In an on-air account of his detention, Mr. Jimenez, who joined CNN in 2017, said he had asked an officer for guidance on where the news media should be situated during the protests, which started in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after being handcuffed and pinned by a police officer who pressed his knee onto his neck.
Mr. Jimenez said the officer told him: “Look, I don’t know man, I’m just following orders.”
The detention of the CNN crew sparked denunciations from press groups and prominent journalists.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor, wrote on Twitter that “arresting journalists is the kind of thing that happens in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. We live in a democracy.” Bret Baier of Fox News wrote that “this should never have happened. Period.” The head of PEN America, Suzanne Nossel, called the proceedings a “dystopian spectacle.”
The arrest of Mr. Jimenez, who identifies as black and Latino, also prompted a discussion of whether he would have been detained by the police if he were white.
The presumptive Democratic nominee for president, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., weighed in on the incident in a Twitter post on Friday. “This is not abstract: a black reporter was arrested while doing his job this morning, while the white police officer who killed George Floyd remains free,” Mr. Biden wrote. “I am glad swift action was taken, but this, to me, says everything.”
Dorothy Tucker, the president of the National Association of Black Journalists, condemned the arrest, writing on Twitter, “It is unfathomable and upsetting to witness this structural racism in real time.”
A spokesman for the Minnesota State Patrol did not respond to a request for comment.
On Twitter, the state patrol said: “In the course of clearing the streets and restoring order at Lake Street and Snelling Avenue, four people were arrested by State Patrol troopers, including three members of a CNN crew. The three were released once they were confirmed to be members of the media.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/business/media/cnn-reporter-arrested-omar-jimenez.html
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