Journalism Is Under Unprecedented Assault

Recent controversies involving both Julian Assange and the San Francisco police show the First Amendment is under dire threat

San Francisco police chief Bill Scott. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty

In San Francisco — the supposed progressive bastion that holds itself up as the antithesis to President Trump — the local police, with the help of elected officials, are targeting a journalist and violating his rights with a fervor that would make Trump jealous. San Francisco residents should be outraged that the city is so egregiously violating press freedom under their names.

A little less than two weeks ago, law enforcement authorities in San Francisco raided the home of Bryan Carmody, a freelance journalist. Brandishing their guns, they cuffed Carmody and confiscated thousands of dollars of reporting equipment. He stayed in handcuffs for six hours before being released, as authorities searched his house and attempted to interrogate him under the guise of a leak investigation. Weeks earlier, Carmody had sold a story — based on a leaked police report, video footage, and a few interviews — about the death of a local public defender to TV stations.

It was an appalling violation of the First Amendment, yet the initial response from local legislators — many of whom regularly rail against Trump for his infringement on civil liberties — was almost as bad as the act itself. Political leaders instinctively defended the raid, and showed an embarrassingly ignorant understanding of how reporting and the First Amendment actually work. Even San Francisco Mayor London Breed issued a statement saying, “I support the decision” to raid Carmody’s house, arguing the police went through “appropriate legal process.”

A growing national uproar over the incident has caused Breed to finally change her tune. She wrote on Twitter that she is “not okay with police raids on reporters,” but law enforcement has opted to double down on their actions. Instead of apologizing, the police announced at a news conference on Tuesday that they were criminally investigating Carmody for “conspiracy” related to the leak.

At the same time, they have evaded reporters’ questions on how the raid was almost certainly illegal.

California has a “shield law,” which was written to protect journalists from revealing their sources in exactly these types of situations. The statute’s language is clear: police cannot — under any circumstances — get a warrant to seize a reporter’s work materials to investigate a source. Law enforcement agencies are supposed to get a subpoena, which unlike a warrant, can be challenged in court by the journalist before any search takes place.

Yet, obtain a warrant they did. Unfortunately, we have no idea how police convinced a judge to go along with their scheme, since the court has so far kept the details of the warrant under seal. As the First Amendment Coalition’s David Snyder asked earlier this week: “Were these judges made aware of Carmody’s status as a journalist? Did the police department conceal that status? Did the judges authorize the search warrants even though they knew Carmody is a journalist?” The public deserves to know the answers to these questions.

On Tuesday, the police agreed to return Carmody’s equipment pending a court hearing on the matter set for two weeks. Despite the urgent nature of the case, the judge curiously won’t even hear an argument for unsealing the search warrant — so we can understand exactly why it was granted in contradiction to the law — at least until the hearing.

The public defender, Jeff Adachi, had been a thorn in the side of police agencies for a long time, and it’s widely assumed whoever within the police department leaked the report to Carmody may have done so to make Adachi look bad in death. (The police report said Adachi was found with drugs in his system and including other personal, unsavory details.) But the motives of the leaker should have no bearing on Carmody’s rights as a journalist. The police chief claimed that Carmody “crossed the line,” without offering a shred of evidence that he did anything illegal. The chief does not seem to understand it is a journalist’s job to obtain information that authorities may not want them to see.