February 29, 2016

A Journalist Was Just Manhandled and Detained at a Trump Rally

Time photographer Chris Morris was put in a chokehold and thrown to the ground by a member of Trump’s security team.

Steve Helber/AP

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Videos posted on Twitter earlier this afternoon show a photographer for Time magazine being violently thrown to the ground by a member of Donald Trump’s security team, possibly a US Secret Service agent. Morris, an award-winning photojournalist who has covered war zones, struggles back to his feet and is led away by several other security team members.

It’s not clear what precipitated the incident, which happened at a Trump rally at Virginia’s Radford University, but the confrontation appears to have occurred inside the enclosure usually reserved for members of the press.

A uniformed police offer and other men in suits can be seen leading Morris away from the scene.

Another video shows the journalist being handcuffed by uniformed police offers. Morris says he was briefly detained and then released.

Gabby Morrongiello, a reporter for the Washington Examiner who was covering the rally, tweeted that the incident occurred when the Time photographer attempted to leave the press corral to take photos of protesters.

A spokesman for the Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment about the episode.

Update: Another perspective on the takedown.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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