Joe’s in the morning Mika Brzezinski and Jonathan Lemire Reporting on the arrest of former CNN host Don Lemon On Friday, the group warned it could be a “terrible” first step in a larger attack on press freedom.
Brzezinski and Lemire, and molly joe fast and Lisa RubinAccording to reports, Lemon’s attorney announced that he was arrested Thursday night while protesting ICE at a St. Paul church in Minnesota. Lemon insists he was only covering the protests as a reporter and not a participant. The U.S. Department of Justice previously announced the arrest of several activists involved in attacks on churches during Sunday services.
Lemon has previously predicted that the Justice Department would pursue him and possibly bring charges against him.
“If there’s no applicable law, they’re going to try to install or modify something, or bypass the judge and do it themselves. It doesn’t matter, everything they say has to do with the protesters. I’m not a protester,” Lemon told Scripps News.
Lemire noted that Lemon’s arrest came days after the FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter this month and seized her equipment in connection with alleged classified reporting.
“On a matter of national security. Computers take away devices, take away computers. The post was assured that the reporter herself was not a target of the investigation. It was one of her sources, but this was seen as a real crackdown on press freedom,” Lemire said.
Rubin, senior political reporter at MS NOW, predicted Lemon could be the first step in the government targeting journalists more aggressively.
She argued:
If your goal is to go after journalists for exercising their First Amendment rights, rights that the four of us truly cherish and that our network cherishes, then Don Lemon has no network behind him. He doesn’t work for a big company like Versant or any other major network or any major print publication. His current lack of infrastructure and support makes him a very convenient and easy first target for the Department of Justice, which wants journalists to worry about our work.
Joan Fast added that Lemon’s arrest felt like something from a dictatorship.
“Think about countries where journalists are being targeted by the federal government, by governments like Russia, China, Türkiye, etc., they are not democracies,” she said. “I mean, this kind of thing, it’s like a shot in the arm to the liberal media. It’s scary.”
Watch above via MS NOW.
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