Carol Linnitt, acting editor-in-chief of The Narwhal, reads a statement alongside photojournalist Amber Bracken outside the B.C. Supreme Court on Jan. 12.Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
In one particularly gory scene in the Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-contending Brazilian film The Secret Agent, a human leg is retrieved from a shark’s belly. As the police chief walks toward the university lab where the discovery has been made, he asks: “Any journalists?” Later, he arranges a secret deposition on another matter, inviting a single journalist for a highly orchestrated news photo that will present a police-controlled narrative to the public.
This weekend the world was witness to the critical importance of documenting the actions of police, evidenced through ICE agents bearing down on Minneapolis. If it wasn’t for video footage of the killing of Alex Pretti, the public could be more easily convinced to buy what the U.S. government is selling: that it was Mr. Pretti’s fault. As they tried to do with the ICE killing of Renee Nicole Macklin Good.
Even in a city teeming with observers armed with cellphones, government forces can kill an innocent man and then try to spin it and tell us that we didn’t see what we all could see. So just imagine what can happen when there is no one around to take pictures or videos.
A man is detained by law enforcement on Jan. 24 near the site where Alex Pretti was shot in Minneapolis, Minn.ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images
In a Vancouver courtroom this month, a civil suit by Amber Bracken, a freelance photojournalist (whose work has appeared in The Globe and Mail) is being heard. She is suing the RCMP and the governments of Canada and B.C. In November, 2021, she was arrested while documenting the police removal of pipeline opponents who were blocking access to a Coastal GasLink site on Wet’suwet’en territory. The area, near Houston, B.C., was in an exclusion zone covered by a court injunction.
Ms. Bracken was not released when she identified herself as a member of the media as she was being arrested. She was jailed for three nights.
Ms. Bracken and The Narwhal, which assigned her to the story, are suing for unlawful arrest and seeking a declaration that it violated their constitutional rights to press freedom. Arguing this case is about press freedom, they have called journalists as expert witnesses. The defence argued against this, saying the trial is about Ms. Bracken’s arrest. Last week, the judge ruled the media witnesses could be heard – a victory for The Narwhal, says its co-founder and acting editor-in-chief Carol Linnitt.
“We are here to ask the courts for ... further articulation of what press freedom means in this country,” Ms. Linnitt said in an interview outside the courtroom on Monday. “And on the other side, we have a team of lawyers for Canada and a team of lawyers for the province who are here trying to prevent that from happening – on the taxpayer’s dime.”
Inside the courtroom, Ms. Bracken, under cross examination, was questioned about why she didn’t identify herself as a journalist as police approached the tiny house where she was taking photographs. Why didn’t she hold her letter of assignment or press pass up to the window for police to see? Why didn’t she yell out the window? “Say ‘hey, I’m Amber Bracken, I’m here for The Narwhal, I’m just photographing, just to make sure you know,’ ” questioned Craig Cameron, lawyer for the Attorney-General of Canada.
When police announced from outside that those in the cabin were under arrest, did she ask the protesters closest to the door to tell police there were media members inside “and for them to clarify whether the arrest announcement applied to you?” Mr. Cameron asked.
Was anything preventing her from detaching the barricade from the door? Surely there were tools available to remove the nails or screws. Did she consider leaving through the large window?
It was hard not to guffaw listening to this line of questioning. Ms. Bracken, an award-winning photojournalist, was there to observe and document. Yelling out to the RCMP or unbarricading the door or scurrying out the window would not only have prevented her from doing her job, but it would have changed the course of events. A reporter is there to be a fly on the wall, not to become the story by yelling in the middle of a tense situation or in the chaos of an axe coming through the door: “Hey, police! Journalist here!”
That, Ms. Bracken testified, would have been “an unusual derailment” of the unfolding events.
If anyone needs proof of how essential it is that police actions be documented, we are seeing it in Minnesota. It is crucial that there not be more places where we are not seeing it.
“The public needs to know. The public needs to see,” Ms. Linnitt told me. “The public needs to make determinations for themselves about what has occurred, especially in moments of state-sanctioned violence.”