Protesters at the kick-off rally for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s reelection campaign verbally assaulted and threatened journalists covering the event Thursday night in Albuquerque.
Courtesy Megan Abundis (@meganrabundis)
While former President Donald Trump and members of his administration made harassing the media acceptable to portions of society, last night, some protesters made personal threats to individual people.
These actions are direct threats to this country’s First Amendment protections of free speech and the press. The Society of Professional Journalists, Rio Grande Chapter denounces these attacks and defends all reporters’ right to cover public events.
While protesters interrupted the outdoor event by shouting conspiracy theories and blasting sirens, reporters from KOB-TV and the Albuquerque Journal were harassed by at least one protester who gave the Nazi salute and shouted “Sieg Heil,” a German phrase popularized by the Nazi Party and later adopted by racist and white supremacist groups. A group of protesters told another reporter they were going to “fuck her up.”
We are asking every candidate running for office to defend the rights of journalists to do their jobs and support their constitutional right to cover political events, protests or any other public event. Journalists should be able to do so without fearing for their safety — just as all people should have the right to do their jobs without fearing for their safety.
We also ask newsroom managers to take steps to ensure reporters, photographers and videographers are safe while on the job, and we’d like to point our fellow journalists to this post from former SPJ Rio Grande President Karen Coates on keeping safe while reporting.
The public has a right to know about these events and the associated protests. Reporters have a right to report on them without being threatened, harassed or attacked. In fact, democracy depends on this.
