Journalist arrested, charged for Jan. 6 coverage

So, let me get this straight...

This guy has no journalistic training. No education, no professional experience. He shows up on Jan. 6 with a cellphone and films what he sees. He also offers commentary, including some that seems to support the behavior of those invading the Capitol.

I don't care who he works for now. I don't care what he's done in the days after Jan. 6. It is immaterial.

This guy was not a professional journalist. He was not credentialed on Jan. 6. He was not even a former journalist doing independent work.

He's just a guy. This is someone pretending to be a journalist in an attempt to avoid the consequences of his actions on Jan. 6.

 

There's a lot of self-dramatizing, self-valorizing, self-mythologizing going on with this guy.

That's fine. I'll still defend his right to the protections of the 1st Amendment - to the extent they're no different than those for all the other journalists arrested or assaulted on or for January 6.

Again, US journalists are arrested more frequently than folks think, often on charges exactly like these, which amount to trespassing.

But I have to laugh when I see people interviewed on camera talking about how their speech is being "suppressed."

 

"I'm a libertarian. I don't like either side. Also, I work for Glenn Beck."

 

"People are smashing their way into the capital because they believe a bunch of nonsense, and I'm going to follow them in but it's OK because I'm taking video with my cell phone," is a terrible strategy.

 

I also think Jan 6 is a unique event in our history and you can’t make honest comparisons to anything else, especially when trying to defend or whitewash what happened there.

 

According to this the First Amendment defense is not likely to work.

https://www.wral.com/story/facing-p...an-defends-his-role-in-jan-6-capitol-takover/

 

IMO he's no more of a journalist than Assange.

Just because you have a phone taking video or create a website to dump hacked docs doesn't automatically make you a journalist.

 

Nobody has taken it on because it isn't a job that any one person can do, particularly one who does not have subpoena power. Which is why we have an entire Federal Bureau of Investigation that is responsible for doing it, and an entire judiciary responsible for deciding whether their investigation warrants charges. You either have faith in those institutions or you don't. The Trumps and Becks of the world have been waging a decades-long war designed specifically to get people like you to lose faith in institutions. The whole goal was to get you to a point where you could watch a mob overrun the Capitol and beat the shit out of police officers and try to nullify an election and you'd decide that it must be the Feds fault. Congrats.

 

Can we add journalists to the MAGA list of jobs that provide total immunity from the law? If the list is alphabetical, make sure it goes before "President, Republican."

 

Forty years in the making, no less. And they still don't see how they're being manipulated.

 

If you think erosion of faith in the FBI started with Glenn Beck you really need to read a J Edgar Hoover book and watch one of the Whitey Bulger movies

 

Should the subject be changed to put quote marks around "journalist"?