End of First Amendment rights for the press?

When I first saw the video of the young RT correspondent being arrested at Fort Benning I did not think too much about it - after all the US seems to regularly arrest journalists these days.

However, when I heard her account of the incident my reaction changed.

She was there as an accredited journalist to cover a peaceful demonstration that has taken place for the past few years; as such she enjoys First Amerndment rights.

She was arrested for unlawful assembly although not part of the demonstrations (you can see her press card in the video) and although she obeyed the orders of the police.

It seems also that habeas corpus does not apply in the state of Georgia any more as she was not allowed to hear the charges against her or to answer them.

If anything LIKE this happened to an American journalist somwhere else, say in Russia, can you imagine the furore.

That is unlikely because the USSR (like all the communist states)  respected foreign journalists.  They have made life difficult for them and occasionally expelled them - but they were never arrested adnd charged under Soviet laws.

Only the US has granted themselves this freedom, as can be seen in the targeted killing of an al Jazeera journalist in the Iraq war  and the murder of a Reuters cameraman from a helicopter gunship (immortalized by Wikileaks).

We  will know when the first person disappears into “indefinite detention” that the darkness of tyranny has finally descended on the Land of the Free,

RT America's correspondent arrested -- Raw Video

Check out this raw footage of RT correspondent Kaelyn Forde being brutally arrested by police while covering a demonstration at Fort Benning.

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This next video relates to the same events

Arrested RT correspondent talks about police brutality at Fort Benning

RT

Released RT correspondent Kaelyn Forde talking about her arrest at Fort Benning where the RT crew covered an annual demonstration against human rights violations committed by the SOA and WHINSEC. She says even though they presented their press credentials they still were arrested.