsafe apparently... yet American media just loves to send their reporters to cover so-called rebellions in places like Libya in order to show how horrible state crackdown is when it happens anywhere other than the US or its allies.

reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

If what you say is true, then the police are not effective in their quest to stifle the news.....

It is all over the place, media-wise.

If the govt wanted to trample the constitution, we wouldn't know anything about this story, because there wouldn't be anyone there protesting.

Originally posted by WakeUpRiseUp

Bloomberg's office admits to arresting journalists...

IMHO, a completely misleading and sensationalist headline.
There is no suggestion whatsoever that Bloombergs office has anything at all to do with the arrests, or is trying to stifle reporting, or is targeting reporters in any way at all.

For me this is a policing issue, where once they go into "arrest mode" and the blood comes up, they will arrest anyone who stands in their way or questions their authoritah, be in a protester, a reporter, a retired judge, an ex marine, The Queen, or Jesus... it doesnt matter who, they'll get arrested.

Bloomberg’s spokesperson Stu Loeser doesnt do himself any favors by siding 100 percent with the police, after the event.

Originally posted by butcherguy
reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

 

If what you say is true, then the police are not effective in their quest to stifle the news.....

It is all over the place, media-wise.

If the govt wanted to trample the constitution, we wouldn't know anything about this story, because there wouldn't be anyone there protesting.

And nothing is ever black and white, is it?

Thankfully for the US government, most people in the US, who cannot be arsed to even get up and attend an Occupy rally in the first place, happen to be too complacent and sedated to question the voice of the hand that feeds them. When the police say the Occupy protestors were violent, then it's established as so. It's called doublespeak; George Orwell wrote a book on it once.

reply to post by WakeUpRiseUp


I found this statement very interesting (emphasis is mine).

“Not being familiar with many of the media outlets for which The Awl says these reporters work, I had the list of ‘26 arrested reporters’ checked against the roster of reporters who hold valid NYPD press passes,” Loeser adds. “You can imagine my surprise when we found that only five of the 26 arrested reporters actually have valid NYPD-issued press credentials.”

He was surprised that only 5 had them, did he expect more?

reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi
It is my belief that most people in the US are tied down to JOBS, and that is what prevents them from spending a few weeks in a park. Another thing that limits them is that the majority have their taxes removed directly from their paychecks, making a general strike (what needs to happen, if there is to be any change) less harmful to the govt.

It is no accident that these conditions exist, IMO.

Originally posted by butcherguy
I will play devil's advocate here:

Are reporters allowed in the building while a fire is being fought?

My opinion:

RT.com has a misleading title on that story. The reporters were not arrested for covering the story. They were arrested for being there.

edit on 20-11-2011 by butcherguy because: (no reason given)

You are partly right, they were arrested for being there, but with the NYPD-issued press credentials, they should not have been arrested at all. Having those credentials on them is supposed to prove that they are there as journalists covering a story.

There is a thread about hard line right/left wingers taking things in a bad direction on ATS.

I just want to make the point that I haven't sad anything wrong about OWS, I am just making observations.

I am a libertarian. I think the govt has us all under nearly complete control, I have posted some of the ways that they maintain that control.

I am a libertarian, not an anarchist.

reply to post by gamesmaster63

Credentialed journalists are not immune to arrest.

Foreign diplomats are.

reply to post by gamesmaster63


What surprises me is this.

The NYPD apparently has control of press credentials.

I was unaware that this was part of the job description. Anyone else bothered by the notion of the police controlling who is press and who isn't?

Originally posted by butcherguy
reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi

 

It is my belief that most people in the US are tied down to JOBS, and that is what prevents them from spending a few weeks in a park. Another thing that limits them is that the majority have their taxes removed directly from their paychecks, making a general strike (what needs to happen, if there is to be any change) less harmful to the govt.

It is no accident that these conditions exist, IMO.

Make absolutely no mistake: general strike is the most important thing that the working class can do. When the population are able to shut down the system on their own terms, then what does the government have? Only politicians, police and soldiers. The longer the strike, the less faith their is in any status quo rectification to social problems, the more antsy the government gets, until something revolutionary actually happens.

Do you not find it strange that nothing significant has resulted from the Occupy movement, despite the fact that millions of Americans alone were involved in them? And where is the general outcry when police use agent provacateurs to incite riots while they mace and beat peaceful protestors? It's because the US population doesn't control the media; the media controls them. Only the people who were there, or those who have the inherent ability to emphasize with them, really understand the significance of why such a movement ever had that kind of momentum.

