While it’s no secret that President Donald Trump and the predominately liberal establishment media have a strong dislike for each other, Trump’s opponents go too far when they characterize his critiques of the media as a veritable assault on the First Amendment-protected freedom of the press.
Given the manner by which the left has placed journalists on some sort of exalted pedestal of inscrutability — at least when it comes to Trump — it’s rather odd that the far-left “progressive” mayor of San Francisco just threw her support behind an armed, no-knock raid by the San Francisco Police Department on the home of an independent journalist who refused to reveal a secret source that could prove embarrassing to some Bay Area authorities.
Vice News reported on the May 10 raid on the home of freelance videographer Bryan Carmody, who had recently received inside information from a secret source — believed to work at the police department — about the “salacious” details of a Jeff Adachi’s death. Adachi, it’s worth noting, had a history of butting heads with the police department.
Carmody was handcuffed and detained for several hours as officers conducted a thorough search of his home and seized his “cameras, cellphones, computers, tablets, [and] hard drives,” according to Vice — thousands of dollars of work-related equipment that the department had refused to return as of Wednesday.
The search warrants for the raid were reportedly signed by two judges, though it remains unclear if either of those judges knew they were signing a warrant that targeted a journalist.
This matters, because there are federal and California state laws that expressly prohibit such actions.
The federal Privacy Protection Act of 1980 prohibits the seizure of a journalist’s “work product material” and California’s “shield law” allows journalists to keep the identity of confidential sources secret, according to Vice.
Another California law prohibits authorities from carrying out search warrants against journalists. Instead, authorities are required to obtain court-issued subpoenas.
In light of all this, the SFPD no-knock raid on the home of a journalist is a far more significant assault on “freedom of the press” than Trump’s cries of “fake news” or even his labeling of blatantly dishonest media outlets as the “enemy of the people.”
Making this glaring double standard that much worse is a statement released by progressive San Francisco Mayor London Breed that seemed to support the police department’s actions.
“The San Francisco Police Department is in the process of conducting an investigation into how confidential information was released from within the Department,” Breed said. “As part of this investigation, the department went through the appropriate legal process to request a search warrant, which was approved by two judges.”
“I believe that someone from within the department needs to be held accountable for the release of this information,” Breed added. “The police need to continue that internal investigation using legal and appropriate means.”
The statement’s sentiments were decried in a Twitter thread by HuffPost and New York Magazine journalist Yashar Ali as “disgraceful and unacceptable,” as well as “useless” and “horrid.”
“What the SFPD did and what two judges signed off on was clearly a violation of California'[s] shield law. No reasonable person disputes that. If the FBI did the same thing after someone leaked something bad for Trump, people would be outraged,” Ali accurately noted.
“This is no different.”
5. What the SFPD did and what two judges signed off on was clearly a violation of California' shield law. No reasonable person disputes that. If the FBI did the same thing after someone leaked something bad for Trump, people would be outraged.
This is no different.
279 people are talking about this
Ali further revealed that he too had received secret leaks related to the Adachi case, and seemed to dare the SFPD to try and force him to reveal his sources, something he made it clear that he would be unwilling to do.
He concluded his thread by suggesting that Breed and the SFPD, as well as the two judges, should be ashamed of their blatant violation of the laws, and asserted that what had occurred was “no different than what you would see in an autocratic regime. Raiding a journalists home and seizing his equipment!!”
8. Mayor @LondonBreed, @SFPD, and the two Judges who signed off on the warrant ought to be ashamed of themselves.
9. The actions taken by @SFPD and Mayor @LondonBreed’s endorsement are no different than what you would see in an autocratic regime.
Raiding a journalists home and seizing his equipment!!
232 people are talking about this
Ali is right: The blatant disregard for established law and protections of journalists by the powers that be in San Francisco is simply disgusting and horribly hypocritical.
As Ali alluded to in his thread, imagine what the reaction from the establishment media would be if Trump had ordered the FBI to conduct an armed, no-knock raid on the home of CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta or any number of other journalists who’ve embarrassed him by publishing leaked insider information.
The shouts of despair, rending of garments and vitriolic demands for retribution would be deafening — and perhaps rightly so.
Aside from proving once again just how duplicitously dishonest and hypocritical many in the establishment media can be — with the exception of folks like Ali who will sometimes call it out on their own side — this incident highlights just how fragile our cherished freedoms truly are.
This is why our precious liberties should never be taken for granted, but fought for tooth-and-nail, regardless of where one might align on the underlying issues.
No comments:
Post a Comment