 "Photo: Matt Rourke, The Associated Press")
A group of journalists from the University of Kentucky newspaper were released from jail Wednesday following their arrest Monday after covering a protest outside the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.
Photography adviser Jim Winn and photojournalism students Britney McIntosh and Ed Matthews work for the Kentucky Kernel, the university's newspaper, but attended the convention as credentialed freelance journalists. They were among 285 people arrested and charged with either misdemeanors or felonies at the convention Monday, said Sgt. William Palmer, a member of the Joint Information Center, a facility used during the convention to relay all public information to the media.
Kernel managing editor Blair Thomas said the three were taking photographs of a protest outside the convention when a group of nearly 300 protesters broke off from the main group and were rounded up by police and arrested along with the journalists, she said.
The three were released Wednesday morning pending an investigation, said officials from St. Paul's Ramsey County Adult Detention Center. Thomas said McIntosh and Matthews are still missing photo equipment confiscated by police.
Adam Goldstein, attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center, said the three could have been easily mistaken as protesters
because there is no consistent, standardized way to identify members of the press throughout the country. If journalists are not working for well-known publications, they are oftentimes not considered legitimate journalists unless the police department will accept other forms of press credentials, he said.
"The main problem student journalists in general face in these situations is that it's very difficult and sometimes impossible to get police credentials to cover the event," Goldstein said. "Some jurisdictions won't issue them to student media, and even those jurisdictions that will often only license those that are in their territory."
Goldstein said the journalists' arrests were part of a bigger problem among student and small-circulation news organizations to be recognized as legitimate media.
"If you're a student paper, it's much less likely that you're going to be recognized a few states away, and you're all the more likely to be rounded up [with protesters]," Goldstein said.
Be the first to comment on this article!