Publication Date
7-28-2022
Abstract
Identifying oneself as press—with a badge on a lanyard, label on a helmet, or sign on a car—used to be a near-grant of immunity. It meant safer passage through dangerous terrain. But today, being recognizable as a journalist may be more likely to make one a target. Physical assaults against journalists in the United States increased nearly 1,400% in 2020. Journalists were assaulted by police as they covered Black Lives Matter protests and by a pro-Trump mob as they reported on certification of the presidential election. In public spaces, performing their democratic role, journalists were dragged, beaten, and bloodied. This physical violence is only the most visible danger journalists face. The rate of online violence against journalists is soaring, and it is even more pervasive than physical violence. It is aimed at women, and women of color in particular. In a recent United Nations study of violence against journalists, nearly three-quarters of the respondents identifying as women said they had experienced online abuse, harassment, threats, and attacks. The impact of this violence on individual journalists is severe, sometimes even debilitating and career ending. But the impact extends beyond the individual journalists targeted. Because this violence is aimed almost entirely at women, people of color, non-Christians, and non-straight journalists, it threatens a very particular impact on news and our information ecology. Journalists within these groups are often the journalists who report on topics that challenge social hierarchies and inequities. Their work regularly gives voice to others from marginalized populations. Thus, this violence disproportionately silences voices already relegated to the edges. Rather than letting our national conversation branch and proliferate, the violence attempts to shear it to a white, male, Christian, and straight trunk. At its core, democracy requires that new voices and stories can be heard so that the same stock stories—and the hierarchies they support—do not become entrenched. Journalists exist, in part, to tell us these new stories about ourselves and our communities—stories that bring us into conversation with one another and thereby help us to successfully self-govern. In this way, the violence is an assault on the freedom of the press, freedom of expression, and democracy itself. And it is continuing with impunity. To address the systemic harm caused by violence against journalists, this Article proposes a federal “obstruction of journalism” statute modeled on the federal obstruction of justice ones. The obstruction of justice statutes are aimed at preserving the effective functioning of our justice system by criminalizing threats against that system. Likewise, the obstruction of journalism statute proposed in this Article would criminalize physical violence and particularly severe threats against reporters with the aim of protecting journalism, another system integral to the functioning of democracy.
First Page
407
Recommended Citation
Erin C. Carroll, Obstruction of Journalism, 99 DENV. L. REV. 407 (2022).