It’s old news now… but I can’t imagine it won’t set a fire in anybody’s belly who truly cares for people’s rights…
So for today’s Don’t Say That story… we have Ms. Goodman in North Dakota…
“I will go back to North Dakota to fight this charge,” she said. “It is a clear violation of the First Amendment,” said Goodman. “I was doing my job as a journalist, covering a violent attack on Native American protesters.”
It couldn’t be more obvious that Ms. Goodman is being charged solely for her journalism and the impact it had on the oil pipeline debate. Here’s how Democracy Now described its news coverage that led to the charges against Ms. Goodman:
On Saturday, September 3, Democracy Now! filmed security guards working for the pipeline company attacking protesters. The report showed guards unleashing dogs and using pepper spray and featured people with bite injuries and a dog with blood on its mouth and nose.
Democracy Now!’s report went viral online, was viewed more than 14 million times on Facebook and was rebroadcast on many outlets, including CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, MSNBCand the Huffington Post.
Rolling Stone’s Matt Tiabbi detailed what happened as a result of the segment Democracy Now aired:
Shortly thereafter, the Obama administration intervened, stopping pipeline construction on Army Corps land and asking the company to “voluntarily pause all construction activity” in the area.
This victory for the Standing Rock Sioux would likely not have been possible without the aggressive independent reporting of Democracy Now!, whose pictures created significant public pressure.
Yet because, in the words of the prosecutor, “Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions,” she now faces criminal charges. Read that sentence again. The state is literally charging her for nothing else beyond exercising her rights as a journalist.
Source: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/13/north-dakota-must-drop-outrage.html
It is disgusting that a person who is supposed to be a public servant, a defender of people’s rights, would be so set against the very reason for his jobs existence.
Even in a land where free speech is acknowledged as a fundamental human right… we have idiots trampling all over that right.
This is a prime example of why the Don’t Say That series exists.
And just today a reporter was shot with rubber bullets by the police while interviewing a man at the Standing Rock protest.
I was shot by militarized police WHILE interviewing a man on camera at #StandingRock…and here’s the footage. #NoDAPL https://t.co/FfWiSCbiKf pic.twitter.com/4DRwNPkfZ9
— Erin Schrode (@ErinSchrode) November 3, 2016
I cannot imagine a more inappropriate and un-American behavior than harming people for their speech.
Public servants everywhere should be ashamed.