Attack on TV news crew raises questions of reporter safety

May 8—TRAVERSE CITY — A 39-year-old man who was arrested Thursday after grabbing and throwing a reporter's microphone and spitting on her colleague has been released from jail on an interim bond.

The man's name is being withheld because he has not yet been charged. He was arrested on suspicion of assault and malicious destruction of property, as previously reported.

Leelanau County Assistant Prosecutor Tristan Chamberlain said he has not yet received a report from the Leelanau County Sheriff's Department and expects one shortly after the weekend.

"Until we get a police report there's nothing we can do in deciding any charges," Chamberlain said.

The incident took place during Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's appearance Thursday at Discovery Pier as she signed a bill on a parkland purchase and development grants.

After heckling the governor, the Traverse City-area man grabbed a microphone from an UpNorthLive reporter's hand and threw it. He then spit on the reporter's photojournalist colleague as two Leelanau County Sheriff's deputies handcuffed him.

UpNorthLive views the right to protest as a pillar of U.S. democracy and welcomes different points of view, according to a statement the station released Friday. But so too are press freedoms and the right of journalists to be allowed to work safely.

"We will not allow for our journalists' personal safety to be threatened like it was Thursday in Traverse City when our on-the-ground team was assaulted for asking a question," the statement read. "We applaud their work and dedication for chasing down the story no matter what."

It's also a reminder of the dangers journalists face, one that's growing each day, according to the statement.

Numbers from press freedom advocacy groups show a trend that spiraled in 2020, with reports of attacks against journalists continuing to add up.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker logged 597 cases of physical attacks on journalists since 2017, including 432 in 2020. The vast majority of cases — 472 — happened while covering protests. Since the new year, the project tracked 35 incidents, including some high-profile ones like attacks on journalists and destruction of equipment during the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

The Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation tracks those numbers through a joint effort. The CPJ advocates worldwide for safety for reporters, both from murders and kidnappings and imprisonment, and provides information and resources to help journalists stay safe.

They show a trend that predates four years of former President Donald Trump's repeated verbal attacks on the press, said Committee to Protect Journalists U.S. Research Associate Katherine Jacobsen.

"The previous president was very much symptomatic of a lot of larger problems brewing in the country for many, many years, and those problems don't just go away overnight with just a change of administration," she said.

She said there's a growing lack of trust of local reporters and the false notion that they're out to do harm rather than good by covering local events and news.

Reporters deserve basic human courtesy, and people who see them at work should keep in mind that they're trying to do a job that's become increasingly hard over the years, Jacobsen said.

Both the pandemic and more than a year of civil unrest put a strain on newsrooms that have generally been strapped for resources.

"Journalists are doing the best they can to keep up with all of this and report fairly and accurately," she said. "I think that there should be some sort of sense of appreciation for that."