skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Monday, March 18, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

SD public defense duties shift from counties to state; SCOTUS appears skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies; Trump lawyers say he can't make bond; new scholarships aim to connect class of 2024 to high-demand jobs.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

Media Organizations: Attack on Reporter in MT Part of Bigger Issue

play audio
Play

Friday, May 26, 2017   

This story was updated at 9:30 a.m. MDT Friday.

BOZEMAN, Mont. – Media organizations are condemning Wednesday's attack on a Guardian reporter by GOP House candidate Greg Gianforte in Bozeman, and also are calling on political leaders to tone down the rhetoric against journalists.

In his victory speech Thursday night, the newly elected congressman apologized for his behavior on Wednesday. However, the Radio Television Digital News Directors Association, National Press Club and others say a disturbing pattern has emerged in the current political climate of increased hostility toward journalists.

"We're hearing from our members in the U.S. about a steadily increasing number of very disturbing assaults and attacks, both verbal and physical, against reporters who are merely trying to do their Constitutionally guaranteed duty to gather facts and present them to the public," said Dan Shelley, incoming director of the RTDNA, which represents journalists around the world.

Reporter Ben Jacobs has said he was thrown to the ground by Gianforte after trying to ask him about the Congressional Budget Office's report on the GOP's health-care act.

Gianforte's campaign said Jacobs was aggressively shoving his phone into the candidate's face, but journalists from Fox News who witnessed the altercation corroborated Jacobs' story. Gianforte was charged with misdemeanor assault.

There have been a number of attacks on journalists recently. At a Federal Communications Commission meeting, security guards pinned a journalist against the wall so he couldn't ask the commissioners a question. And a Public News Service reporter in West Virginia was arrested after trying to ask Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price a question about the Republican health-care bill.

However, Shelley said his organization has seen hostility toward the press brew for awhile.

"This is not a partisan, political issue," he said. "There's been a longstanding, simmering undercurrent of anti-media feeling in the country. RTDNA, as a matter of fact, had severe issues with the Obama administration, which tried and, at least on one occasion, threw a reporter in jail."

Shelley said journalists shouldn't be discouraged by the current mood of the country and should continue to do their job.

"When a reporter is interfered with in a responsible attempt to gather facts and present them to the public, it's not the reporter who's the victim," Shelley said. "It's the public."


get more stories like this via email

more stories
Corporate partners sign contracts to offer a graduate assistantship and pay the students. In turn, MSU pays the graduate assistant's tuition, fees and salary, so the assistantship is directly tied to the academic experience. (pressmaster/Adobe Stock)

play sound

By Victoria Lim for WorkingNation.Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for Missouri News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Col…


Social Issues

play sound

A new report brands Connecticut's tax system as "regressive" for low- to middle-income residents and uses a report from the state to make its point…

Environment

play sound

Backers of a new federal rule said it will increase fairness for livestock and poultry producers, in North Carolina and across the country. The U.S…


A study by the advocacy group Inseparable showed one in five adults said at any given time, they consider their mental health to be either 'fair' or 'poor.' (Adobe Stock)

Health and Wellness

play sound

Mental health care advocates are encouraging federal agencies to adopt a proposed update to regulations which would expand access to psychological car…

Social Issues

play sound

With hotter summers bringing hotter working conditions, the Maryland Department of Labor is implementing a heat stress standard to protect workers …

Environment

play sound

Recreational fishermen in New England say commercial trawlers are threatening the survival of smaller businesses relying on a healthy stock of Atlanti…

Social Issues

play sound

Women are treated much differently than men by the criminal justice system, according to a new report detailing how and why mass incarceration is …

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021