It was the correct finish to an ordeal that never should have started.
Andrea Sahouri, a reporter for the Des Moines Register, this week was acquitted on charges of failure to disperse and interference with official acts. Sahouri was pepper-sprayed and arrested last May while covering social justice protests in Des Moines.
While the verdict was great news for anyone who values a free press, the entire situation is troubling for many reasons. Primarily, why was Sahouri arrested in the first place, and why was the case brought to trial?
Erin Murphy
The latter question is particularly troubling. At least 130 journalists were arrested or detained in 2020, and 14 have faced criminal charges, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
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An Iowa jury on Wednesday acquitted a journalist who was pepper-sprayed and arrested by police while covering a protest in a case that critics have derided as an attack on press freedom and an abuse of prosecutorial discretion.
Here’s our statement at @FreedomofPress welcoming the jury verdict for @dmregister reporter Andrea Sahouri.
It’s still infuriating Polk County prosecutors wasted time and resources on a case that clearly violated her press freedom rights. https://t.co/ORYxEHepMWpic.twitter.com/7DIlNk3ByA
“We are very grateful that justice was done today, and that Andrea was fully exonerated. But it should never have come to this,” Maribel Perez, the head of the news division at Gannett, told the Washington Post. Gannett Co., Inc. owns the Des Moines Register.
128 reporters were arrested in the United States in 2020 while on the job, according to the US Press Freedom Tracker. Daily Caller reporters Shelby Talcott and Jorge Ventura were arrested in September 2020 while covering riots in Louisville, Kentucky. The charges against them were dropped.