The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a database of verified press freedom incidents created by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, released its latest annual report in December, which identified 2024 as the third worst year for the press in the U.S. since the Tracker launched in 2017.
The report, authored by senior reporter Stephanie Sugars, analyzes data collected by the Tracker in 2024, which includes assaults, arrests and other forms of obstruction to journalists’ work.
According to the report, “journalists were arrested or detained by police at least 48 times, more than during the previous two years combined.” Of those, nearly 90% occurred near Israel-Hamas war protests, and nearly half were by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). At the time of the report’s publication, charges were still pending against five journalists.
The “highest spike” of journalist arrests during protests was in late April through May, after Columbia University students kickstarted a national movement of pro-Palestinian campus encampments and demonstrations, in which students called for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas War and demanded that administrators divest their universities from Israeli-owned companies. The year’s largest detainment of journalists came on April 30, when “at least six journalists were confined in buildings on campus or forced off the premises while New York City Police Department officers cleared a building that had been occupied by protesters.”
According to the report, “Neither the mayor’s office nor the NYPD responded to requests for comment.”
2024 is described by the Tracker as a “protest year,” a distinction that was also assigned to 2020 and 2021, amid the racial reckoning following the killing of George Floyd by police.
Headshot of Stephanie Sugars. Photo by Tess Mayer via Freedom of the Press Foundation
In an interview with First Amendment Watch, Sugars talked about the Tracker’s report, discussing the considerations that are made in including detainments or arrests, how the Tracker determines who is and is not a journalist, and the often tumultuous relationship between police and the press.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
FAW: How does the Tracker determine who is a journalist?
Sugars: We use a multi-pronged approach for what we end up including in the Tracker. The first step is, as you mentioned, figuring out who is a journalist. And so we like to use a really broad definition, mostly characterized by “Was the individual engaging in an act of journalism?” Namely, collecting information for distribution to the public. So we can include a lot of independent people who may be reporting just on their own social media platforms, or on Substack or something similar, as well as legacy outlets. And then we look into whether the individual has a history of journalistic work, and whether they would self-identify as a journalist. Once we clear that sort of threshold, the next question is again, connecting back to the “engaging in acts of journalism” question, were they arrested in the course of doing journalism, or were they arrested or charged because of their journalistic work?
FAW: Is that increasingly difficult to determine with the growth of alternative media?
Sugars: I think in some ways, yes, it has become more difficult, as a lot of people have been turning to reporting independently, either to fill a need that they see in their community where particular groups or stories are just not being covered as much, or in the way that they think they should be, but also as newsrooms are downsizing or merging or having layoffs or disappearing entirely. So, yes, I think it’s become more complicated because of that. It has also become challenging as norms in the industry have shifted around what is or is not acceptable behavior or rhetoric to use as a working journalist. It’s less taboo now than it may have once been to be vocal about your own opinions on something that you may be reporting on, which has complicated sort of drawing that line between, were you acting as an activist or as a journalist in that moment? And so that’s a line that we’re constantly negotiating with and trying our best to ensure we are respecting the distinction and preserving it.
FAW: Does the data include arrests of student journalists?
Sugars: Yes, we definitely include student journalists. We even have a student journalism tag that we use to make it easier to find those cases in particular. But if they are on assignment for their student paper, we’ve included arrests and assaults. It gets a little messy when you get into denial of access or censorship sort of questions because of the different rights that student journalists have, but we do try to include and address some of the most egregious instances as well.
FAW: Can you explain to me the data’s differentiation between arrests and detainments?
Sugars: We try to be very particular with how we use them so we are consistent. When we say arrest, we truly mean you were beyond being detained. You are also processed, likely taken to a local jail or police headquarters, fingerprinted, maybe photographed, and charges are issued by the department. Versus in a detainment, where you might be held in the field and prevented from continuing reporting for any amount of time but released without being charged.
FAW: How many of this year’s arrests are the result of police abuse of the First Amendment rights of journalists versus the application by the police of reasonable time, place and manner restrictions? Is that something that’s considered?
