Miami (August 18, 2014)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today again called on police in Ferguson, Missouri, to stop detaining, threatening and obstructing news coverage of matters of public interest.
Following publication on Friday of a letter signed by 48 press organizations, among them the IAPA, reprimanding the police for staging incidents against journalists and restricting the work of the press; there have been continued protests of detentions and threats of arrests restricting news coverage in Ferguson, that has become the epicenter of tension and racial debate in the country.
Three reporters were detained on Sunday evening by police when they sought to gather information about violent clashes in the city. They are Robert Klemko of the magazine Sports Illustrated, Neil Munshi, a reporter in Chicago of The Financial Times, and Rob Crilly, foreign correspondent of The Daily Telegraph. The three were handcuffed and set free shortly afterwards.
The protests in Ferguson originated with the case of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American, who was killed on August 9. During an incident still under investigation a white police officer shot him several times, killing him. Brown was unarmed. For more than a week protests in Ferguson have oscillated between peaceful demands and acts of violence such as looting of privately-owned establishments.
On August 13 journalists Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and Ryan J. Reilly of the Huffington Post were detained, taken to a police station and held in a cell for approximately 15 minutes. Lowery, who managed to record the incident and published it in The Washington Post, was ordered to stop filming and violently shoved. The two were then freed without any charges being brought.
“The journalists who are covering the news in Ferguson have found themselves exposed to dangerous situations typical of coverage in areas of risk. In addition to that hey face the restrictive and confrontational attitude of the police that limits the ability of colleagues to report and the people’s right to know more about a matter of national interest,” said Claudio Paolillo, Chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information.
Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, declared that restrictions of their freedom to practice and of the movement of journalists and news media, and the creation of obstacles to the free flow of information are directly opposed to press freedom, as established in the Declaration of Chapultepec and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights’ Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org.
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