[Public News Service of West Virginia Reporter Daniel Ralph Heyman] has been arrested and charged with "disruption of government services" in the state capitol for "yelling questions" at visiting Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price and White House senior advisor Kellyanne Conway.
[...] "The above defendant was aggressively breaching the secret service agents to the point where the agents were forced to remove him a couple of times from the area walking up the hallway in the main building of the Capitol," the complaint states. It adds Heyman caused a disturbance by "yelling questions at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price."
The misdemeanor carries a possible fine of $100 and up to six months in jail.
[...] The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia called the charges "outrageous" and said the arrest was "a blatant attempt to chill an independent, free press."
"Freedom of the press is being eroded every day, " it said in a statement. "We have a president who calls the media 'fake news' and resists transparency at every turn."
The statement said this is a "dangerous time in the country."
Price and Conway were in West Virginia to discuss opioid addiction in the state, which has the highest drug overdose death rate in the nation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by idiot_king on Thursday May 11 2017, @06:07PM (2 children)
...people trying to fight back, being silenced by the state. We need to keep pushing harder before this becomes even MORE normalized than it is in the early days of Der Trumpenfurher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @07:39PM
Unfortunately, this has been normalized for quite a while now. I can still remember the good old days when Presidents would regularly show up at press conferences to answer questions. Any question that reporters had on their minds was fair game. Back then, it was considered an important part of keeping the President and the rest of his Administration honest. (Yeah, I know, that notion seems quaint and even downright silly now.) Those days are rapidly fading into the mists of time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @02:06PM
Just a reminder: "free speech zones"