Sugars: We definitely take it into account, and then also we defer more to the journalists and their perceptions and experiences on the ground than we necessarily do to how police may have framed the context, and also look at whether it was applied in a blanket sort of practice, or if it was more individualized. So, for example, there is a student in Minnesota at the University of Minnesota who was covering a sit-in in an administrative building in October. His name is Tyler Church, working for the student paper, and because of the location he was in when police entered the building through underground tunnels, he was amongst the very first people who were detained. He was even wearing a press vest, had a press credential, identified himself as press, but was still detained. But other journalists who were also there from the student paper and then one journalist from a local outlet were not detained in zip cuffs for any amount of time. And so while all of them were held in the building while police finished clearing it, and not allowed to leave until police declared it safe, we only documented [Church’s] arrest because he was put in zip cuffs, whereas the other three said, “No, it was more of a safety issue.” We try to tread that line, but with the best information that we may have available at the time.
FAW: What do the statistics show also about possible errors in judgement or mistakes made by journalists in going beyond what the First Amendment or local law protects?
Sugars: We include all criminal charges for acts of journalism in the knowledge that there are going to be some in there where there could be an argument that, yes, the journalist has broken this law. So, for example, it is not permitted under law for journalists to, let’s say, follow a protest onto private property, but they may choose to do so from an editorial perspective of, “Well, that’s where the news is.” I can recall some cases out of St. Louis, for example, where reporters followed protesters onto a highway in order to continue documenting the demonstration, but now they are actively also on a highway as a pedestrian, which is very much not allowed, and so it is sort of this balancing act. We’re not trying to say that every single arrest was absolutely without any sort of justification. Another example that comes to mind is we have several cases of journalists being found in contempt of court for not obeying court restrictions on photographing or recording, which there’s the arguments to be made by the journalists that maybe they were not aware of the rule. It may be a clearly stated rule, but it is because of something they were doing for journalistic purposes. That’s sort of how we handle it, to avoid making our own judgment call on whether or not the journalist was justified or not in that action.
FAW: Beyond the raw data, why were journalists this year generally detained, arrested and/or charged? Was there a common trend?
Sugars: So 2024 is what we, in house, refer to as a protest year, i.e. any year where there are particularly inflamed protests or widespread national sustained protests. So other big protests years were 2017 where there was a large number of journalists arrested in a couple of flare up incidents around Trump’s first inauguration, some continuing protests around the DAPL [Dakota Access Pipeline] in North Dakota and then in St. Louis, around a particular court decision in finding that a police officer would not be charged with murder for the death of a Black man [Anthony Lamar Smith]. And then we had 2020 and 2021, which will come as no surprise, when there were big protest years because of the BLM Movement. And so more or less, from May of 2020 through April of 2021, we saw a lot of protests nationally, and then big protests, of course, this year as well, around the Israel-Gaza war. The vast majority of arrests took place in or around protests over the Israel-Gaza war almost exclusively. A few other protests took place as well, but that was the major theme, and so the police response was really measured against how they were responding to the protesters as well, in terms of how they would then treat the press who was covering it.
FAW: Of the journalists arrested while covering Israel-Hamas war protests, was there a common action among them? Trespassing, for example?
Sugars: I think more journalists were just detained than were arrested and charged this year, but a fair number of them were for more or less being in the roadway. That was the case for I think the majority of cases out of New York, which was 23 out of the 48 arrests, which is mindblowing in and of itself. But there were a few that were more so for trespassing.
FAW: There are journalists, as the report notes, that have been arrested or detained more than once. Are each of their arrests counted in the data, or is it only per journalist?
Sugars: We do each individual arrest. So both the journalists who were arrested four times this year, each was detained or arrested three times in New York and then while covering protests in Chicago, around the DNC. And so for cleanliness of data and being able to track things over time, we do them each on their own. That’s why we use words like “journalists were detained or arrested [‘x’] times” rather than “[‘x’] journalists were arrested.”
FAW: You discuss the arrests of photojournalists Josh Pacheco and Olga Fedorova, as each were “detained four times this year while documenting protests in New York City and outside the Chicago DNC.” Their arrests were described as using a “catch and release” tactic. What is that? Where did this language come from?
Sugars: That language was bantered around a little bit starting this year. Most of the journalists that I’m speaking to, specifically in New York, were talking about an apparent, to them, change in how the New York Police Department was responding to protests, specifically pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and this sort of aggressive tactic. I think if I was going to attribute the phrase to one person in particular, it would probably be to Mickey Osterreicher, the general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association. It’s basically referring to this practice of detaining first and asking questions later when it comes to journalists. So just going in, getting them out of the way, and holding them, and then trying to determine whether or not they are press and whether or not there’s justification to press charges against them, rather than using common sense tools and also recognizing press credentials, even if now they’re not being issued by the department themselves. There was some feeling amongst journalists that police were just using not being able to tell the difference between who is a “real reporter” and who is not, as a justification to just detain everyone.
