An award-winning journalist whose coverage of a clash between protesters and security personnel in North Dakota help put a major oil pipeline project under the mainstream media spotlight could face a riot charge Monday.
Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! host and executive producer, may have to appear in district court just days after the state attorney prosecuting the case dropped trespassing charges against her and leveled a riot-related charge instead. On Monday, a judge will decide whether to approve the new riot charge for a case that is being considered an attack on freedom of the press and the First Amendment.
The state attorney is already saying he doesn’t consider Goodman a journalist. “She’s a protester, basically. Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions,” Ladd Erickson, who is prosecuting the case for Morton County, told the Bismark Tribune last week.
Goodman, a journalist for more than two decades, is a recipient of dozens of awards, including the prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for excellence in broadcast journalism. She has been arrested in the past, most notoriously in 2008, when Goodman and other journalists were arrested as they covered the 2008 Republican National Convention and accompanying protests in St. Paul, Minnesota. After being slapped with lawsuits law enforcement agencies settled in court.
Goodman initially faced trespassing charges after she reported on the clash between Native American demonstrators and Dakota Access private security at a pipeline construction site where crews were accused of bulldozing over sacred sites. Injuries were reported on both sides; several protesters reported that they were bitten by security dogs and dozens also reported being pepper sprayed.
Video coverage of the violence went viral and was recirculated by major television stations, raising the profile of the $3.8 billion to new heights. Since then, the 1,172 mile project has suffered setbacks, particularly as the federal government called on developers to halt construction near its lands as it reviews permits. Construction is mostly ongoing elsewhere, though the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe fighting is still pushing back in court.
In the September video, Goodman and her team followed angry protesters who went through the property’s fence, and faced off with construction crews and private security personnel.
“Security have some form of gas, people are being pepper sprayed,” Goodman said as the camera shows attacks on both sides. She later is seen introducing herself as a journalist and asking a worker what he is spraying on people.
Erickson has said he finds no distinction between Goodman and demonstrators now facing charges. He also said Goodman didn’t mention that people trespassed during the incident or the assaults on guards.
“I think she put together a piece to influence the world on her agenda, basically. That’s fine, but it doesn’t immunize her from the laws of her state,” Erickson said.
But Goodman, who lives in New York, says she was doing her job. “I came back to North Dakota to fight a trespass charge. They saw that they could never make that charge stick, so now they want to charge me with rioting,” said Goodman, according to Democracy Now! “I wasn’t trespassing, I wasn’t engaging in a riot, I was doing my job as a journalist by covering a violent attack on Native American protesters.”
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Goodman’s case is making waves as an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker is facing three felony charges for filming one portion of a coordinated oil pipeline protest that shut down five key pipelines transporting crude oil from Canada’s tar sands into the United States.
Deia Schlosberg, producer of the upcoming documentary, How to Let Go of the World and Love All Things Climate Can’t Change, was arrested while filming in Walhalla, North Dakota. She could face decades in prison for conspiracy charges, the Huffington Post reported. Similarly to Goodman, Scholsberg’s team maintains she was documenting the protest, not actively participating in it.
The news gathering process and journalists’ right to access private and public grounds has long been a contentious issue, sparking landmark litigation around the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press. And while some states have passed laws to codify news gathering practices, issues are generally solved via the courts, which tend to rule journalists can’t trespass or break the law while gathering the news.
However, in the case of Goodman and Schlosberg, prosecutors are questioning the journalistic role of an individual, which has been a growing issue with the rise of so-called citizen journalists. That comes as defining the press has long been a problem.
“Anyone can be a journalist and they don’t need an affiliation with an established outlet,” William E. Lee, professor of journalism at the University of Georgia Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, said in 2014 while commenting on his analysis of how judges struggle with defining the rights of citizen journalists. “Judges have tried to define the press and the results have often not been pretty.”
UPDATE: The riot charge against Amy Goodman was dismissed Monday afternoon amidst protests and at least one arrest outside the Morton County District Court.
““The judge’s decision to reject the state’s attorney, Ladd Erickson, attempt to prosecute a journalist, in this case me, is a great vindication of the First Amendment,” Goodman said outside the court. “All of the media should be [at the site], given the scope of this struggle, and we encourage all of the media to come here. We certainly will continue to cover the struggle.”