zlacker

>>sorami+(OP)
Man, this seems like such an uphill battle. I feel like unless they can show police were trying to deliberately target the press rather than just treating them like any other members of the public, they'll have that much more difficult of a time getting past qualified immunity and winning a lawsuit.

>>mehrda+1y
I agree with you this probably won't be easy. But the video of the CNN arrest is quite damning in my non-lawyer opinion. They had press credentials. They clearly and calmly identify themselves as press. They clearly and calmly state that they will move back to wherever the police want them. They are arrested 1 by 1 over the course of several minutes.

>>TallGu+my
I'm having trouble finding the clip you're talking about (the link next to CNN redirects to AP News and says "PAGE NOT FOUND" for me?), but in any case: the thing is, I don't think (though IANAL, please do correct me if this is wrong!) it legally matters one bit that they had press credentials and clearly identified themselves as such. Being a journalist, as far as I know, doesn't give you some kind of immunity to anything. My understanding is that if they get treated better, it's only because the executive does it out of respect for the press or to steer clear of the line and build a more clear-cut case. But legally, I expect they'll just be treated like any random people. I imagine police will make a case that it's not realistic to negotiate with each person on an individual basis when dealing with crowds and that they have to do things in bulk as much as possible. And if you want to win, you can't realistically argue that they shouldn't have the power to do things en masse, so the only viable remaining argument I can see is that, even with that consideration, their actions were still somehow unconstitutional. It's possible one could make such a case for some of these incidents, but if the CNN case was merely one of being "arrested" as you describe (and not e.g. getting badly injured etc.), it doesn't sound like a winning case. The legal system seems to pretty much treat a mere arrest as a no-op in many situations... treating it otherwise requires clearing a really high bar as far as I've been able to tell.