FAW: Is there evidence that the police are using indiscriminate arrests of journalists followed by release without charges as a strategy to keep the public from knowing about what’s going on during demonstrations?
Sugars: More than half, 15 out of 23 cases that we documented involving the NYPD this year, 15 were just detainments, where charges were not filed at all, and there were multiple additional cases where the charges were dropped even before the journalists were released from custody, or were dropped within a month. Almost all of them were. Which I think is more evidence towards arresting or detaining journalists without cause, because if there were cause, you would assume that they would actually pursue the charges.
FAW: How do the police themselves justify all of these detainments when the evidence doesn’t exist to charge the journalists with a crime?
Sugars: Unfortunately, the NYPD hasn’t responded to most of my requests for comment in quite some time, and so it would be speculation at best. That said, I believe that in the past they have made a variety of assertions, ranging from being unable to determine in the moment who is “real” press and who isn’t; that there was a basis and that it was the DA, not the police who elected not to pursue the charges; and that a mistake was made in the field that was quickly resolved after the journalist’s status was verified by a supervisory officer at the scene.
FAW: Was it surprising that the NYPD was responsible for half of the arrests of journalists in 2024? Why or why not?
Sugars: In some ways, yes, in other ways, no. Whenever we talk about which police departments are the most aggressive towards the press, we have to take it with a grain of salt because there is a sort of numbers bias that happens there by sheer volume of population and the size and scale of protests that may take place. So the NYPD and the LAPD have a not great history when it comes to detaining members of the press, but these are also major metropolitan areas that may have huge protests taking place, and more often. New York saw days and days and days, months and months of protests around the war with protesters taking over streets, and not, as the NYPD would prefer, having approved march locations or following a particular route. And so I think that that played into it to an extent, for sure, but also particular policies and attitudes of the department play a role in the arrests that we end up seeing. So for example, both the NYPD and the LAPD have a more common use of kettling, which is a police tactic where they will encircle a crowd in order to oftentimes engage in mass arrests. And so we’ve seen dozens of journalists caught up in these kettles over the years. And so any department that is using a tactic like that is already sort of engaging in a practice that’s more likely to have a negative impact on journalism.
FAW: Does the Tracker account for kettling in its data?
Sugars: One of the things that we hold as a marker for whether or not we will count an arrest that is in a kettle or as a detention, is if the journalist identifies themselves as press and they’re like, “Yeah, we don’t care. Press is going to stay in this kettle,” versus we have had incidents where journalists were caught in the kettle. They were like, “Hey, I’m press,” and they were released from the kettle, or the police actively said, “Hey, if you’re media, we want you out.” Now, we’ve had journalists who decided, “Nope, I’m going to stay in the kettle,” in which case now you’re self-selecting into being detained, and so we will not document those.
FAW: Are there any solutions that have been proposed to curtail the arrests of journalists during these situations? Would standardized press passes help or hurt?
Sugars: It’s very much a mixed bag. We’ve seen police departments ignore all press credentials. There was a journalist who was threatened with arrest in D.C., who had White House-issued credentials, which are some of the most stringent in the country. And so it is sort of this question of, is there any credentialing that is going to be seen as enough without making a sort of national registry, which kind of goes against the whole ethos of journalism, and not making it this exclusionary role for the specific few who meet these guidelines, because you should be able to identify as press and not need credentials at all. Not wearing [or having] credentials for any variety of reasons, as it can make you more of a target, either for arrest or assault by individuals participating, shouldn’t be disqualifying. That being said, there were new recommendations from the Department of Justice for how police should work with and interact with press around demonstrations, and that it is a bit of this give and take and conversation between what are reasonable restrictions that can be put in place and how the two groups should really be interacting with each other. So for example, I’m not going to fundamentally out of hand dismiss the idea of media staging areas when it makes sense and when they’re still reasonable, and that was more of an issue in LA where police would be setting up these staging areas, telling the press that they had to go to these zones, but they are 100 feet, or two full blocks away from where things are taking place, which defeats the purpose of ensuring safe press access. So we’ll see if those new guidelines are in any way followed, if they are allowed to stand under the new administration. But there was a lot of hope when they came out in response to the 2020 protests and because of the involvement of Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and other groups in getting them organized, and so the hope is that it may make a meaningful difference.