Border-town marshal faces backlash after First Amendment talk with kid reporter
PHOENIX (AP) — A confrontation between an intrepid 12-year-old reporter from Pennsylvania and an Arizona marshal has ignited a debate about press freedom, with social media mostly branding one brave and the other a bully.
Hilde Kate Lysiak posted video from their interaction Monday in Patagonia, roughly 20 miles from the Mexico border, on her newspaper’s website, Orange Street News. She was on her bicycle following a tip when Patterson stopped her, Lysiak wrote. The young journalist identified herself as a member of the media and gave her name and phone number.
That's when Patterson made a remark about not wanting to hear about press freedom and threatened to arrest her, according to Lysiak. Dan Barr, a lawyer with the First Amendment Coalition of Arizona, said there's no law that prohibits filming law enforcement doing their job, especially if they're in uniform.
Lysiak started her own newspaper to cover news in her hometown of Selinsgrove, Pa., Snyder County. It wasn’t immediately clear what brought her to Arizona. The youngest member of the Society of Professional Journalists, she received kudos from the organization. This is not the first time Lysiak, whose father is a former New York Daily News journalist, has received attention for her reporting. In 2016, she beat out other local media outlets with a story about a homicide in her neighborhood by interviewing residents.
https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2019/02/border-town-marshal-faces-backlash-after-first-amendment-talk-with-kid-reporter-from-pa.html
