Face to face with a maskless man threatening to shoot her, Amanda Andrade-Rhoades had limited options.
The freelance photojournalist was working solo on assignment for The Washington Post last Wednesday as supporters of President Donald Trump descended on the U.S. Capitol, rioting as Congress voted to certify the 2020 election results.
The man was tall and older, with a mustache and a tan jacket, Andrade-Rhoades told VOA.
Journalists were attacked, threatened and detained during the Capitol siege Updated: January 10
Print article WASHINGTON - As an angry crowd of Trump supporters surged toward police barriers at the Capitol on Wednesday, Associated Press photographer John Minchillo was there documenting the chaotic scene. Suddenly, their ire turned to him. Several men grabbed Minchillo by his backpack, pulling him down a flight of stairs. Others grasped the lanyard that identified him as media, dragging him through the throngs that wove flags reading “Don’t Tread on Me” and “TRUMP 2020.” “We’ll f kill you!” someone yelled. Then a man shoved him over a ledge.
Sometime between the evening of Dec. 26 and the morning of Dec. 27 a rock found its way inside the office of the Livingston County News, leaving a softball-size hole in the buildingâs large front window.
Passersby discovered the broken window Sunday morning while walking their dog and flagged down a Geneseo Police Officer to report what they saw. Inside the building, the rock lay among shards of glass in the front of the office.
A week later the investigation remains open. The incident is being treated by police as criminal mischief, which state penal law defines as a person intentionally damaging the property of another. The charge, depending on the extent of the damage and other conditions, can reach felony levels.
Democracy under siege and the press, too
On Wednesday afternoon, a mob of right-wing extremists and indignant livestreamers stormed the Capitol. Along their path, they left a note to the journalists who were covering the scene, a message that seemed a harrowing extension of a presidency marked by anti-press virulence: etched into a door was the phrase murder the media. It’s hard not to take that seriously as was noted by Rachael Pacella and Paul W. Gillespie, both journalists who had survived the 2018 mass shooting at the
Capital Gazette, in Annapolis, Maryland. And yet, as Masha Gessen wrote for