It’s been a month since Fox6 News photojournalist Clint Fillinger was arrested, knocked to the ground, handcuffed and issued a ticket when he questioned an officer’s order to back away from a fire scene he was shooting for the nightly newscast.
Since then, he’s become a symbol of press freedom – or, depending on your vantage point, one of news media overreach.
At long last, says Fox 6 news director Jim Lemon, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn and station officials are scheduling a meeting next week to sort out the controversy.
In the early hours of Monday, Sept. 19, Fillinger was covering a house fire near 27th and Townsend streets when a police officer ordered him away from the police line.
Video footage of the incident that Fox 6 posted on its website indicates that Fillinger complied with the order to withdraw, even as he argued that he had a right to be on the scene.
“The public is out here. If the public is out here, I’m allowed to be out here,” the video shows Fillinger telling the officer, who persists in ordering him back from the police line.
Responding to his assertion, a second officer says, “We just need you to go all the way back for their privacy.”
“Whose privacy?” Fillinger asks. The first officer cuts in. “For your safety. All the way back.”
Fillinger sharply picked up on the discrepancy. “It’s not my safety! Don’t give me that” – bleep.
The video doesn’t make clear what happened next. Fillinger later told a Fox 6 reporter, “It’s hard enough to walk backwards, much less with a camera,” and so he put his hand out. The officer barked, “don’t put your hand on me.”
Said Fillinger: “The next thing I knew I was on the ground being handcuffed.” The 68-year-old Fillinger later complained of injuries to his wrist, knee, shoulder and hip.
Two days later, Flynn publicly responded to the story with a defense of his officers and trying to turn the blame back on Fillinger and the TV station. “If the cameraman had simply complied with the instructions to back off from a working fire, none of this hullaballoo would be taking place,” Flynn told reporters.
News Director Lemon rejects that analysis, noting that the police line itself wasn’t being moved – only the newsman. “Clint did everything absolutely 100 percent right,” Lemon tells Pressroom Buzz; as he observes, Fillinger complied with the order even as he challenged it and kept taping. Acknowledging Fillinger’s moment of “salty language,” Lemon says that given the situation, “I don’t think there was anything inappropriate about it.”
Fillinger told Fox 6 he’s been in the business for 45 years, and “nothing ever even close to this has happened.” It’s not unusual to be moved back from a scene, he noted – but only when the police move back the entire line, something that didn’t happen in the Sept. 19 incident.
Lemon says the station wants the police department to expunge Fillinger’s ticket and train the department’s officers on the rights of news professionals on the scene. “My intent for the meeting is to have that face-to-face dialogue about this,” he says.
The station “put it all out there,” he adds – posting on its website Fillinger’s raw footage from the incident and raw footage from Flynn’s statement, along with the news story about the chief’s reaction. “I get that different people have different points of view.” Indeed, he notes that on the station’s Facebook site, “a lot of people commented against us.”
Groups representing broadcast journalists and photographers were quick to line up on Fillinger’s side, sending [PDF] letters [PDF] to the department in his behalf.
The watchdog group the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press has also weighed in, noting an uptick in incidents of this nature. So far, though, there’s been little coverage, beyond three paragraphs in Duane Dudek’s column.
In general, courts have largely upheld the rights of newsgatherers in public places. And some developing law is even expanding some of these rights: a federal appeals court ruled in August that police were wrong to arrest and seize the phone of a man who recorded his own arrest.
In short, First Amendment rights belong to everyone – not just the professional press.
We may find out soon just how far that goes here in Milwaukee.
Here are the videos from the Fox 6 website.
The raw video from the Sept. 19 confrontation:
Fillinger’s interview with Fox 6 after the incident:
The Flynn reaction story:
The raw Flynn interview:
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