Anyone who tows the party line, claiming that these Occupy movements are irrelevant, are completely blind and obviously complacent with being nobodies in a system of exploitation. The question here is why would anybody side with the police view? Perhaps they have lost sight with the very foundation of their country and society.

reply to post by Dimitri Dzengalshlevi


Remember the time scale we're looking at here, Dimitri.

It's been two months since all this started. Two months. Political movements can take decades to see fruition.

In two months, this movement has exploded worldwide, is starting to dominate headlines, has shifted the national discourse towards social injustice, after more than forty years of silence in the US, and is clearly already giving the Owner Caste a bad case of the shakes.

Two months. That's actually really good. it took over a year for the Montgomery bus boycott to get results, for comparison.

reply to post by butcherguy


if they were not effective it wasn't for lack of trying

Yesterday in New York, officers within the NYPD were filmed setting up blockades on the sidewalks of Manhattan, demanding identification from citizens to have access to public streets. As thousands rallied against corporate greed, NYPD officers were filmed ironically demanding corporate-issued building passes from New York workers so that they could have permission to walk certain routes, resulting in many protesters proclaiming that the City has been transformed into a literal Police State. Now it is clear that the right to walk the streets of New York is being eradicated by the NYPD while at the same time the First Amendment’s right to report is being completely ignored by the Police Department while they keep journalists from reporting from one of the biggest news events in the world at the moment.

"American foreign correspondents routinely put themselves in harm's way to do their jobs, in some of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. And their NYC colleagues deserve the freedom to make the same choice," Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said in a statement earlier this month. "Zuccotti Park is not Tiananmen Square."

As Occupy events continue to escalate in intensity, however, it seems as if Bloomberg’s tyrannical rule over New York is becoming more and more evident. Reports of journalists arrested during Thursday’s Day of Action have been unconfirmed so far, though RT’s own Lucy Kafanov says that she was struck by a police baton while reporting from New York and independent journalist Luke Rudkowski claims a plain-clothes officer punched him in the face for filming a demonstration. Others told reporters that the NYPD refused their credentials during protests, claiming them invalid yet threatening to revoke them at the same time.

Retired New York Supreme Court Judge Karen Smith adds that on Thursday's Day of Action, she was threatened with arrest herself while volunteering as a legal observer during the protests and was nearly assaulted by the NYPD.

"I was there to take down the names of people who were arrested," Judge Smith tells Democracy Now on Friday. "As I’m standing there, some African-American woman goes up to a police officer and says, ‘I need to get in. My daughter’s there. I want to know if she’s OK.’ And he said, ‘Move on, lady.’ And they kept pushing with their sticks, pushing back. And she was crying. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he throws her to the ground and starts hitting her in the head,” says Smith. “I walk over, and I say, ‘Look, cuff her if she’s done something, but you don’t need to do that.’ And he said, ‘Lady, do you want to get arrested?’ And I said, ‘Do you see my hat? I’m here as a legal observer.’ He said, ‘You want to get arrested?’ And he pushed me up against the wall.

very sick puppies these ossifers are

and will be taught the Superman, by yours truly, should they attempt to deny me my right to set foot where, when,
and if necessary on whom i will

lol 1st line of defense

www.tech-ex.net...
+
www.mobilemag.com...
modified to get more than 80,000 volts + at least a couple of Amps

reply to post by butcherguy

The reporters were not arrested for covering the story. They were arrested for being there.

???

Sounds like doublespeak to me.

S&F for the thread.

reply to post by soficrow


As in being in a riot, that is why they had riot police there.

I will say it again, I am not anti-OWS.

The RT.com story was inaccurate, as are a lot of their stories.

Originally posted by WakeUpRiseUp
www.youtube.com...

Well if you ever needed proof that the constitution is not being obeyed.
1. Your dumb
2. Here it is
Not that it hasn’t been here for months. Police are only meant to use force when someone is in danger and accordingly there have been hundreds of assaults on protesters that are going unprosecuted.
There is no freedom of speech; there is no freedom for that matter.

People are waking up one by one and it won’t be long until the revolution is right on our doorstep.
People against occupy are blind.

rt.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

edit on 20-11-2011 by WakeUpRiseUp because: (no reason given)

"You're either with us, or against us!"

Zero sum thinking is a key indicator of ill conceived logic and blind followers.