This was the 12th time that Linda Gibbons had violated the 18-meter \u201cbubble zone\u201d that surrounds Canadian abortion clinics, so all the players in the scene knew their roles.<\/p>\n\n
The tiny grandmother sat down and silently began to pray as Toronto police moved in. Sue Careless and two other journalists maneuvered to record the arrest. Careless concentrated on Gibbons, framing her in the camera\u2019s viewfinder between a church steeple and the clinic door. She heard an officer reading the familiar pre-arrest litany.<\/p>\n\n
Then a policeman said, \u201cYou have to leave.\u201d Careless explained that she was a journalist and kept clicking. The last photo she took, before the handcuffs went on, showed the police starting to drag Gibbons across the street. The police confiscated her film.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIn the police van, I kept saying, \u2018I\u2019m a journalist. \u2026 I had a right to be there,\u2019 \u201d said Careless. \u201cOne of the officers finally asked me, \u2018What\u2019s your name?\u2019 I said, \u2018Why don\u2019t you read it off my press card?\u2019 \u2026 So that\u2019s what he did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The police arrested one demonstrator and three freelance journalists.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThe math just didn\u2019t add up,\u201d said Careless.<\/p>\n\n
But her legal bills quickly started to add up. Careless endured 13 court appearances before the Crown withdrew the charges. Oct. 15 marked the one-year anniversary of the arrests and her lawyer is still working to retrieve her mug shots and fingerprints from police files.<\/p>\n\n
Careless has credentials from the Periodical Writers Association of Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists and, in the past decade, has written 300-plus articles for 22 secular and religious publications. She is best known for her Canadian Church Press work and, when arrested, was on assignment for The Interim \u2014 a national pro-life newspaper.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt seemed like nobody, at least in the secular press, wanted to cover this,\u201d said Careless. \u201cPeople said it was just a religion story or it was an abortion story. I kept saying, \u2018No! This is about freedom of the press. \u2026 I had a press card and they arrested me. That\u2019s a story.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n\n
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects journalists, whether they work in powerful newsrooms or for smaller organizations. The same is true under U.S. law. But police on both sides of the border seem to be cracking down, said Paul McMaster, the First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Va.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cA journalist is a journalist,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the government\u2019s job to credential some journalists and not others. \u2026 Clearly, the whole point was to intimidate Sue Careless and the other journalists who were out there covering a controversial event.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Sadly, he added, this is probably a \u201cwin-win situation for the police. After all, who cares what happens to reporters?\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Careless noted that many other journalists \u2014 even some who defend abortion rights \u2014 cared enough to contribute to her legal defense fund. After all, there is nothing unusual about journalists getting caught in the tense territory between police and demonstrators. And the number of \u201calternative journalists\u201d is rising, since the World Wide Web is allowing many secular and religious advocacy groups to create their own niche-news operations.<\/p>\n\n
If a pro-life journalist could get arrested at an abortion-clinic protest, then a Mennonite journalist might be arrested outside a nuclear-weapons plant. A Wiccan website reporter might get handcuffed because she saw police break up a sit-in that was stopping loggers from entering a sacred forest. A Southern Baptist journalist might face arrest for photographing gay and lesbian protestors that disrupted a convention of evangelical sex therapists.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cIt does not matter which media outlet sends the reporter, or what the personal sympathies are of the photographer, or what the politics are of the demonstration,\u201d argued Careless, in an essay for the Globe and Mail in Toronto. \u201cAs long as the journalist is working as a professional journalist, and not an activist, the police should not interfere with the news-gathering process.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI and other freelance journalists must not be so intimidated by these arrests that we will retreat to only the safe subjects or flower shows. We must continue to gather news in the danger zones of public opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was the 12th time that Linda Gibbons had violated the 18-meter \u201cbubble zone\u201d that surrounds Canadian abortion clinics, so all the players in the scene knew their roles. The tiny grandmother sat down and silently began to pray as Toronto police moved in. Sue Careless and two other journalists maneuvered to record the arrest. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n