DOJ first attempted to charge<\/a> eight people, including Lemon, last week. A magistrate judge rejected those charges against five of the people including Lemon, saying that there was insufficient evidence to charge. The judge, however, encouraged prosecutors to take the case to a grand jury and seek and indictment.\n <\/p>\n\n It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to criminally charge a reporter, though it is not without precedent. Those cases are heavily scrutinized before the decision to bring charges is made, and often face extended legal battles over whether the reporter is protected by the First Amendment before the case makes it to trial.\n <\/p>\n
\n Still, senior DOJ officials immediately, and publicly, asserted that Lemon would face charges after the incident at the Minnesota church. Lemon did not have a right to be on the church\u2019s private property, they\u2019ve said, adding that interrupting a church service may have impeded in the churchgoers\u2019 constitutional rights to express their religion.\n <\/p>\n
\n Press freedom groups blasted the arrests on Friday.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThese arrests under bogus legal theories for obviously constitutionally protected reporting are clear warning shots aimed at other journalists,\u201d said Seth Stern, the chief of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation. \u201cThe unmistakable message is that journalists must tread cautiously because the government is looking for any way to target them.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Stern told CNN \u201cthe answer to this outrageous attack is not fear or self-censorship. It\u2019s an even stronger commitment to journalism, the truth, and the First Amendment. If the Trump administration thinks it can bully journalists into submission, it is wrong.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Katherine Jacobsen, the US, Canada and Caribbean Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said Lemon\u2019s arrest \u201cshould alarm all Americans.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cAs an international organization, we know that the treatment of journalists is an indicator of the condition of a country\u2019s democracy. The United States is doing poorly,\u201d Jacobsen said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the nonprofit advocacy group Public Citizen, called the action against Lemon an \u201cauthoritarian breach\u201d and an \u201cegregious violation of the First Amendment.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cReporters in America are free to view, document, and share information with the public,\u201d Gilbert said. \u201cThis arrest is a constitutional violation, an outrage, an authoritarian breach, and utterly appalling.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n This story has been updated with additional developments.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Journalist Don Lemon was taken into custody on Thursday night in connection to a protest at a church…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-443232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}