NOTE: This story is part of “Together/Alone,” a column from Spectrum News Chief National Political Reporter Josh Robin that explores life during these times.

Christine MacDonald is an investigative reporter for the Detroit News. If she had her way, she’d be spotlighting the evictions about to be unleashed on Michigan’s vulnerable residents from the coronavirus-induced economic collapse.

But the collapse of her own industry meant that on Sunday night, she was on breaking news. And there was plenty. She strapped on a gas mask, put on a press pass lanyard and fired up Facebook live to show the world how Detroit was reacting to the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis. 

That’s when MacDonald had the handcuffs slapped on her.

Police were detaining MacDonald, 44, after the city’s curfew — even as journalists are typically given broad leeway to report, as long as they follow police orders. You can listen to the clicks of the cuffs on the Facebook feed just as MacDonald identifies herself to the officer.

She was released not long after, when colleagues intervened. In a sense she was lucky she only was briefly detained. Her colleagues were chased, tear-gassed and shot at with rubber bullets, even as “we were moving where they wanted us to go, holding up our press passes and yelling ‘media,’” Detroit Free-Press reporter David Jesse wrote on social media.

Detroit’s mayor later apologized and said the city is working on assigning credentials that are more visible. 

It’s uncomfortable writing about the press at this time; I’d prefer the attention be on what can be done to bridge the chasm between police and those they are supposed to protect and serve. I think we need to also ask how reporters can be protected —and trusted — during this pivotal time.

What happened to reporters in Detroit wasn’t isolated. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker says after documenting 100 to 150 press freedom violations in the US per year over the past three years, it’s now investigating over 200 from just the last few days. There’s a running tally here, from Des Moines to Louisville to Pittsburgh to D.C.

Kirstin McCudden, its managing editor, says about 80 percent of reported assaults were done by police. Protesters also are reported to have attacked and threatened the press. Early Saturday in Washington, a group set upon Fox News reporter Leland Vittert and a crew early Saturday in Washington, DC. "We took a good thumping," he told the AP. 

And protesters likely on the other side of the spectrum, supporting President Trump, threatened local Long Island, New York TV reporter Kevin Vesey last month. He was live at a demonstration against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s rules that temporarily required businesses shut their doors to stem the spread of COVID-19.

 Then, without saying much, the protesters turned on him. He was yelled at (“you are the enemy of the people!”), flipped off and followed by people not wearing masks (“no, I got hydroxychloroquine, I’m fine,” one told him.) 

The protest’s organizer later apologized, calling the hecklers “idiots”  — but someone else with more power than anyone cheered them. More on that in a moment. 

 I would be inclined to chalk up these incidents to the fogginess that inherently surrounds protests, which were especially fluid over the weekend, turning violent at times.

But it’s also a time of diminished trust. Our credibility has plummeted, particularly among Republicans. We need to do whatever we can to address that. 

The rise of social media has also left us not just with a space for competing viewpoints and shared knitting videos, but also a vast, largely unregulated ecosystem of competing realities, accelerated by algorithms that feed off division. 

Frankly, I don’t even know what people see as a “reporter” anymore, when anyone with fingers and a phone can tell the world anything.

In the midst, media companies like Facebook and Google have helped bleed newspaper newsrooms to half the level as 2008, according to the Pew Research Center, and that was before the latest economic collapse. MacDonald, the Detroit News reporter, and her Detroit News colleagues are working only three out of four weeks due to furlough; they had a staff of 300 in 2000. It’s now about 90. 

So can I draw a straight line from police and protesters targeting journalists to an industry flayed by new media, in a world where facts are relative? 

No. 

But I would be remiss if I didn’t introduce it as a backdrop.

Then there is President Trump’s Twitter, replete with accusations of “fake news” and “enemy of the people” about reporters.

Remember that Long Island reporter heckled by the people he was covering?

President Trump found out, and retweeted Vesey to his 80 million followers, adding his commentary that the protesters were “great people” and, all but certainly referring to Vesey, noted “fake news is not essential”.

The president’s kudos to those attacking Vesey was retweeted tens of thousands of times. 

Says McCudden: “In the month of May, President Donald Trump tweeted ‘Enemy of the People’ about the media no fewer than five times. The last one was this Saturday, May 30. We’re tracking reports of at least 40 journalists assaulted — by both police and protesters — that same day.”

“What the commander-in-chief says about the media influences how people treat it,” McCudden added.

Of course, police mistreated the press before the president came to office, including during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Again, I won’t draw a direct line from the president’s Twitter, to alternate facts, to newsrooms that are a shell of what they were, to reporters screaming that they’re a member of the press still getting arrested and roughed up by police.

Instead, I’ll just leave it with MacDonald, that reporter covering the streets of Detroit.

“The vast majority of the reporters that I know are just doing their best,” she told me. “The people I know are working their [expletive] off.”

SANITY CLAUSE

The First Amendment.  Sorry, a bit heavy handed, but reading it makes me feel better: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

TRAPPED PARENT TIP

Fresh Air. I suggest frank conversations, if possible, about what is going on in the world. I also recommend an accompanying screen-less sojourn to wherever there is a tree, blade of grass, and a peek of sky (preferably, but not necessarily blue). It makes my heart ache for youngsters whose summer experiences are canceled this year, and all the more grateful for a calm moment to be alive, together with my kids.