N.Y.P.D. Stops Reporters With Badges and Fists - NYTimes.com
In the aftermath of the Occupy Wall Street eviction from Zuccotti Park, a mayoral aide e-mailed reporters.
The aide, Stu Loeser, said that he had heard of journalists “supposedly” wearing police press badges who “allegedly encountered problems on the streets of New York.”
[...]
“Imagine my surprise,” he wrote, “when we found that only five of the 26 arrested reporters actually have valid NYPD-issued press credentials.”
Here’s the rub. A majority of the city’s working reporters do not possess police passes. Leonard Levitt is a veteran reporter who writes the prodigiously well-sourced NYPD Confidential. “The police want to accredit as few reporters as possible, and they make it exceedingly hard for nonmainstream reporters to get press passes,” he said.
Mr. Levitt has tried to renew his pass for a year. “Needless to say,” he noted, “they are resisting.”
There is another problem: a police pass has become a ticket for a quick removal. My Times colleague Colin Moynihan stood on that darkened square last Tuesday morning when a police spokesman shouted, “Who has press credentials?”
Many reporters and photographers dutifully raised their hands. With that, the police removed the “credentialed” reporters, under threat of arrest, to a press pen, out of sight of the square. Only shouts and yells could be heard.
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