What the arrest of a black CNN journalist on air taught us

Francine Prose

The mistake was always to think that it can’t happen here, because it can, it has and – unless we remain aware and vocal – it most certainly will again

Sun 31 May 2020 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 31 May 2020 02.01 EDT

The circumstances surrounding the 29 May arrest of the CNN reporter Omar Jimenez couldn’t be clearer, more obvious, less subject to doubt or debate. You need only watch the video of the incident to know: this is not fake news.

In Minneapolis, Omar Jimenez was covering the protests ignited by the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed by the police. Confronted by a phalanx of state policemen in riot gear, Jimenez offered to move back. “We’re getting out of your way. Just let us know. Wherever you want us, we will go.” He calmly identified himself as a CNN journalist and produced his credentials. Nonetheless, he was handcuffed and led away, as he continued to ask, peacefully and respectfully, why he was being arrested. Soon after, his producer and cameraman were also cuffed and marched off. One can hear the distraught cameraman asking what to do with his camera, which was seized by the police – apparently unaware that it was still filming.

What the camera doesn’t show is that a few blocks away, a white journalist, also reporting for CNN, was treated by the police with consummate politeness. So what we see, and don’t see, is the convergence of two profoundly toxic streams growing stronger and deeper as they continue to poison our society. One is the erosion of our first amendment protections – Jimenez’s right to document and describe what he was seeing is constitutionally guaranteed – and the other is the systemic racism that explains why a black reporter was arrested while a white one was encouraged to do his job; why a Minneapolis police officer jammed his knee into George Floyd’s neck for eight fatal minutes; and why, almost every week, another black person is killed by the police or – like Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery – by freelance white vigilantes.

One shudders to think what might have happened to Jimenez, a black man in a tense confrontation with law enforcement, had he not been employed by CNN and accompanied by a camera crew.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/31/what-the-arrest-of-a-black-cnn-journalist-on-air-taught-us