They’re shocked that antifa attacks them. Reporters with The Oregonian, The Portland Tribune, freelance photographers, and a local TV station reporter and crew complain they’ve been attacked and/or threatened by antifa and Black Lives Matter activists at the so-called Red House Autonomous Zone. This is the spot along Mississippi Avenue in North Portland where armed insurrectionists have taken over a neighborhood to stop a foreclosure of a house – in a foreclosure that actually happened two years ago.
The stunned reporters expect understanding, appeasement from the mob, help from official Portland, and appreciation of their constitutionally protected, God-given right to cover the news.
They’re late. Michael Strickland and Andy Ngo want to know where this same mainstream media have been. Where were the appeals to the constitution and help from official Portland in 2016 and 2019 respectively, when Strickland and Ngo were attacked by antifa thugs? Where were capital “J” Journalists when Strickland was sent to jail and Ngo was sent to the hospital because of attacks by antifa?
The Oregonian reported that troubles began almost immediately for reporters covering the takeover of the house and the streets surrounding it.
The problems for reporters began almost as soon as demonstrators on Tuesday clashed with sheriff’s deputies and police, who had come to serve an eviction notice and help secure the property.
The activist group PNW Youth Liberation Front set forth a rationale for limits on journalists in a tweet Thursday. “The space at the Red House is an active eviction blockade,” it said. “If you enter that space not to defend the Kinney family, but to livestream or film the risks that others are taking for your personal gain, then you are a guest. If you aren’t respectful, you will be an unwelcome one.”
The newspaper was shocked that a KATU-TV news crew was stopped and attacked for videoing the armed insurrection.
Hours after police retreated from the area Tuesday morning, several masked demonstrators surrounded KATU television journalists Genevieve Reaume and Ric Peavyhouse as they entered the barricaded zone to interview occupants.
Video shows the demonstrators used umbrellas to block the reporters from filming and made multiple verbal threats.
One of them knocked Reaume’s phone from her hand and shattered it on the ground, she said in an interview.
The reporter’s hand was stomped when she reached for her now-broken phone on the ground.
