Journalist, author, and Homelands cofounder Alan Weisman was arrested on June 7 while covering the Line 3 anti-pipeline protests in northern Minnesota. He was charged with gross misdemeanor trespassing and released after five hours. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for an explanation of why Weisman was arrested while clearly working as a journalist.
“It is outrageous that officers from Minnesota’s Hubbard County Sheriff’s Department held journalist Alan Weisman in detention for hours, strip-searched him, and went through his equipment,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York.”
Weisman, who was working on an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times and collecting information for a book, was wearing two lanyards with press credentials when a sheriff’s deputy tapped him on the shoulder and said he was under arrest. “It was very clear that I was a journalist,” he told CPJ, saying that he had a notebook in his hand and was conducting interviews at the time.