{"id":65102,"date":"2026-08-20T12:49:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=65102"},"modified":"2026-08-20T12:49:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T16:49:20","slug":"there-is-a-difference-between-creating-an-incident-and-reporting-on-an-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=65102","title":{"rendered":"There Is A Difference Between Creating An Incident And Reporting On An Incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, The Daily Signal<\/a> posted an article about the church invasion charges against former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort. Major media outlets have joined an amicus brief urging a court to dismiss the charges.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Forty-five media outlets and nonprofit organizations joined the brief, including The Associated Press, Dow Jones (which owns The Wall Street Journal), MS NOW, The New York Times, The NewsGuild<\/a>, PEN America, ProPublica, Slate, and The Washington Post.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lemon and Fort stand accused of violating federal civil rights laws for their alleged activity in the invasion of Cities Church in<\/strong> St. Paul, Minnesota, on Jan. 18, protesting the pastor who works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Justice Department brought charges against Lemon and Fort under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act, claiming they took part in the agitation that violated congregants\u2019 civil rights. Lemon and Fort have said they were present at the invasion in their capacity as journalists.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The amicus brief, led by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, argues that if Lemon and Fort are convicted, \u201cfederal law would be within arm\u2019s reach of prosecutors to muzzle reporting in the public interest.\u201d Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko of the U.S. District of Minnesota added the brief to the court record Monday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article notes:<\/p>\n

Agitators, who said they targeted Cities Church because one of its pastors works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allegedly stood up<\/a> in the middle of a service, refused to leave when asked, blocked members of the congregation from getting to their children, and chanted, \u201cWho shut this down? We shut this down!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The indictment notes that Lemon livestreamed the planning meeting before the church takeover, but he told his audience he was leaving out key details to avoid revealing the target beforehand. It also claims Lemon said \u201cthe whole point\u201d of the activity was \u201cto disrupt\u201d the service. It further accuses Lemon of confronting the church\u2019s pastor, refusing to leave when asked, and obstructing churchgoers as they left the building.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The indictment presents fewer concrete claims about Fort\u2019s alleged involvement in the agitation. It alleges that she confronted the pastor and that she blocked a minivan from leaving the church\u2019s parking lot by conducting an interview in front of it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The actions of Don Lemon were not reporting and are not protected by the First Amendment. As soon as you block someone from exercising their right to participate in a religious service, you have broken the law. I hope the people involved in this protest, which involved trespassing if they stayed after they were asked to leave, are punished for their actions. This was not a protest–it was unlawful activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the church invasion charges against former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort. Major media outlets have joined an amicus brief urging a court to dismiss the charges. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19989,19990,10994,8451,19988,19991,10397],"class_list":["post-65102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amicus-brief","tag-cities-church-in-st-paul-minnesota","tag-department-of-justice-doj","tag-don-lemon","tag-georgia-fort","tag-reporters-committee-for-freedom-of-the-press","tag-the-daily-signal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65103,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65102\/revisions\/65103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}