Jailing a journalist won’t stop the truth

A Young Reporter on the Indictment of Journalist Covering Inauguration Day Protest

Emerald Ip - SV De-Bug - June 9, 2017 - 5 minute read

Editor's Note:

Journalist Aaron Cantú faces up to 75 years in prison for doing his job. He was arrested at the Washington, D.C., Inauguration Day protest for being on the scene that turned into a riot. Charges were dropped on all members of the press but Cantú and a photographer. One young journalist just starting her career is undeterred by the attempts to silence and discredit those whose duty it is to tell the truth. Cantú is scheduled to be arraigned today.

The night I decided I wanted to become a journalist was the night I watched the police shoot tear gas at a news crew and protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.

The second night of protests after Mike Brown was killed, I stayed glued to my computer screen watching as the cameraman livestreamed how protesters were herded into a residential neighborhood as police continued to fire canisters of tear gas at them.

“We will continue to broadcast,” the reporter repeated. “No matter what, we will continue to broadcast.”

I was physically shaking in fear and outrage, but I knew then and there I wanted to do what that reporter was doing. I haven’t changed my mind since.

Journalist Aaron Cantú is facing up to 75 years in prison for reporting on the Jan. 20 protests in Washington, D.C, according to The Monitor. He isn’t the first reporter to be arrested for covering a protest. He wasn’t even the only reporter arrested at that particular protest.

What is notable is that he is the only one of two left facing charges. The other journalists at the same protest have had their charges dropped. Aaron Cantú was only named as being present while property damage occurred and not as a source of property damage, but now faces eight felony counts—including inciting a riot, rioting, conspiracy to riot and five counts of destruction of property, according to the Santa Fe Reporter.

The current presidential administration has repeatedly publicly attacked the news media and news organizations, saying that the media are telling fake stories and lying to make the current presidential administration look bad. (See Donald Trump’s twitter.)

I’m left wondering if Aaron Cantú is being made an example to intimidate other reporters and keep people from going into the field.

I’m left feeling scared, but not surprised.

As long as people have tried to report the truth, there have been people in power trying to keep truth hidden to protect their own special interests. So far in 2017 there have already been at least 13 journalists killed worldwide for doing their job.

Distrust of the media in the US is escalating to the point where a Montana candidate for the House of Representatives will body slam a reporter from the Guardian and repeatedly punch him for asking a question. There were people who supported that reporter being attacked.

I know that I’m trying to enter a profession where I could get arrested for doing my job, where I can get punched and people will cheer on my attacker, and where if I travel internationally on the job, I can be kidnapped or killed. The police might shoot me with tear gas or break my camera and take my recording equipment away. I will probably get harassed on social media and probably will end up receiving death threats if my stories piss off the wrong people. Oh well.

I’m going to be a journalist and do my duty.

They can lock up Aaron Cantú for 75 years and that won’t change that people protested on Jan. 20 and their voices were heard that day. They can lock me up for reporting on a San Jose protest and that won’t change the fact that people are sick and tired and angry over the injustices in this city, this country, and this world.

Here’s a fact among the many that the Trump administration can’t accept:
Jailing a journalist won’t stop the truth from getting out there.

Locking up Aaron Cantú for over 70 years won’t stop the leakers, won’t stop the protests, and it won’t stop good journalists from telling the truth to the world.

The administration that invented the phrase “alternative facts” wants to silence and discredit the people who give folks the true facts they need to fight back.

We will not be silent. We journalists will continue to do our job.

Fear will not be enough to stop me.

Image by Adrian Avila